On 4/30/07, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 4/30/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1) Finding that she died in 1992 involved
discovering a 'Nadia M.
Osipovich' of the correct approximate age died in Oregon in 1992.
Oregon is the recorded state of residence of this person in the 1940s.
It's probably the same person and she's probably dead. This list exists, in
part, to prevent identity fraud (impersonating a dead person).
Is it enough to simply match name, approximate
age, and state of
residence in death records to prove someone is dead for BLP concerns?
For this person, probably. In general, no. There are probably thousands of
dead Matthew Browns buried in your area.
Based on the two listed sources, I don't think we can conclude that
it's the same person. The first source has the person's name, and
"Asset of the San Francisco KGB. Naturalized American citizen living
in Portland, Oregon. Cover name Watchdog." The "second"
"source"
just has the name and cover name. Both sources are secondary based on
the same primary source - the Venona project, which I'd say is
somewhat dubious in and of itself. As far as I'm concerned I don't
have any hard evidence the person ever even existed.
So basically you have a name. You can get extrapolate a date of birth
accurate to a few decades, and you know from the source that they once
lived in Oregon, which matches the fact that at one point they got a
social security number issued by the state of Oregon. But really you
just have a name.
It's not a particularly common name, but I don't think it's enough.
I'm also not sure what the purpose of this exercise is. Right now
this "biography" is really about the Vernona project, not about a
person.
Anthony