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> staying ahead of geopolitical and individual threats Am I mistaken in thinking how utterly bizarre it is for an online auction site to run some CIA style int
by ljm 6y ago
> staying ahead of geopolitical and individual threats
Am I mistaken in thinking how utterly bizarre it is for an online auction site to run some CIA style intelligence unit? Sounds like you would only ever find a bunch of deranged nutjobs running that kind of operation. I mean, their idea of a geopolitical threat was a website run by a couple in the suburbs?
- claudeganon 6y agoYou are mistaken only in that it is likely far more common than you think for corporations to do this kind of stuff. The people at eBay just got caught because they were egregiously poor at doing it covertly. Companies have long employed internal and external private security forces to silence their critics and threats to them. The Pinkertons have been doing this in the US since the 1850s, for example, which predates almost of every form of state intelligence services.
- silexia 6y agoeBay is a shockingly poorly run company. Any company that invests resources into this sort of CIA type unit is just burning cash. The only company it might actually make sense for would be actual national security companies.
- mcguire 6y agoOn one hand, it makes sense. Any large organization will attract "threats" and a multinational organization cannot count on the legal and civil framework of one country. Think of the World Trade Center: it was a symbol of something to somebody, but to most Americans outside of New York before 2001, it was just a big office building. On the other, consider that money is power and that those in control of the assets of, say, eBay would want to use that power at their discretion.
- ForHackernews 6y agoDon't all the big valley companies do shit like this? I remember Uber had some kind of crazy counterintelligence division that was trying to get dirt on journalists and local lawmakers to blackmail them.