PARANOIA

In the March 17, 2010 Los Angeles Times, Megan K. Stack reports in "Russian secrets for sale, no questions asked" that "At Moscow's Savyolovsky Market, anyone can buy discs filled with information hacked or leaked from government databases. Reporters or hit men, it really doesn't matter":

They are selling secrets along the shining corridors of the Savyolovsky Market: Unlisted numbers. Tax returns. Customs declarations. Wanted lists. Police reports. Car registrations. Business permits.

Wrenched from the bowels of government by the forces of runaway capitalism and corruption, the hush-hush databases have made their way to this market in central Moscow [...] In a country where you have no right to know, but really you can know anything, anybody can anonymously buy discs burned with private information such as rape victimization, financial holdings and the suspicion of CIA involvement. Asking price (it's negotiable): $40 to $60.

Nobody asks whether the buyer is looking for a competitive edge, an address to plan a hit, research for a newspaper article. The sale of these databases is illegal, sure, but nobody seems to care. A few beat cops browse lazily among the stalls, studying cellphones. [...]

A browse through the database of phone directories turns up full names, addresses and telephone contacts for employees of the FSB, the secretive intelligence service that is a successor to the KGB. [...]

If sympathies run in the other direction, you might phone the woman whose name was found in the notebook of a suspected CIA agent.

The police records offer a window on a compulsively secretive world. Crimes committed by police officers on a single September day included rape, hooliganism, embezzlement, bribe-taking and false testimony. "Suicide of an arrested person" also appeared in this category. And on that same day in Novosibirsk, a traffic police captain hanged himself in his shed. "The motives are being established," the report says helpfully.