The Daily Caveat wrote recently about the proliferation of black market personal data traders on the U.S. / Mexico border. Apparently Moscow has also seen a tremendous growth in such activities with far more serious consequences:

Via The Globe & Mail:

By GRAEME SMITH
Tuesday, July 5, 2005 Updated at 8:40 AM EDT
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

MOSCOW — The most expensive wares in Moscow's software markets, the items that some Russians are calling a threat to their personal safety, aren't on public display. It takes less than 15 minutes to find them, however, at the teeming Gorbushka market, a jumble of kiosks selling DVDs, CD-ROMs and an array of gadgetry in an old factory west of downtown.

One question -- Where can we buy databases of private information? -- and the young man selling rip-off copies of Hollywood movies leaps to his feet. He leads the customers to another vendor, who wears a bull's head on his belt buckle. This second man listens to the request, opens his cellphone, and punches a speed-dial number. Moments later, a third vendor appears. He is jovial and blunt about his trade. "What do you need?" he says. "We have everything."

In Moscow these days, among people who deal in stolen information, the category of everything is surprisingly broad...At the Gorbushka kiosk, sales are so brisk that the vendor excuses himself to help other customers while the foreigner considers his options: $43 for a mobile phone company's list of subscribers? Or $100 for a database of vehicles registered in the Moscow region?

Fascinating...and more than a little scary, considering that in addition to more cut-throat competative intelligence and regular old identity theft one of the disturbing off-shoots of this personal data black market has been a growth in carefully planned robberies of promient businessmen and public figures.

Read the rest here.

-- MDT