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.