Personal Data: What's possible with a few dollars and internet access?

The PrivacySpot blog has an interesting post and link to a New York Times article from the May 18, 2005 Technology section. The article reports on the efforts of a computer security course at Johns Hopkins University to prove the vunerability of electronic personal data scattered across the country.



The project involved small teams of students who were allowed to spend no more than $50 and were to limit there search of legal and public sources of information, including death records, property tax information, campaign donations occupationa license registries, etc. The results of the efforts by these inquisitive computer science students were interesting.