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I find the list lacking Having done the job in a previous life there are a lot that are really good out there that don't get a lot of press. Here's two: HUMI

• TeeMassive 5y ago
  Failed to mention John LeCarré, although his books are fiction it still comes from the perspective of someone who worked ~20 years in the British intelligence services.
  • stef25 5y ago
    The article's full of references to LeCarré
• withinboredom 5y ago
  > I always find it funny how interested and intrigued yet abhorred so many people are when it comes to spycraft/espionage Also having done this sort of stuff in a previous life. And it’s always interesting how people react when they find out, some people automatically just lose all faith in you. Like you’re some sort of actor, just playing a role. Some people legitimately want to know more about how it really works. I literally keep it to myself in most contexts.
  • roody15 5y ago
    “ some people automatically just lose all faith in you” Could this be that there is a level of dishonesty when involved with espionage/spying. This may be a natural reaction to not want to associate with people who have little qualms being dishonest perhaps?
    • fires10 5y ago
      I was thinking it might be that most people claiming to be a former spy were just posing and not really a former spy. I know the few I dealt with that had the legitimate potential to actually being one were all very low key and wouldn't normally talk about it any way. I would probably lose faith in someone claiming to be a spy simply because of this. Not the dishonesty in being one, but that most who claim to be are probably not.
      • implements 5y ago
        I expect there’s a fair few intelligence analysts knocking about who don’t need to be that secretive (“I just read material from multiple sources and produced reports”) - unlike intelligence officers (people who covertly recruit and run agents) who really do need to show the utmost discretion to protect other people, methods and locations.
      • withinboredom 5y ago
        People like to ask what I did in the military if it comes up. It took me a few years to come up with something that didn’t cause this reaction.
        • fires10 5y ago
          I always start out with I was a nobody and didn't do anything exciting or interesting which is the truth. It just sounds more exciting than it really was. I answered the phone and said "so and so is not available, can I take a message" on unsecured lines. I got the job because I was the only one in the temp unit awaiting orders who wasn't there for disciplinary reasons. The "so and so" was a political appointee.
          • withinboredom 5y ago
            Sounds like a vacation! I was a nobody too, but I did get to see some wild shit because I have a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; got me demoted a couple of times too. I also had a habit of tinkering with things I had no business tinkering with, to my commander’s chagrin, and sometimes, but rarely, delight. Sometimes I miss it for a few minutes, but I really don’t. That’s pretty much the gist of what I say these days. There’s usually questions about the wild shit or the tinkering, but that’s pretty much where it ends, because there’s no way those stories are true. My wife didn’t believe most of them until she met some of the people I worked with and she realized that the stories I told were the sane ones: they have even crazier ones.
  • AlbertCory 5y ago
    All the books I've read about being a spy emphasize that everyone you meet in the spy agencies is probably lying to you, about everything, and some of them do it just from force of habit, or to stay in practice. And people all think you're always lying to them? Gosh, I wonder why?
• CaptainJustin 5y ago
  > n.b. I always find it funny how interested and intrigued yet abhorred so many people are when it comes to spycraft/espionage etc... I was such a person. When I was in school I read the EU report on Echelon. There was so much basic espionage meta in there that shocked me. For example I had thought of signals intelligence as an aggressive act - an act of war. In the EU report SIGINT and broadly spying was introduced as a ordinary part of a decent intelligence function of a state.
  • goohle 5y ago
    Listening and watching is not a form of aggression. A state have right to listen and watch other state actions from their territory. If a foreign traffic is passing through your state territory, your state has rights to look into it.
    • Fnoord 5y ago
      On top of that, it is a tool, which can be used or abused. It can, for example, be used to avoid aggression. Just like talking to a high military leader of a hostile state can be used for 'good' or 'bad' purposes.
  • AndrewKemendo 5y ago
    It also comprises the vast majority of the intelligence we collect. It's not even close how big of a gap there is between how much SIGINT and IMINT we collect and there's still another huge gap between the amount of IMINT and HUMINT we collect. I personally wouldn't consider any of them aggressive.
• throw1234651234 5y ago
  "Having done the job in a previous life there are a lot that are really good out there that don't get a lot of press." Assuming you had access, I am not asking for any specifics at all, but did you know ANYTHING that is remotely interesting as part of the job? Anything from "There are aliens, we have plasma weapons" to "we actually figured out a way to fix enamel" or "sleeping 6.8213 hours is actually more efficient than any other number". Basically, does the "intelligence community" actually have any interesting information other than some backdoors, a lot of data dumps, and stealth helicopters that crash (or maybe just tail props thrown around to mislead).