Michael Zimmer.org

Information is leverage. Information is power. Information is Maltego.
These are the catch-phrases for a South African company that recently released an affordable, user-friendly data mining tool called Maltego, bringing powerful data-mining technology to the masses.
While targeted mostly to forensics and information security professionals, it is not hard to see how such a tool could be easily deployed to mine the vast amounts of personal and identifiable data people are increasingly sharing in the Web 2.0 world. No longer is it necessary to have the computational power or singular repository of …

It was recently revealed (confirmed?) that the popular online video diaries of LonelyGirl15 were not authentic, but a publicity stunt of entertainment folks linked to Hollywood talent agency CAA. Today, the real identity of LonelyGirl15 has also been revealed, mostly through some simple amateur data-mining posted at LG15.com:
I was surfing the article on Lonelygirl15 on TMZ.com when I came across a comment that linked to a private MySpace page that was allegedly that of the actress who plays Lonelygirl15. As the profile was set to “private,” there was …

I’ve commented about some of the privacy & surveillance implications of adding location meta tags in photos, everyone snapping photos in public with their cellphone cameras, and the rise of amateur surveillance and data-mining. Many of these concerns are repeated in an essay on the Guardian warning of the growing dangers of peer-to-peer surveillance, defined as…
the emerging idea that the constant operation of a whole range of digital devices will increasingly be used as evidence against us by parties other than the state. Many of us have already encountered it, …

Anders Albrechtslund has organized an amazing Social Software and Web 2.0: Critical Perspectives and Challenges for Research and Business seminar and workshop hosted by Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark on October 6, 2006:
Social software and Web 2.0 are concepts (or buzzwords) that have been used in order to capture recent developments on the Internet. Websites such as Flickr, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, eBay, Google Maps and craigslist are all part of this second-generation phenomenon, which has spurred a number of new services and communities. The concepts have been eagerly adopted within seemingly …

The Dumb Little Man blog reveals how easy it can be to figure out who a person is, where they live, and what their daily routine & activities are by simply searching through public online calendars (like Google Calendar) and some simple searches or 411 calls.
[via Slashdot]]

The latest amateur surveillance and data mining story stars a suburban mom upset about the house being toilet-papered by area teens. She didn’t want to involve the police, so she took the following steps:

She canvassed local stores to see which one had a run on toilet paper, and discovered that at one store, someone bought 144 rolls of toilet paper, cheese, dog food, flour and plastic forks, the same items found on her lawn and house.
She then got the manager of the store to show her surveillance videos, allowing her …

We’ve seem to have recently turned a corner where advanced surveillance & data mining technologies are now increasingly marketed to everyday people. Wired News reports on a new vehicle license plate scanning and tracking that is being pitched to more than just law enforcement needs:
Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing …

FlickrInspector is a new tool to help make amateur data-mining of Web 2.0 more efficient. Enter a Flickr username, user ID, or email, and FlickrInspector gives you all the “publicly available” information on that Flickr user, including “interestingness”, recently uploaded photos, favorites, contacts, tags, sets, etc.
It’s a convenient way to stalk learn more about your favorite Flickr user, all in one place.
[via Lifehacker]

I’ve blogged about the concerns with commercial data aggregation, the power of data mining, and about how “security via obscurity” no longer applies when databases are online and searchable.
Here’s a case showing just how easy it can be for amateurs to do a little data mining, track someone’s online activities, and perhaps even piece together some of their identity:
Over the weekend, Cory Doctorow blogged about this story of a woman lost her camera while on vacation, but the family who found it refused return it because their child liked it …