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from the only-the-shadow-knows...-and-has-head-up-its-ass dept.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used a quick and dirty web-based system to communicate with its agents around the world. Easy-to-use but not sophisticated. Iran and China used this system to find U.S. spies and convert or kill many agents, including entire national spy networks, starting around 2008.
Once you recognized the system, counter-spies could simply use Google to find the CIA's communication sites. They could then use standard traffic analysis to find out who visited the sites, identifying the spy networks.
Iran found spies using the system, converted some to double agents, while killing dozens of others. Iran may have passed the info to China, who wiped out the CIA network there, turning and killing 30+ agents. Iran then went spy hunting across the Middle East, too.
The absolute kicker: a CIA tech contractor identified the problem, that the network was compromised and spies were disappearing due to it, and reported it up the chain in 2008. He was ignored, punished and fired. Part of the reason we know this all happened is because he filed a federal whistleblower protection lawsuit.
So many/most of these U.S. agents would not be dead if CIA management AND the CIA inspector general had listened and acted on the report of a technical/security problem. Instead they denied they had a problem, burying their heads and their agents in the sand. Not only is the CIA riddled with terrible torture monkeys, but also deadly, incompetent, and inept management.
Article: The CIA's communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran.
Previously: CIA Informants Imprisoned and Killed in China From 2010 to 2012
Ex-CIA Officer Arrested, Suspected of Compromising Chinese Informants
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:55PM (1 child)
You're talking about consistency across generations. That's not really feasible.
Your viewpoint is based on the idea of a coherent organization with coherent goals, but that coherency is an illusion.
In fact the Intelligence community at large is very fractured and you have almost as many competing interests as you do individuals working within the organizations.
Think of it in terms of people, each with their own unique story to tell.
You have the nerds, we aren't anti-social or sociopaths, but a lot of times we allow our ambitions to cloud our judgement. We do what is interesting to us and frame it within a context that justifies it.
Specifically, the nerds who make crypto & security and the nerds who compromise crypto & security are functionally identical, but with diametrically opposed viewpoints justifying their behavior.
We are the do'ers though, we're the ones who make it possible for things to happen without necessarily considering all possible outcomes.
You think the 21 year old hotshot government script kiddie is functionally different from the 16 year kid who bought some scripts online to see what he could break, or the 32 year old who wrote these tools and released them in hopes that knowing the exploits exist would tighten rather than compromise security generally? You're fooling yourself.
Beyond the nerds who enable things because they can't see past the ends of their nose when it comes to possible repercussions, there are many, many people who make their career in intelligence for other reasons than the challenge aspects.
You have the "red blooded, bible thumpin" American Hero types who view their job through a filter that tells them that anything done in the name of America must be a good thing. These guys are damned near impossible to turn because they sincerely believe the story they've told themselves. Generally the way to get at them is via their repressed urges. For example trapping them in a "sin" sting and threatening to make the deviant behavior known unless they divulge some puzzle piece that is unlikely to ever link back to them and then the evidence against them will simply evaporate.
The second type are the career people who are only concerned about their career. They do blend into the first type, there is significant overlap, but the difference is they aren't doing what they do for America. They are doing what they do because they like being in the shadows and acting like a puppet master. Generally these guys become double agents once compromised, not because of dirt, but because they like the added sense of control on the world scene from playing both sides against eachother. These guys and gals are sociopaths, for them it is about control but the extra money doesn't hurt either.
The final type are career floaters, these are people who are doing what they do for love of money only. They would rat out their mother for the right size briefcase full of cash. This means exfiltrating sensitive data and selling it to the highest bidder, or simply having a standing customer whom they report to periodically. These are straight up moles, they view themselves as underpaid, under appreciated, and justify their breaches by telling themselves that if they don't then someone else will. The money is right and the intel probably seems mostly harmless. In some cases they are paid by the MB for for data, data which is simply copied to someplace else with no one else the wiser. This type generally start their career with the government and then leave to work for contract companies. This also attracts people like Snowden, who were not compensated with dollars, but with sense of heroism. Kudos to Snowden and the others for their good work in rooting out an illegal operation, but you can bet he did what he did because he felt ignored and unappreciated and not properly compensated. Gaining status as a folk hero was likely a fair trade in his mind.
So here's how the scenario you describe plays out in reality.
Company A has interests in Country B whether it be land, money, infrastructure, natural resources, anything else you can imagine.
Country B is friendly at first to Company A, but eventually this friendliness turns. Perhaps a new regime comes to power, or perhaps it's the old regime trying to placate it's populace, but suddenly company A finds it's interests are no longer protected. Company A is now forced to lobby it's interests with the USA. Depending on how well connected Company A is, this can take the form of lobbying congress, or for the better connected, they just directly influence the intelligence apparatus.
In the case of Dole Pineapple Company, the president of the company was vice president of the USA. However it occurs, the interests of Company A, are now viewed as "the interests of the USA", by an organization with a license to kill and a mission specifically to "further the interests of the USA at home and abroad".
It's important to note that Company A can actually be any group, this includes publicly traded companies, but also privately held companies, uber wealthy individuals and also informal organizations such as the various Mafias.
Once the interests of Company A become American interests in the eyes of the intelligence community, it is then on the intelligence community to realign the interests of Country B with Company A.
This includes but is not limited to further inflaming an already agitated populace and doesn't even stop at assassination. Eventually the problem is resolved when new leadership is installed that is friendly to the interests of Company A, regardless of if the interests of Company A actually align with overall American interests.
This is why we appear to support dictators. The new leadership is doing what the old leadership failed to do and that is to protect the corporate interests of Company A, regardless of who Company A really is.
In the meantime the apparatus to do this is driven from the top down. Each cog in the machine has it's own teeth in the machine, it's own reason for turning, but so long as the net effect is that those gears are all turning towards the ultimate goals of Company A, then all cogs are kept in place. It is only when a cog fails to turn properly that it is removed, regardless of it's reason for failing to turn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @10:26PM
Dated. MXczZTV0NnVxYXFhMzM2Ng==