Google and Yahoo! have fostered the belief that if you can type, then you are a researcher. In my experience, the DIY researcher’s greatest failings occur in the following areas:
- poor source selection
- not understanding that a hierarchy of authorities may exist for the research topic
- not understanding the relationship between time, money, and value
- not understanding how error and bias may appear in search results; and finally, terminology.
Most DIY searchers do not prepare for the search by collecting the synonyms and antonyms, thesauri, dictionaries, and the British and American spelling differences. They don’t take time to consider appropriate terms and phrases then make a list to work through.
If you have to complete any kind of intelligence analysis, then these titles are necessary reading.
A re-print of Heur’s classic, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. This is about the dangers of cognitive biases and how to avoid them. It also contains the best explanation of Analysis of Competing Hypotheses that I have ever read.
Clark’s Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach. This is about target modeling, organizational analysis, as well as quantitative and predictive techniques.
Lowenthal’s Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy(3rd Edition). The third edition of Intelligence represents a major revision. I think the best features of the third edition are a more integrated, and comparative analysis of the of intelligence services in Britain, China, France, Israel, and Russia, and for just for me, the author included a new list of acronyms.
I use a lot of the large squared Moleskine notebooks. Sometimes I need to mark sections of the book for easy reference. Those little half grid-squares at the outside edge of the page are ready made for the purpose.
I use my razor sharp pocket knife and cut a few of the partial grid-squares away on the edge of 4 or 5 pages to mark the start of a section. I usually make this inverted tab about 4 or 5 grid-squares long and use a Pilot Hi-Tec-C to label it. If I don’t need to label the inverted tab, then I just use a single hole punch to make the inverted tab.
For less permanent markers I use book darts.
In Canada, only one incorporating jurisdiction allows a search by officer or director name. Uncovering a person’s corporate affiliations in Canada is difficult.
The Investigator must embark upon an involved search strategy using a variety of database aggregators, the Internet, and a few public record sources. After conducting all these searches, the Investigator will never be certain that he has found everything.
Doing this type of research is dependent upon the Investigator’s understanding of the sources’ content and how to connect the data to the objectives of the investigation.
The Investigator must know how to search directory databases, commercial credit reports, news and journal databases, insider filings, statistical data, court records, lien filings, and much more to reveal corporate affiliations in Canada.
After doing address searches, search for references to the person’s or company’s telephone and fax numbers.
In D&B, you may find a person used his personal telephone or fax number for a small business.
In Google, leave out parenthesis and other separators. The number should appear as 123 456 7890. Google will then return anything that appears where the space was located. If you include separators they will be ignored and anything that appears in their place will not be returned in the results. Do the search without quotation marks first, then do it as a phrase search with quotation marks.
You should search for references to fax numbers in the same manner. If you find several companies or people using the same fax number, then you have some type of relationship. In my experience, many frauds begin with a front company or phony business that uses the same fax number as several such businesses.
Searching for data on a person certainly involves searching by name, but limiting your searches to only name references is shortsighted.
If you know the person’s home address, then search for references to that, you may find a business, association, or other organisation at his home. You may find that his home address is associated with another person.
You should search his business address the same way, but add an address search in Dun & Bradstreet and other credit reporting databases. Lien filings, corporate filings, and other public filings should be searched by name and address as permitted by the relevant jurisdictions.
Associations and affiliations tell you a great deal about a person — remember what your mother told you about the company you keep…
The US Government Accountability Office says that stolen sensitive military items have been purchased by undercover government officials on Craigslist and eBay. However, this is like the kettle calling the pot black. The same subcommittee determined that the Defense Department sold chemical protective suits and biological warfare laboratory equipment to the public.
While it is easy to see an element of fear mongering in this, it does remind us that private sector businesses should be checking eBay and Craigslist for their own product and counterfeits. Doing so may reveal a problem with theft, grey marketing, or counterfeiting.
