Comment by grajaganDev
1 year ago
It is pretty wild that now 99% of spying is done through a keyboard.
HUMINT has become very difficult due to ubiquitous automated physical surveillance, social media and DNA.
To credibly run HUMINT, the agent must have a strong backstory.
The people doing the vetting also work for intelligence agencies with unlimited funding.
Is it?
If you lived your entire life exclusively around "spies", would you be able to tell? (don't think too much about it).
> If you lived your entire life exclusively around "spies", would you be able to tell?
Yes: basically every large website is spying on you. :-)
Websites do it very closely. I hope they do something good with that information tax (it's very high).
There's a larger you though. A little bit blurrier, completely metaphisical. It is an old tradition (for example, Horoscope, but not only it).
That blurry you thing has the means to spy on you too. Not as close as a website that has your exact identity, but close enough.
One could see your public behavior and gauge what cultural clothes you decide to wear, and from that figure out lots of things about you (in a more blurry, metaphisical way). These ideas are very, very old.
For example, I was supposed to move from being a web developer in the 2000s (very known persona profile) to some kind of crypto-nerd, to some kind of AI-nerd. It's the lane that was assigned to me, the clothes I am supposed to wear given my life circumstances. I decided to make different arrangements for myself (still very much a 2000s web developer), and then noticed how people blindly follow this stuff. I can't help but imagine a lot more people do this (persona mobility), and know what's all about.
Yes - there is very little HUMINT happening nowadays. The end of an era.
I am going to pass on addressing your hypothetical question.
If spies were obvious and visible in a way that we could see their intelligence work, they would not be spies, they would be diplomats.
Do you get my point? If there is non-cybernetics human espionage activity, you are not supposed to see it. To people unaware of it, it looks like it doesn't exist.
In this scenario, all this shit about spies (movies estabilishing their personas, tall tales, especulations) is nothing but misdirection.
The espionage holy grail is not perfect tech, is perfect misdirection. Of course, the concept exists, but nothing is perfect.
Both of our discourses are hypothetical, we can't offer any proof. On what grounds can you dismiss mine? (don't worry about it, I don't want to win an argument).
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