February 15, 2008

Interview with Gina de Miranda, Spookbuster

2008 February 15

Gina de Miranda

  • Decide what you're going to look for, and about who.
  • Decide what search terms will be effective
  • Use The Word Menu (Random House)
  • Use The Visual Thesaurus to refine search terms
  • The Invisible Web (read the guides Berkeley Library)
  • Librarian's Index to the Internet
  • Metasearch (Metasearch Engines)
  • Search Engines
Robert Lackey (RobertLackey.com/)
Example
  1. Memos (everybody)
  • Visit GigaBlast, which searches via document type
  • singingfish (enables searching via document type, e.g., mp3, mp4)
  • Government book repository or records depository: 
  • gw.edu NSA archives, e.g., photos of Rumsfeldt's meeting with Saddam Hussein and invoices for 
  • Databases: excellus, the web detective, 
  • pacer is the court system (charges $0.08/page). Search criminal courts records for people summoned as witnesses.
Harry Gart (does not have a means of support, does not add up, they're gone a lot, won't take phone calls in your presence)
  • Drivers license number
Can find what car someone is driving.
Deally Koss—people have figured that he is an asset. Website is way too professional for someone supporting themselves via blog. Publicist said “we like the Fascists”. 
Reverse engine for ZIP code and Phone Number (even cell phone). Gina comments, “I am good.”
The Counterculture Haunter—well known. Claiming to be destitute. It did not fit. Clues that he might be an informant. Searched FBI using doc searches. Found a commendation letter. Fifteen-twenty businesses under his own name. Outed himself as Crossdresser. 
Fave: Mario Provaka (Romanian). Search engines that go by string search in a particular document type. 
Offshore search engines (Europe, Asia).
Example from Jerry Defoe: chat room inhabitant trying to disrupt, provocative, profane. Ping the IP: static IP in downtown Manhattan. Jerry: “I knew it was a professional operation.” After Giuliani dropped out of the race, he disappeared.
Gina: “Work it backward. IP address is your internet protocol address. You can Sam Spade (Windows) traces protocols back to their point of origin. Cryptome.org has gov't docs: IP addresses for all the gov't servers. DNSinfo: IP reverse: narrow IP to geographic. Network solutions and run the whois: track down the ISP.
Melinda “Amazing”
Saddam Hussein
Uday's computer. Sidney Blumenthal was stealing from daughter using a keytrapper. Morgan put one on SB's computer. Autumn 2002. Strange email address: to Iraq. SB dialoging for the Clintons: 
Greed
Told Morgan to keep listening
Keystroke trapper: two kinds: software and hardware (disguised).
Sophos antispy software. Sweep the computer for spyware. "Spy software" "anti keylogging"
Encrypt with PGP: translate everything you write into garble.
Root kits: small bkgd program. Slower and slower. If you have a DSL line. Install Port protection software.
Contact info: email: madame_karnak@
Trojan Republican: strange bedfellows.
Offshore (in my book):  
Following the money trail. How do you find out who is benefitting. Freedominfo.org: financial transactions offshore. 
Edgar (SEC website) Form 3: companies fill out before going public: reveals shareholders. Form 8: change in material conditions.
What to do:
  • Listen, don't be too quick to categorize
  • Remember that there are people who are in the business of selling you down the river
Melinda: be empathic (Abu Graib guard)
Jerry: AT&T capturing everything. Immunity for telecoms
Gina: take a look at your constitution
Dave in Florida, “Also have to be careful because some of the info is not accurate.”
Gina: “Good point. Be exhaustive. Corroborate using several independent sources. E.g., people with bad credit reports are not necessarily bad people. You cannot take a government report and just buy it. I advocate: look for patterns that don't fit together, how they treat people, corroborate.”
Dave: “People grow up and can change for the better.”
Gina: “Men need to get over the idea that they ought to withhold child support if they cannot get visitation. The children still suffer.”
Study: The benefits of a two-parent situation:
G: “Bashing women or bashing men is foolish. It hurts the children.”
D: search for video "Ron Paul's Rally"
J: Government spying for political purposes.
Gina:
  • Need to encourage people to think. Most people try to be good. Do not believe what you see on television. Learn to look behind. If you don't want others to believe the worst about you, don't believe the worst of them.
Example: man who worked with a woman who was savaged. He was not indicted, but the news was all over the net, and he lost his job and had to relocate to rebuild his life.
  • How people can protect themselves.
Scott: “How about Rick Williams's effort to put truth back in media?” 
Jerry: “Do your research. Beware of IPOs. Caveat emptor.
Gina: Saw a lot of people lose everything in the Dot bomb, but you meet better people at the bottom...It's ludicrous to judge people by the money they have...Money does not make you good; it makes you rich. 
Gina says:
  • How do I keep from people getting the wrong idea about me? Google yourself first. Now is the time to go back and moderate your postings. Go to DejaNews. 
  • Call for your credit report. Make sure someone is not using your numbers. 
  • Send the letters.
  • You are entitled under a 1972 law to go to any government agency and challenge their information. You can write to the FBI and ask for your own letter to placed in your file. Keep both letters, the one with your information and the one requesting that the information be filed.
  • Previous employer ReferenceCheck.
  • PGP for email. Read your outgoing email before sending.
  • Be kind, because the face you show to the world is the face that will be revealed.
  • Stay humble.
  • If the story sounds too good to be true, think
  • Who you are is more important that what what you have.
I am starting a website called The Disappeared. We cannot allow to happen here what has happened elsewhere. 