Searching for a File Type
Make use of the file format search available in Google, Yahoo, Live and Exalead. The following tells you how to search for specific file formats, such as PowerPoint (ppt) presentations; Adobe PDF for government and private industry documents; xls for Excel spreadsheets containing lists, statistical, and accounting data; and rss or xml to locate RSS feeds. Continue reading ‘Searching for Hidden Files’
The Google “site:” Operator
The Google “site:” operator is one of the most powerful search tools available from Google for target reconnaissance.
Target Reconnaissance
Once normal search methods locate sites that have useful data and you have explored those links using the cache operator, its time to do some serious anonymous target reconnaissance.
Using the “site:” Operator
This operator allows you to map an entire domain. Use the operator to get a listing of every indexed page on a domain. Try this: site:microsoft.com.
The operator will accept additional arguments. For instance, site:gov secret will search all domains ending in .gov for the word secret. Try it.
Notice that the search results include links to the cached pages for the domain. In conjunction with the site operator, you will use additional arguments targeting your subject. Your anonymous target reconnaissance will be conducted by viewing the cached pages. You will not click on any links on the cached pages as these will go to live pages. You will not allow your browser to download any images on the cached pages, as they may be live images from the target domain. You will be STEALTHY. They won’t see you coming.
As an Investigator, one of the greatest problems is properly identifying the subject of your inquiries. You have to deal with misspelled names, incorrect dates of birth, generational designators, and many other obstacles to identifying the subject in your search results.
Face-filters help when you are looking for images and video. But how do you find your person in the thousands of search results that appear when you search by his name alone? Continue reading ‘Clustering Search Engines’
Large search engines like Google capture a great deal of content that normal searches won’t find. One feature on Google provides two types of functionality commonly ignored by the neophyte.
The feature is the cache operator. This operator has only one argument:
cache:www.confidentialresource.com or cache:http://www.confidentialresource.com
This will return: “This is G o o g l e’s cache of http://www.confidentialresource.com/ as retrieved on 5 Mar 2008 18:01:20 GMT.”
You can see that the Blog has changed since the 5 Mar 2008. This is the first function provided by the cache operator.
Links on cached page may be explored in the cache by copying the link location and submitting it as a search with the cache operator or by clicking on the cache link in the search results (should they appear). In my experience, pages generated from a database (CMS, etc.) will not appear in the cache search results, but it is worth at try. Another operator will work for those pages, and that will be the subject of the next Stealth Search article.
The second, and most important function provided by the cache operator, is that of STEALTH. As you are not visiting the target web site, they don’t know you are investigating them.
Infamous hacker Kevin Poulson paid the defaulted Yellow Page accounts of escort services to get their defunct telephone numbers reactivated. He collected the profits and when the police became interested, only the original advertiser was on record with the telephone company. I once saw this done in a home renovation scam.
In Cynthia Hetherington’s excellent book, Business Background Investigations: Tools and Techniques for Solution Driven Due Diligence, she tells of a group of crooks who moved into an office recently vacated by an insurance company. They took-up the old phone number and began selling insurance.
When new policy holders complained about bad service to the insurance company’s head office, the scam was revealed, but the crooks had moved on.
It’s not just people who have their identity stolen.
Dave Carpe at Passing Notes provides a good primer for the Researcher or Investigator who needs to record telephone interviews.
I just found this:
“WikiLeaks.org is developing an uncensorable version of WikiPedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis.”
I’m not sure how I might use this site, but it does have some very interesting instructions on how to submit material anonymously.
I don’t believe in the paperless office. I remember a client who tried to impose the “paperless office”. Employees kept paper files in their car trunks and they would sneak out to the parking lot to review critical paper files and notes throughout the day.
However, we can streamline how we handle paper files. Here are some good articles on the subject.
Paperless office is pure fiction: report
Is Paperless Possible?
6 tips for a ‘paperless’ office
12 Tips for an Organized Desk
“Paperless Myth: Rumours of Paper’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” By Ulla de Stricker
“Why I Prefer Hardcopy” By Katrina Hughes
