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Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. With all the advanced data collection and analysis, can't American intelligence agencies distinguish spies

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. With all the advanced data collection and analysis, can't American intelligence agencies distinguish spies? Why not leave it to them rather than repeating the same historical mistakes?

nradov 7y ago
American intelligence agencies can't reliably distinguish spies, especially not without doing the kind of rigorous background check required for a security clearance. The FBI and NSA aren't omnipotent.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  Also to add to this, it's kinda hard to detect if someone was indoctrinated and trained in their home country and then sent here with crystal clear, mid to long-term, instructions on what to do and how to report back. To report back they don't even necessarily need to transmit data or meet someone in front of 37 security cameras with a big envelope that says "secret stolen plans" in screaming red letters. They can slowly lift data over the course of weeks, months or years from whatever they are here to learn about and use a dead drop... go to the Goodwill a mile from their apartment and leave an SD card behind the third row of records between 2 and 2:05pm, or upload encrypted fragments via a different public WiFi once a week, or mail an SD card to a series of memorized addresses disguised as eBay purchases. Old school tradecraft makes you effectively invisible in a digital world as long as you are cautious in how you collect data and get around any security measures at the school/employer you are attempting to steal data from. If you're in a position to be accessing the data as a student/researcher/employee, especially if you are in a position to actively manipulate that data as part of your role, unless you are being stripped searched and all USB ports have been rendered inert, if you're patient you can take all the data you want and unless you go telling people, you're probably not going to get caught, especially by some federal agency that can't read your mind.

nradov 7y ago

American intelligence agencies can't reliably distinguish spies, especially not without doing the kind of rigorous background check required for a security clearance. The FBI and NSA aren't omnipotent.

ryanmercer 7y ago
Also to add to this, it's kinda hard to detect if someone was indoctrinated and trained in their home country and then sent here with crystal clear, mid to long-term, instructions on what to do and how to report back. To report back they don't even necessarily need to transmit data or meet someone in front of 37 security cameras with a big envelope that says "secret stolen plans" in screaming red letters. They can slowly lift data over the course of weeks, months or years from whatever they are here to learn about and use a dead drop... go to the Goodwill a mile from their apartment and leave an SD card behind the third row of records between 2 and 2:05pm, or upload encrypted fragments via a different public WiFi once a week, or mail an SD card to a series of memorized addresses disguised as eBay purchases. Old school tradecraft makes you effectively invisible in a digital world as long as you are cautious in how you collect data and get around any security measures at the school/employer you are attempting to steal data from. If you're in a position to be accessing the data as a student/researcher/employee, especially if you are in a position to actively manipulate that data as part of your role, unless you are being stripped searched and all USB ports have been rendered inert, if you're patient you can take all the data you want and unless you go telling people, you're probably not going to get caught, especially by some federal agency that can't read your mind.