2 ms·

I agree that if it was just EM even a undergrad physics lab could've found it in 10 minutes, worth keeping in mind all the wacky shit the KGB used to track peop

by mhh__ 5y ago

I agree that if it was just EM even a undergrad physics lab could've found it in 10 minutes, worth keeping in mind all the wacky shit the KGB used to track people (radioactive dust on shoes for example) - spy tech was insane multiple careers ago, it's probably not gotten worse (although I imagine the internet has killed off a lot of physical spying).

mc32 5y ago
If Los Alamos Labs is any indication, physical spying is still around and kicking but doesn't use traditional movie inspired "agents" just regular people willing to sell to a bidder or who believe in something other than the US.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  I'm always slightly lost when people use movies as a reference when talking about espionage because I even as entertainment pretty much all I consume is non-fiction. When I did eventually consume some le Carre (RIP) I think I enjoyed it much more than I would've done because I understood why he decided to write and the parallels he drew.
- sennight 5y ago
  Spies have historically been unhappy people with personality problems or emotional issues that put them at odds with their own countrymen. Almost 20 years ago I had to go through a bunch of background investigations in the military, and after a couple of interviews a theme emerges making it clear that they were trying to filter out people who basically had self-esteem issues. They definitely try to keep you unaware of what they're really after though, which yields some really weird results. I wonder how that is going now... probably not well. Anyway, Hollywood spies do kind of exist - but they aren't the Rosenbergs breakdance fighting on a rooftop. They're active duty military on "loan" to the NSA's Special Collection Service. They rarely return to the military, not because a life of blackbag jobs and no stability is fun, but because the military really doesn't want them after the CIA has potentially screwed them up.
  - wahern 5y ago
    I once met someone who went around surreptitiously maintaining recording equipment near airports that tracked tail numbers of landing aircraft. They would have done their work in the 1980s and AFAIU mostly involved retrieving film and tending to cameras positioned in hotel and apartment windows. I don't know which intelligence agency they worked for, though; not even which country. I presumed they worked for either the U.S. or Israel; probably the latter given the low-tech, laborious method. The person didn't tell me directly. My boss told me about our visitor's career after they left. I was working at a political advocacy organization that promoted U.S.-Israeli security ties and which regularly worked with people--mostly retired--from the intelligence and defense communities.
    - sennight 5y ago
      heh, like I said - the military doesn't want them afterwards. Bill Hicks had a bit about the military's esprit de corps, and how nonsensical it seemed to him - an organization tasked with killing people and breaking things so fixated on old fashioned ideas like honor and a sense of duty. Well the US military has a very long institutional memory and rarely does anything without good reason: the morality conditioning is a very effective, functionally useful, program. They can drop 150 18-year-olds into a distant village for months with little to no supervision and it doesn't devolve into a 24/7 machete-rapefest. Look at what happened in East Germany when an army with no such program rolled in... industrial scale inhumanity. Same thing frequently pops up in Africa when one tribe temporarily becomes king of the hill. Anyway, the "clandestine services" are morally bankrupt and the DoD is aware of how dangerous a game it is to play with people they've invested a lot of time on. This is obviously just a guess... assuming this took place on US soil: it sounds to me like that dude worked for somebody doing something "extra-legal" and it wasn't the USG. Israeli is a pretty big fan of honeytraps and blackmailing intelligence assets. So that is where I'd put my money. Also: the civilian side of the US intel industry puts almost zero effort into OPSEC. Just search LinkedIn for prior military who list "remote sensing" or whatever the current euphemism is for NSA stingray tender, you'll get a results page full of laughably low effort cutouts.
      - 5y ago
- w0de0 5y ago
  I’m no spy, but I believe your description of agents has always been true. Note that, outside fiction, “intelligence agent” is distinct from “intelligence officer.” The latter is a professional spy who recruits and handles the former from among regular people who might be leveraged, paid, or ideologically keen. Only in popularizations are the two roles confused - though I suppose there are rare circumstances in which an officer goes undercover in order to directly pilfer secrets, as opposed to recruiting someone who can. Hard and rare one expects: language, culture and competent counter-intel have made recruiting someone already inside easier and wiser. Also I don’t think competent professional spies have ever used “movie inspired” anything, but the generous interpretation of your comment assumes you meant the reverse. But still a poor assumption to think the fiction ever got it right, starting with the confusion over what an “agent” is but including everything else. Excepting Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” and “The Quiet American,” which I suspect nailed the respective damnfool incompetence and arrogant ignorance of a certain type of mid-century patriot keenly. “Harlot’s Ghost,” though mystical, may also speak bizarro truth.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  One of the most famous examples is Adolf Hitler. Being a bad painter did not pay the bills, so he had a side job for the army checking all kinds of obscure political meetings. One day he was ordered to verify a DAP meeting, and actually liked what was told. Someone pissed him of, causing him to start one of his famous angry speeches. The DAP was impressed, offered him a position, and the resulting meteoric rise ultimately started a world war.
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    Weak men with no prospects really are the biggest threat to a society, huh? They'll adopt any position and'll do anything for a mirage of recognition or whatever abates their resentment and perspective of disempowerment. The San Bernardino mass shooter went after women cause girls rejected and emasculated him as he claimed in his video manifesto uploaded to YouTube.
    - mc32 5y ago
      That's true from an ex-post fact PoV, but otherwise you get massive amounts of false positives.

