Mark Horvit, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, spoke about doing deep background checks on candidates for local office at RJI's "Down-home Democracy: Empowering Citizens With Outstanding Coverage of Local Elections" on Friday, Jan. 31, 2014.
2.
Run every candidate in key races through the
same basic checks. This can include things
like:
Have they paid their property taxes?
Do they have any liens?
Do they have criminal records?
Are there any civil suits against them?
Any discipline from professional licensing bodies?
6.
Who is he/she?
Google, yes, Google
Also check at least one other search engine.
Where has he/she lived?
Zabasearch
Does the person still live there? Do they own?
Subtitle: Property records are fun
BRB Publications
7.
Court records (both for business and people).
Find neighbors with whitepages.
Sex offender registry.
Corporate records
Professional licenses
10. Domain
searches can reveal a lot.
Domain Tools http://www.domaintools.com
Allwhois http://www.allwhois.com
Quarkbase
11.
Search by image with Google
Search by image with Tin Eye
EXIF
Exchangeable Image File: the file format used
by most digital cameras. Usually consists of the
JPEG file format along with metadata tags.
Firefox add-on
12.
Search engine cache (Google, Bing)
Wayback Machine
Library of Congress’ archiving project: Mapping
the Internet Electronic Resources Virtual
Archive (MINERVA)
CyberCemetery – sites of defunct government
agencies and commissions