February 13, 2008

Lady Godiva, Werewolves of the State, and the Soup Kitchen

Protest is in the air and dates for a massive march on Washington DC are now under discussion. One such date is April 15th. There are many good reasons to pick Tax Day for an event or events across the country. The continued existence of the IRS is reason enough but, for me at least, Tax Day brings not just the horror of filing and paying but the delights of what was once the equivalent of a Libertarian High Holiday. Those were days of innocence. The wonderful old days of the early Libertarian Party were certainly varied. We changed the program some every year so that the media would not become jaded, some years featuring vampires sucking out the life's blood of a sad citizen and another year using a real horse and a mostly naked woman with a long blond wig, emulating the ride of Lady Godiva. I think that role was played by Carolyn Treynor in Los Angeles. We always had tax protests even when Ed Crane, the Darth Vader of Cato Institute, expressed the thought that they lacked sophistication. His lackeys and lick spittles nodded ferociously when he scrunched up his face and announced that. The word had been said, right, no tax protests. Now of course we understand for whom he is working so that all makes sense. April 15th became an annual celebration of freedom so it is wonderful to see another generation of activists take up the mantle and the signs and go to work. Massive marches were a little beyond our numbers back then but if the Revolution continues to fulfill its amazing potential for spontaneous, from the grass roots, order then I am sure that tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Revolutionaries will converge on the White House if the Invisible Hand of Spontaneous Order so moves the Revolution. But even if some more boring date is chosen for the March to End all Marches which will probably be ignored by the MSM, doing local Tax Protests is both fun and worthwhile, especially now. In those Old Days we orchestrated the whole event locally. It usually began with a march to a local Federal Building, but some used City Hall or their state Capitol. We got permits; we found parking. We sent news releases; called the media; did follow-ups. We let them know what to expect and made sure they had places to put the cameras or park their trucks. Speeches were supposed to be short, tight, and punchy but naturally sometimes they wandered on. These were, after all, Libertarians. We also sang protest songs of our own devising. “Who's the leader of the cult who'se screwing you and me? IRS – TAX – SOB UC” Enough of that. The literature always took up the theme. If I had the Lady Godiva flyer I would include it. On one occasion we also pasted condoms to the literature so that is you were going to be screwed at least you would be safe from infection. The next year we did a soup kitchen, handing out bowls of delicious soup to saddened filers. There were ideas that were so outrageous even Libertarians knew they should not be carried out. The more people who are involved in the planning and action the better. March. Sing. Shout. Wave signs. Leaflet. Don't forget your sign-up sheets and include the local website and contact information. Centralization is for lower life forms like bureaucrats. Things are different today. When planning your event remember to educate while entertaining yourselves. Now, we can use tax protests to widen the steadily growing gap between those working for Federal government and state – local governments while educating ourselves and all Americans on the causes for the steady deterioration of our economy. For those stay at home folks, the ones who just can't get there if there is a massive protest in DC, it is also possible to stage simultaneous events across the country that evoke the flavor of those long gone Libertarian Days, bringing them up to date with a few additions. Marching on your state capitol or town hall presents many possibilities for that process to begin. Have a digital money counter that flashes over by the millions. People watch the action. Tie that to what the Federal government is spending on Iraq. Pass out tiny replicas of dollar bills to show the impact of inflation (now those might need a microscope). Innovate. Government costs a lot and no place does it do less for us than that enacted from Washington DC. Unfunded mandates, regulatory intrusion, and other horrifying ugliness from the Feds are causing rising resentment by those in state government. Nothing about government, as presently constituted works. If we had a choice, a real choice, it would already be history. Employees of various local and state governments are growing more aware that their own pay and retirement is at risk. Coalition is built on a common agenda that benefits all parties and freedom is good for all of us. Ron Paul has said he will end the IRS and that is a solution enacted from the Federal level. But there are other ways to skin the cat. How many ways can you leave the Fed, that corporation that substituted a small, tightly controlled business for the union of the states? Along with the exit of the Lakota Republic, staged by Libertarian Russell Means, other entities are now talking about asserting their illegally foreclosed right to leave the United States of America. Among these are Vermont and Texas with murmurings from elsewhere across the nation. That also presents interesting potential themes for education. My kids would have enjoyed dressing up like Indians. Tax Day; it costs more than Christmas and you don't even get a lump of coal. I eagerly await the ideas that will pour forth from the Revolution. It will be fun.