Update: The link to Who is John Doe? is inactive.
A few days ago a friend asked me for help tracking down some friends of an imprisoned murderer. Cracking my knuckles, I said, I’d love to, of course!
Tracking people down is one of my favorite things to do, and there are so many back alleys in the Internet, you could toil away at it for your whole career.
I sent my friend a few ideas, but this is one of my favorites: Who is John Doe? Despite looking pretty old-timey, it’s a great collection of resources, and you can use them to expand from there: if snitch.name turns up a Facebook profile, why not investigate it with Graph Search? If a federal lawsuit turns up for your source in PACER, why not check the state where they’re from?
Really, finding people is mostly a matter of patience and time. That’s sort of the sad secret behind the magic.
In other news, I have settled down in New Orleans for the time being, so if anyone’s in town, drop me a line! We’ll go out for a hurricane 🍹