4 ms·
>Force was an athletic guy, and coming up through the agency he’d loved the physical thrill of bursting through a door at 6 am in Doc Martens and a tactical ves
by MichaelGG 12y ago
>Force was an athletic guy, and coming up through the agency he’d loved the physical thrill of bursting through a door at 6 am in Doc Martens and a tactical vest
... So he literally likes being a jackbooted thug.
Anyways the main takeaway, again, is opsec. Use delayed messages instead of chat. If for some reason you have to write to people and talk to employees, invent another persona that you use. Not just on the surface, but underneath. So you're posing as DPR, but talking about paleo and how the FDA food triangle sucks? That's your real persona leaking through. Instead, pickup someone else's point of views, location, cultural references, etc.
Same happened to one of the Lulzsec guys. "Yeah I was in jail for pot" (or something like that). Bam you just leaked like 10 bits of ID right there. But if he had said "I got arrested for heroin possession but struck a plea because I was X years old" - you just provided fake bits. And if an agent was thinking they're so clever picking up on these bits, they've now narrowed down their search to people that aren't you.
I wonder how deep this goes - do criminals do this often enough that LE is actively trying to figure out what personal details are fake?
- treetoppin 12y agoI've often wondered what happens psychologically to people who inject "noise" into their virtual personas to evade being identified. Does the fake persona start to leak back into their everyday personality? If you do this long term does your personal identity start to erode?
- nostrebored 12y agoI'm of the opinion that the brain is very plastic. I feel like if you surround yourself with enough things that run contrary to your current beliefs your surroundings will leak in, without you being aware of this change at all. Psychologists have already shown that things such as violent media have immediate effects on the psyche, why would opinions etc. be any different? Also, you might find this interesting: http://www.seeing-i.co.uk/ http://www.seeing-i.co.uk/
- walshemj 12y agoThe BBC did an interesting two part dramatization on Kim Philby recently not sure if its been on PBS http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0406w88 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0406w88 They actually showed Philbys press conference where he was proclaiming his innocence - still used as a training aid apparently
- shalmanese 12y agoRead A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K Dick.
- MichaelGG 12y agoI've noticed that with lies I maintain personally, I start to believe them over time. This is why Eliezer (LessWrong) is so against lying - it's hard enough to reach the truth when you're explicitly trying, let alone when you sabotage it on purpose. With lies I need to keep, history starts rewriting itself. I remember things differently than reality. OTOH, that's how I maintain a few secrets (nothing that useful really) - I "truly" believe them when taking to friends and family. This might be why it's so hard for people to maintain cover. In this article, we see Ross dying to tell people. Now if he had been involved with a BTC exchange and done a few illegal things, I dunno, would that be enough? He could let that slip without letting on more. But it's super hard and I suck at it, so... I'm sure real agents have better training and ways to cope. It'd be cool to see training materials.
- walshemj 12y agoYou have to live your cover just like in the Americans TV series and in real life one uk based KGB agent ran a very successful fruit machine company - he apparently joked he was the only millionaire KGB officer.