Analyst Toolbox

I sniggered when I looked at this (PDF) because my first thought was, We're in even bigger trouble than I thought if law enforcement intelligence analysts need to be told what a word processor is and how it could be useful. This very basic 12-page guide from the U.S. Department of Justice introduces software useful for intelligence analysts, who have investigative needs very similar to journalists. In addition to word processors ("To produce text documents, including bulletins, fact sheets, investigative summaries, and analytical reports"), it briefly explains software for spreadsheets, databases, mapping, presentations, graphics, statistics, timelines, creating PDFs, publishing, analyzing phone records, link analysis, data mining, data visualization and investigative case management.

In the same spirit, allow me to offer intelligence analysts my own advice: Osama bin Laden. Bad guy. Go get him.

Search federal spending data back to 1979

... using the new, free FFATA Portal. A spokesman for Global Computer Enterprises, Inc., the private company that created the site, told Federal Computer Week that "the goal of the search portal is to make the information easy to find by taking out the government jargon." The site explains:

The portal offers free, instant access to contracts and grants awarded across the federal government via a user-friendly free text search and dynamic reporting tool. No login or registration is required – the public has instant access to federal spending information and the ability to create custom reports from that information. This site is not associated with any government agency and is provided free of charge from GCE.

By providing more transparency in government, this site is the easy way to track federal spending and your tax dollars at work. Users are able to search government contracts, grants data, and earmark grants from the appropriations process.

OMB Watch is another private entity that offers a federal spending database.

EarmarkWatch.org

 

... is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense. Here's how the Sunlight Foundation introduced it:

Using EarmarkWatch.org, you can exercise citizen oversight of Congress. Dig into the 47 earmarks worth $166,500,000 that Rep. John Murtha inserted (and figure out which benefit campaign contributors). Or take a close look at the $100,000 earmark that Sen. David Vitter secured for an organization that promotes creationism in Louisiana schools. Or the $37 million in earmarks that include defense giant Northrop Grumman as a beneficiary.

Right now, you can investigate earmarks from the House Defense Appropriations Bill and the House and Senate versions of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bills. Using a host of online resources, you can find out whether recipients of earmarks hired lobbyists, made campaign contributions to members of Congress, or won federal contracts and grants. You can also add information to eamarks others have researched, or comment on what others have found. EarmarkWatch.org provides you with powerful tools to scrutinize and evaluate thousands of earmarks. To get started, create an account and pick an earmark.

Evolution, er, Maltego, again

The personal data mining software I wrote about recently will be back soon, under a new name: Maltego. The creator says he pulled the software offline after receiving emails accusing him of trademark infringement and misusing the terms of service of a social networking site. He's made changes to compensate and promises that version 1.0 of the new app will be available in a couple of weeks and will "totally rock."

Evolution personal data mining software

Evolution is software that searches online sources, such as social networking sites, Wikipedia, Google Books and phone directories, for names, numbers, email addresses, phrases and Web domains, and graphically displays the links between them. I installed it after reading a Linux.com article that called it "a kick-ass application, just seething with power and potential":

Still don't grok it? Think of the NSA sifting through network traffic, looking for actionable intelligence. Or if that's too conspiracy-minded for your taste, think of trying to find something new and meaningful in the results of a Google search on Paris Hilton. Evolution is kind of like that, but more aggressive in finding results, and a lot more aggressive in trying to make sense of them.

I searched for just my name and it quickly found my telephone number, my email addresses, my wife, open record appeals I had written, this blog and my personal Web site, references to me on other sites, my latitude and longitude and home city, Google Book hits citing my name and more. You can then repeat searches (called "transforms") on entities it finds, exploring potential relationships. It also turned up a lot of information unrelated or only marginally related to me, and of course it's a lot easier to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant if you're researching yourself. If you start cold on someone you don't know much about, you're going to have to do a lot more leg work to nail down what's meaningful and what isn't. Still, I was impressed. It runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The Linux.com article quoted the creator, Roelof Temmingh, saying he's undecided about what to do with the Evolution, which is free, at least for now, and still in beta: "He said that he needs to make some money from Evolution or it will die," the article said. "He is considering everything from advertising to subscriptions, or selling the GUI and transforms, or selling only the GUI and making the transforms open source, and he is open to other suggestions."

UPDATE: You can no longer download Evolution from its Web site. Linux.com reports that the creator announced he had removed it "due to circumstances outside of my control. I am not sure how long this outage will last, but perhaps it will be permanent." The site now says that if you want to see what Evolution can do, contact evolution@paterva.com.

Site unmasks organizations making anonymous Wikipedia edits

A CalTech graduate student has created a site, WikiScanner, that reveals organizations where employees have made anonymous edits of Wikipedia, Wired reports:

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case.

Other organizations fingered include the CIA, Microsoft and Congress. The site appears to be struggling with the attention it's already generated, because I tried entering The Courier-Journal in the search box and it churned away for several minutes before telling me it could find no anonymous edits by anyone from our newspaper.

Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons

The Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains a list of "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons." "The Office of Foreign Assets Control (or OFAC) is an office of the United States Department of the Treasury that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the unapproved proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Wikipedia explains. You can get the information in multiple formats, including formats suitable for importing into a database. You can also search using the federal government's Excluded Parties List System, and there are free search tools on the Web, including one offered by InstantOFAC and another by NASD. The Wikipedia notes that blocked parties include Al Qaeda, communist parties of several countries and The Central Bank of Iran:

Also included are various names of individuals whose names are blocked, though controversially this has caused some innocent individuals to be unable to perform daily transactions such as wiring money to relatives or opening bank accounts, even though OFAC has a verification hotline to verify that a blocked individual is, in fact, a positive match to the list or not.

"Fuzzy matching" ZIP code finder and address verifier

QAS offers a free address lookup tool that does "fuzzy matching" to verify addresses, including returning the full ZIP code, filling out partial addresses and correcting misspellings. You get ten free lookups a day and they sell a "pro" version you can add to your Web site.

Spies Online

In spite of its name, Spies Online says its goal is not to encourage spying:

Spies Online has many investigative resources for private investigators and amateur sleuths that will assist in finding people or doing background checks. It is also concerned with the issues of computer security and privacy. There are many programs on the market that sell links that Spies Online provides here free.

Mapping IP addresses

IP-address.com will plot the general location of a computer if you have its IP address. It plotted my home and work computers in Louisville, correctly, but fear not, it won't identify your exact address, only your city or the city of your Internet service provider. It grabs your computer's IP when you visit the home page and attempts to locate it automatically, but you can enter any IP address.

ZIP code locator

ZipInfo, a ZIP Code database vendor, offers a free ZIP code lookup that will give you a ZIP's county, FIPS code, time zone, area code, latitude and longitude and its Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Mail drop search

Sometimes a fraudulent business will use an address that looks legitimate because it has a suite number and street name but in fact it's just a rented post office box at a UPS Store or other mail drop. This student financial aid site offers a search form you can use to see if an address matches a mail drop. As the site notes: "A mail drop address alone should not be considered confirmation of a scam, because legitimate firms sometimes use such mail boxes. But the fact of a mail drop address, together with other warning signs, can be a useful indicator of an operation's questionable legitimacy."