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Do you think these large government agencies with hundreds or thousands of employees are some sort of magical super-organizations where everything and everybody

by roel_v 9y ago

Do you think these large government agencies with hundreds or thousands of employees are some sort of magical super-organizations where everything and everybody is 100% on, all the time? These are all regular people like you and me working there. We're talking about the world's most organized agencies, yet who put or leave an internet-connected webcam with a default password in front of their building; or hire someone who will copy gigabytes of data and run off with it - and fail to notice; or give their most secret and valuable spyware to an ally who then gets impatient and exposes it with some stupid mistake. This is not about being an 'idiot', this is perfectly normal behavior to happen once in a few years over hundreds or thousands of people.

viraptor 9y ago
I think these are all separate cases. Yes, opsec is hard in general. There's a scale of how hard some problems are to prevent - what you listed is in various places on it. The specific case I responded to with laptop in the park while you're trying to mess with foreign governments would be at one extreme of that scale.
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  they're all separate cases of people doing stupid shit while working doing this kind of stuff. The laptop in the park was an example of how someone could do stupid shit while working on this kind of stuff, it was of course an example plucked from thin air of one kind of stupid shit one could do and get caught out, not necessarily the stupid shit that actually got him caught. The point is that at least most people, even if most of the time highly competent, slip up some times and it seems this guy slipped up one time which really thinking about it starts to make me suspicious because if you slip up once in hundreds of times why not 3-7 times. why only one time. but anyway the point is intelligent most of the time, stupid once is all it takes to get caught and nearly everyone does it. And now I'm defending a Russian agent doing stuff I think sucks.

by roel_v 9y ago

viraptor 9y ago

I think these are all separate cases. Yes, opsec is hard in general. There's a scale of how hard some problems are to prevent - what you listed is in various places on it. The specific case I responded to with laptop in the park while you're trying to mess with foreign governments would be at one extreme of that scale.

bryanrasmussen 9y ago
they're all separate cases of people doing stupid shit while working doing this kind of stuff. The laptop in the park was an example of how someone could do stupid shit while working on this kind of stuff, it was of course an example plucked from thin air of one kind of stupid shit one could do and get caught out, not necessarily the stupid shit that actually got him caught. The point is that at least most people, even if most of the time highly competent, slip up some times and it seems this guy slipped up one time which really thinking about it starts to make me suspicious because if you slip up once in hundreds of times why not 3-7 times. why only one time. but anyway the point is intelligent most of the time, stupid once is all it takes to get caught and nearly everyone does it. And now I'm defending a Russian agent doing stuff I think sucks.