"I can find anyone in the world in 24 hours ..."

I gues that doesn't count Osama Bin Laden. Anyway, the above quote comes from a fascinating New York Times article about the paparazzi wars in Los Angeles.

Other interesting highlights include:

Here, too, are what Mr. Griffin describes as the passenger manifests of every coast-to-coast flight on American Airlines, the biggest carrier at Los Angeles International Airport. "I get the full printout," he says. "If they fly any coastal flight, I know. I can also find anybody in the world within 24 hours, I guarantee it. If they don't mask the tail number on a private plane, I'll find it." He says he has law-enforcement officers on his payroll, too, and can have a license plate checked in an hour on weekdays, 20 minutes on weekends. (The release of drivers' information was limited in California after a stalker used information from the state's Department of Motor Vehicles to find and kill the actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989.)

Yet Mr. Navarre is creating new paparazzi all the time. "You never know," he says. He noticed that a homeless Vietnam veteran, panhandling on a local street corner, had a rapport with the celebrities driving by. So he gave him a 6.3-megapixel camera worth $3,000. "And he turned out to be good," Mr. Navarre said. "He'd been at this corner a long time."