While it hasn't been confirmed yet as far as I know, the Washington Post's Security Fix blog reports that
- Steven Rambam, the owner and CEO of Pallorium Inc., a company that bills itself as the largest privately held online investigative service in the United States, was arrested...by FBI agents just moments before he was to lead a panel discussion on privacy here at the HOPE hacker conference in New York City.
It goes on to say:
- Rambam was going to discuss how he dug up -- in just 4.5 hours of searching private and public databases -- more than 500 pages worth of data on HOPE attendee Rick Dakan, who agreed to be the guinea pig for the project.
"All I had given him was my e-mail and name. He knew everywhere I'd lived, every car I had driven, and even someone else in Alabama who was using my Social Security number since 1983," said Dakan, who said he is attending this conference for a book he is working on about hacker conferences. "He found all my friends, pictures of friends, knew about my brother's criminal history."
Fortunately, it sounds like the panel went on seamlessly without him. More information, including what the charges are, should become available at his arraignment. In the meantime, how would you deal with it if one of your session leaders got yanked off the podium by the FBI? Would your panelists be strong enough to carry it off on their own? And as a side note, how scary is the subject he was planning to address?