TexasCHLforum.com

bdickens wrote:

SewTexas wrote:my daughter took a "world view" class and one of the lessons was about what you could learn about a person from their bumper stickers. We still play that game when we're in traffic....it's actually kinda scary.

One of the reasons why my vehicles are "sterile."

I also don't leave papers, books or any other kind of thing visible that any sort of information can be gleaned from.

When I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, I was tasked out to a detail for the JFK Special Warfare Center. What they needed was NCOs for part of an anti terrorism class for people who were to be deployed in certain hot spots, but not where there were active operations.

We were in teams of two. We were given photographs of our subjects, a description of their car, license plate number, home address and a camera. We were also given signed and notarized waivers allowing us to be doing what we were doing in case we found ourselves confronted by the local constabulary. Our task was to follow these people around for two weeks and find out as much about them as we could.


The picture of a person's life that can be compiled from scraps of information off of papers left lying on car seats, bumper stickers, books, trash in the trash cans, etc is - how shall I say - eye opening.

We found out where people went to school, who their friends were, what units they were in, their hobbies, their children's names and where they went to school. We even managed to get the SSNs of a couple. We even found out stuff that was in their personnel records, including one subject whose records we found out were blacked out.

At the end of the two weeks, they had everyone in the class assemble in a classroom. Then they had us come in and give a presentation on what all we found out about them, including a slide show.

You should have seen the jaws drop.