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I'm not a spook myself, but ISTM this should always have been disqualifying: Now you show up at the border of Russia, they’ve got your high school yearbook out
by jessaustin 7y ago
I'm not a spook myself, but ISTM this should always have been disqualifying:
Now you show up at the border of Russia, they’ve got your high school yearbook out there where you wrote about your lifelong ambitions to work for the CIA.
- chrisseaton 7y agoI think it’s a rhetorical exaggeration - hyperbole.
- fivre 7y agoIn practice, you show up at the border of Russia and are detained (in my case, because virtually no Americans cross this particular border). A nice, younger FSB agent with some English skills asks you a battery of questions but doesn't really care about their job, asking if they can just fill in your address again when given your parents' address, because it's more work than it's worth to transcribe another address that no one will ever read. Later, an older, saltier, more senior FSB agent harangues you over some missing documents before getting bored and letting you go. We have some amusing preconceptions of Russia that rarely survive the reality of Russia.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y agoRealistically, if you've been stopped by Russian border police and complied with their requests you've done everything right. Russia then has three options: A: detain you and spur an international incident with complaints to the U.N. re human rights abuses and everything else. B: refuse entry. C: delay you long enough to get a follow team deployed so they can see what you do without inciting a lot of bad press, or delaying your travels more.
- sjg007 7y agoThere are enough doppelgängers but you need to have a cover story.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWriting that in your facebook/yearbook would probably be a disqualifier.