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posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 22 2017, @05:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the send-the-kingsmen dept.

The New York Times reports that the Central Intelligence Agency faced one of its worst intelligence gathering setbacks in decades when many of its informants in China were killed or imprisoned between 2010 and 2012. To this day, it is unknown how the identities of the informants were compromised:

From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.'s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.

Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.'s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.

Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.

The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country's extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.

Also at BBC, which notes:

Last year, China warned government officials to watch out for spies - and not fall in love with them

This CIA story really helps put that "Don't date a foreigner!" campaign in perspective. You don't want to see your significant other bleeding out in the street, do you? DO YOU?!

Update: Chinese paper applauds anti-spy efforts after report CIA sources killed


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by linkdude64 on Monday May 22 2017, @02:33PM (4 children)

    by linkdude64 (5482) on Monday May 22 2017, @02:33PM (#513505)

    China runs a shitload of compromised ones IIRC and it is nothing short of a death race for the devs to continuously detect their signatures. Good thing TOR has spent lots of time and money updating their CoC!

    It seems like throughout history the CIA has been willing to do almost anything to get extra funding, especially in the form of creating a greater need for their own services via generating chaos around the world. "Whoops, we fucked up and ruined a country. Looks like we'll need twice as much money to fix it!!!" The NSA, I do not have that impression of, and have not heard anything about, namely, from Wikileaks. They do not seem like a rogue agency, they seem like a true intelligence agency - concerned with Information and Information only, rather than the direct abuse, misinterpretation, and wayward planning intended to exploit that information. They give their figures and likelihoods to the military, and the military does what bull-headed things it will, which they are equipped to do.
    The CIA just seems like it wants to bite off more and more and more. I almost suspect (PURE SPECULATION ALERT) that the timing of these code leaks from both the CIA and the NSA were timed with the election cycle, and are a sign of infighting over funding between agencies, and history tells us the CIA have ALWAYS been the ones with their hands in the cookie jar.

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  • (Score: 1) by linkdude64 on Monday May 22 2017, @02:35PM (3 children)

    by linkdude64 (5482) on Monday May 22 2017, @02:35PM (#513506)

    Funny. I'd placed "Pure speculation + Off-topic" in between a couple of karats before the second paragraph as a kind of joke. Looks like I forgot it would disappear. Joke's on me. Hehe.

    • (Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:53AM (2 children)

      by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:53AM (#513870) Journal

      > Pure speculation + Off-topic

      Edward Snowden once worked for the CIA, yet the information he leaked was about the NSA.

      • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:44PM (1 child)

        by linkdude64 (5482) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:44PM (#514453)

        1) I could've sworn that these recent NSA tool leaks weren't from Snowden, or, at least, it's been confirmed that there has been another leaker to Wikileaks other than he since his big splash.

        2) Wouldn't him leaking info about the NSA for the CIA necessitate him being a CIA employee previously?

        • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:51PM

          by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:51PM (#514559) Journal

          You had some speculation about "infighting" that you said was off-topic, so I offered some additional speculation. Edward Snowden did work for the CIA:

          After attending a 2006 job-fair focused on intelligence agencies, Snowden accepted an offer for a position at the CIA. The Agency assigned him to the global communications division at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

          [...] After distinguishing himself as a junior employee on the top computer-team, Snowden was sent to the CIA's secret school for technology specialists, where he lived in a hotel for six months while studying and training full-time.

          In March 2007 the CIA stationed Snowden with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was responsible for maintaining computer-network security.

          -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Employment_at_CIA [wikipedia.org]

          I didn't mean to suggest that he was behind the recent leaks. I was alluding to the documents he released beginning in 2013. They increased public awareness of the NSA and, I would say, brought it into disrepute.