Joseph Scales
05-18-2005, 02:22 PM
In one of the more disturbing academic exercises in recent years, students at John Hopkins University set out to prove that anyone with a few bucks, a few hours, and access to the Internet could become a vendor of personal information about large numbers of Americans. And they did. This story in the New York Times reports that, working with a strict requirement to use only legal, public sources of information, groups of three to four students set out to vacum up not just tidbits on citizens of Baltimore, but whole databases: death records, property tax information, campaign donations, occupational license registries. They then cleaned and linked the databases they had collected, making it possible to enter a single name and generate multiple layers of information on individuals.
According to the story, several groups managed to gather well over a million records, with hundreds of thousands of individuals represented in each database.
source: CSO Magazine (May 18,2005)
According to the story, several groups managed to gather well over a million records, with hundreds of thousands of individuals represented in each database.
source: CSO Magazine (May 18,2005)