She was not a public figure.
A woman went to work one morning without any reason to believe the day would be different from any other. She held no public office. She ran no business with a visible footprint. She had no public dispute or controversy attached to her name. She was, by every external measure, a private person living a private life.
Someone had been looking for her. Not through friends or mutual contacts. He paid an internet information broker a small fee and received the address of her employer. The physical location where she would be at a predictable time. He drove there and killed her.
The entire transaction cost less than two hundred dollars. Two database lookups. Her workplace, delivered as a commercial product.
For a small business owner, the exposure is structurally worse and far more automatic. The registered address on a business filing is public by default. The home address used as a registered agent address is published in state records. A business owner's employer address and work location are often the same address they filed with the secretary of state, printed on their business cards, and listed on every professional platform they use. The information does not need to be sought out. It is organized, searchable, and available for purchase.
The court that heard the case later found that the information broker bore legal liability for the physical harm caused by the sale. It was a landmark ruling. It changed nothing about the underlying system.
The same type of transaction runs continuously across dozens of platforms today. A name. A fee. A location. The architecture that made her findable that morning has not been dismantled. It has expanded.
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