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We were hearing a little while back that it had become exceedingly difficult to concoct diplomatic cover for intelligence agents, in a world full of socials. D

We were hearing a little while back that it had become exceedingly difficult to concoct diplomatic cover for intelligence agents, in a world full of socials. Does the availability of AI mean that (as long as you own, or at least can retcon, several socials?) spinning up entire innocuous provenance networks for fresh identities is once again a push-button solved problem?

rurp 2y ago
It might help against casual checks, but a large web of invented social accounts will be uncoverable by any serious actor. If there's no corroborating trail outside of social media for any of those accounts it will be very possible to sniff out the fakery.
tivert 2y ago
> We were hearing a little while back that it had become exceedingly difficult to concoct diplomatic cover for intelligence agents, in a world full of socials. > Does the availability of AI mean that (as long as you own, or at least can retcon, several socials?) spinning up entire innocuous provenance networks for fresh identities is once again a push-button solved problem? AI doesn't defeat biometrics. I'd bet the problem with social media for intelligence agents is it allows facial recognition to uncover their true identity. If the search uncovers a real profile and a fake AI generated one with fake AI generated friends, it's still fishy to an adversary. Also if you're an agent and have gone to a country under one name, you can never go back under a different name without being trivially caught.
djhn 2y ago
There’s plenty of people in Europe in the 30-50 age bracket that aren’t on any social media. Many people from extremely wealthy families or careers in finance, consulting, medicine, law, law enforcement, military and the judicial branch came of age before ubiquitous social media and had already picked a career path where being discoverable is more of a liability than a benefit. No Linkedin, no facebook, no twitter, no instagram. Maybe a faceless fake name lurking account. Hard to say whether there are as many people in younger age groups who are like that.

rurp 2y ago

It might help against casual checks, but a large web of invented social accounts will be uncoverable by any serious actor. If there's no corroborating trail outside of social media for any of those accounts it will be very possible to sniff out the fakery.

tivert 2y ago

> We were hearing a little while back that it had become exceedingly difficult to concoct diplomatic cover for intelligence agents, in a world full of socials. > Does the availability of AI mean that (as long as you own, or at least can retcon, several socials?) spinning up entire innocuous provenance networks for fresh identities is once again a push-button solved problem? AI doesn't defeat biometrics. I'd bet the problem with social media for intelligence agents is it allows facial recognition to uncover their true identity. If the search uncovers a real profile and a fake AI generated one with fake AI generated friends, it's still fishy to an adversary. Also if you're an agent and have gone to a country under one name, you can never go back under a different name without being trivially caught.

djhn 2y ago

There’s plenty of people in Europe in the 30-50 age bracket that aren’t on any social media. Many people from extremely wealthy families or careers in finance, consulting, medicine, law, law enforcement, military and the judicial branch came of age before ubiquitous social media and had already picked a career path where being discoverable is more of a liability than a benefit. No Linkedin, no facebook, no twitter, no instagram. Maybe a faceless fake name lurking account. Hard to say whether there are as many people in younger age groups who are like that.