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Does the CIA do any monitoring of people online? I guess given that it's a huge agency they probably do some because of mission creep, but I thought the idea wa

Does the CIA do any monitoring of people online? I guess given that it's a huge agency they probably do some because of mission creep, but I thought the idea was that the NSA is supposed to be in charge of it.

m12k 9y ago
Oh absolutely they do. NSA specializes in mass surveillance and cryptography (both design thereof for national security and breaking thereof to spy on others - they probably have way more cryptographers and mathematicians than any other agency). But even then all the other intelligence agencies will do a lot of online spying, hacking, and following of people of their own, in alignment with their respective missions - that's just the world we live in now, where there's no way to run an intelligence agency and not have a massive online surveillance apparatus. FBI will do it nationally for federal investigations, CIA will do it 'on foreign soil' (although this is extended to nationally as well whenever there's a counterintelligence justification) and they'll do it both to screen for and keep tabs on potential threats (e.g. terrorists) and for knowing their plans, and maybe know where they will be at a given time for e.g. drone strikes, rendition or special forces ops. The regime change wing of the CIA will undoubtedly also be monitoring any regime they want to overthrow and supplying insurgents with intel to help them, warn them if they are hunted. On top of this there's the different army ones under the Defense umbrella that will do similar things as the CIA but under a 'cyberwarfare' moniker and in coordination with their respective troops. And finally there's agencies with State, Justice and Energy that will indubitably also have their fair share of hackers - the full list of agencies is pretty long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community#Members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... I'm sure books could be written about the effort required to coordinate them all and prevent too much redundancy, but you can be damn sure they all monitor people online and don't just leave that to the NSA.

m12k 9y ago

Oh absolutely they do. NSA specializes in mass surveillance and cryptography (both design thereof for national security and breaking thereof to spy on others - they probably have way more cryptographers and mathematicians than any other agency). But even then all the other intelligence agencies will do a lot of online spying, hacking, and following of people of their own, in alignment with their respective missions - that's just the world we live in now, where there's no way to run an intelligence agency and not have a massive online surveillance apparatus. FBI will do it nationally for federal investigations, CIA will do it 'on foreign soil' (although this is extended to nationally as well whenever there's a counterintelligence justification) and they'll do it both to screen for and keep tabs on potential threats (e.g. terrorists) and for knowing their plans, and maybe know where they will be at a given time for e.g. drone strikes, rendition or special forces ops. The regime change wing of the CIA will undoubtedly also be monitoring any regime they want to overthrow and supplying insurgents with intel to help them, warn them if they are hunted. On top of this there's the different army ones under the Defense umbrella that will do similar things as the CIA but under a 'cyberwarfare' moniker and in coordination with their respective troops. And finally there's agencies with State, Justice and Energy that will indubitably also have their fair share of hackers - the full list of agencies is pretty long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community#Members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... I'm sure books could be written about the effort required to coordinate them all and prevent too much redundancy, but you can be damn sure they all monitor people online and don't just leave that to the NSA.