by mhh__ 5y ago

mc32 5y ago

If Los Alamos Labs is any indication, physical spying is still around and kicking but doesn't use traditional movie inspired "agents" just regular people willing to sell to a bidder or who believe in something other than the US.

mhh__ 5y ago
I'm always slightly lost when people use movies as a reference when talking about espionage because I even as entertainment pretty much all I consume is non-fiction. When I did eventually consume some le Carre (RIP) I think I enjoyed it much more than I would've done because I understood why he decided to write and the parallels he drew.
sennight 5y ago
Spies have historically been unhappy people with personality problems or emotional issues that put them at odds with their own countrymen. Almost 20 years ago I had to go through a bunch of background investigations in the military, and after a couple of interviews a theme emerges making it clear that they were trying to filter out people who basically had self-esteem issues. They definitely try to keep you unaware of what they're really after though, which yields some really weird results. I wonder how that is going now... probably not well. Anyway, Hollywood spies do kind of exist - but they aren't the Rosenbergs breakdance fighting on a rooftop. They're active duty military on "loan" to the NSA's Special Collection Service. They rarely return to the military, not because a life of blackbag jobs and no stability is fun, but because the military really doesn't want them after the CIA has potentially screwed them up.
- wahern 5y ago
  I once met someone who went around surreptitiously maintaining recording equipment near airports that tracked tail numbers of landing aircraft. They would have done their work in the 1980s and AFAIU mostly involved retrieving film and tending to cameras positioned in hotel and apartment windows. I don't know which intelligence agency they worked for, though; not even which country. I presumed they worked for either the U.S. or Israel; probably the latter given the low-tech, laborious method. The person didn't tell me directly. My boss told me about our visitor's career after they left. I was working at a political advocacy organization that promoted U.S.-Israeli security ties and which regularly worked with people--mostly retired--from the intelligence and defense communities.
  - sennight 5y ago
    heh, like I said - the military doesn't want them afterwards. Bill Hicks had a bit about the military's esprit de corps, and how nonsensical it seemed to him - an organization tasked with killing people and breaking things so fixated on old fashioned ideas like honor and a sense of duty. Well the US military has a very long institutional memory and rarely does anything without good reason: the morality conditioning is a very effective, functionally useful, program. They can drop 150 18-year-olds into a distant village for months with little to no supervision and it doesn't devolve into a 24/7 machete-rapefest. Look at what happened in East Germany when an army with no such program rolled in... industrial scale inhumanity. Same thing frequently pops up in Africa when one tribe temporarily becomes king of the hill. Anyway, the "clandestine services" are morally bankrupt and the DoD is aware of how dangerous a game it is to play with people they've invested a lot of time on. This is obviously just a guess... assuming this took place on US soil: it sounds to me like that dude worked for somebody doing something "extra-legal" and it wasn't the USG. Israeli is a pretty big fan of honeytraps and blackmailing intelligence assets. So that is where I'd put my money. Also: the civilian side of the US intel industry puts almost zero effort into OPSEC. Just search LinkedIn for prior military who list "remote sensing" or whatever the current euphemism is for NSA stingray tender, you'll get a results page full of laughably low effort cutouts.
    - 5y ago
w0de0 5y ago
I’m no spy, but I believe your description of agents has always been true. Note that, outside fiction, “intelligence agent” is distinct from “intelligence officer.” The latter is a professional spy who recruits and handles the former from among regular people who might be leveraged, paid, or ideologically keen. Only in popularizations are the two roles confused - though I suppose there are rare circumstances in which an officer goes undercover in order to directly pilfer secrets, as opposed to recruiting someone who can. Hard and rare one expects: language, culture and competent counter-intel have made recruiting someone already inside easier and wiser. Also I don’t think competent professional spies have ever used “movie inspired” anything, but the generous interpretation of your comment assumes you meant the reverse. But still a poor assumption to think the fiction ever got it right, starting with the confusion over what an “agent” is but including everything else. Excepting Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” and “The Quiet American,” which I suspect nailed the respective damnfool incompetence and arrogant ignorance of a certain type of mid-century patriot keenly. “Harlot’s Ghost,” though mystical, may also speak bizarro truth.
hyperman1 5y ago
One of the most famous examples is Adolf Hitler. Being a bad painter did not pay the bills, so he had a side job for the army checking all kinds of obscure political meetings. One day he was ordered to verify a DAP meeting, and actually liked what was told. Someone pissed him of, causing him to start one of his famous angry speeches. The DAP was impressed, offered him a position, and the resulting meteoric rise ultimately started a world war.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  Weak men with no prospects really are the biggest threat to a society, huh? They'll adopt any position and'll do anything for a mirage of recognition or whatever abates their resentment and perspective of disempowerment. The San Bernardino mass shooter went after women cause girls rejected and emasculated him as he claimed in his video manifesto uploaded to YouTube.
  - mc32 5y ago
    That's true from an ex-post fact PoV, but otherwise you get massive amounts of false positives.