[HN Gopher] The Rise and Fall of a Double Agent
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The Rise and Fall of a Double Agent
Author : hluska
Score : 33 points
Date : 2021-04-28 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| motohagiography wrote:
| The exploration of his motivations could have been deeper. I
| suspect the basic problem in espionage work is that being
| interested in it at all is precisely the reason not to hire
| someone to do it. I'm imagining a trade off where either you take
| some very earnest people who want to serve their country and then
| manage the risk of disillusioning them, or you find a cluster of
| people who really just get off on deception and find a way to
| somehow exploit them.
|
| I can say I harbour no envy for any of them.
| the_af wrote:
| > _I suspect the basic problem in espionage work is that being
| interested in it at all is precisely the reason not to hire
| someone to do it_
|
| Interesting way to put it, I hadn't thought about it this way.
| It sounds analogous to what is argued in "The Rise of the
| Warrior Cop" (about cop militarization and abuse in the US):
| that the people more enthusiastic about combat gear and working
| in a SWAT-like unit are exactly the kind of people who
| shouldn't be allowed in those units.
| lb1lf wrote:
| "It is a well-known fact that those people who most want to
| rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it...
| anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President
| should on no account be allowed to do the job."
|
| -Douglas Adams
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The people working in spy craft must be pretty cynical. I
| imagine the CIA is more about realpolitik. Doing whatever it
| takes to keep America ahead. You don't need to have an
| existential crisis torturing someone when you know that your
| Chinese counterpart is doing the same. You only get
| disillusioned if you believe the facade.
| grouphugs wrote:
| people aren't really getting this, no one likes or cares about
| the nazis besides the nazis, and even that is very limited to
| generated nazibuxxx
| jl2718 wrote:
| > FBI indictment that accused Ramos of racketeering activity
| involving gambling, money laundering, and drug trafficking.
|
| Is this all from selling encryption devices, or was he doing
| crime on the side?
| michaelt wrote:
| You might be interested in this article [1] about the
| prosecution of an auto installer who specialised in fitting
| special compartments in cars.
|
| Here's a summary:
|
| The guy thought, much like a shop can sell bongs but only to
| customers who don't mention weed, he could install hidden
| compartments so long as his customers didn't mention drugs.
|
| He gets some pretty big hints - like the customers' willingness
| to pay $5000 per compartment in cash, and unjamming a
| compartment containing $800,000 in cash.
|
| Then the cops get wind of his business, tap on his phone and
| pressure him to help them spy on his customers; he refuses,
| fearing for his family's safety.
|
| Then the cops catch a gang with one of his compartments full of
| drugs, and in exchange for a reduced sentence, one of them
| testifies they'd told the installer to make them a compartment
| for ten kilo bricks of cocaine.
|
| Boom, convicted of conspiracy to traffic drugs. 24 years
| without parole.
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/
| vkou wrote:
| > Then the cops get wind of his business, tap on his phone
| and pressure him to help them spy on his customers; he
| refuses, fearing for his family's safety.
|
| That's the problem when working with organized crime. You
| take a dollar from them, and you and yours are theirs, for
| life.
|
| And if the cops catch wind of this, they aren't going to do a
| thing to protect you if you flip.
| akiselev wrote:
| From another article [1]:
|
| _> The DOJ further noted in the memorandum that "to date,
| neither Australian, Canadian, nor American law enforcement has
| identified a single non-criminal user of Phantom Secure
| devices."
|
| In February 2018, after doing a deal in Mexico, Ramos boasted
| in a text, later submitted to U.S. Federal Court: "We are f--
| king rich man. I swear to God you better f--king appreciate it.
| Get the f--king Range Rover brand new. Cuz I just closed a lot
| of business. This week man. Sinaloa Cartel that's what's up."
|
| ...
|
| Ramos later pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering and is
| serving a nine-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison. As part
| of his plea, he agreed to forfeit proceeds of crime totalling
| $80 million US._
|
| It sounds like he knew that he was selling these phones to
| criminals for the purpose of committing more crime. If he had
| some plausible deniability he might have been able to avoid
| charges, but in this case he's basically a co-conspirator. The
| sale of phones for illegal activities is the racket
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cameron-ortis-
| investigation-r...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| An alternative reality where everyone is a highly trained shooter
| and there are no law enforcement agencies (except those that
| enforce that everyone carries a gun) is a fun thought experiment.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| > Fundamentally, Phantom Secure was a hardware company. It sold
| modified BlackBerry handsets that had been customized to
| communicate only with other Phantom Secure devices. On top of
| that, it ran an email system that routed encrypted messages
| through Panama and Hong Kong. As a result, conversations were
| nearly impossible to intercept, and if law enforcement did snag a
| message, there was no way of decrypting it.
|
| There's free/open "encrypted chat" networks which may be more or
| less secure than commercial gray-market/criminal products. Is
| there any free-of-charge and open-source software for running
| your own infrastructure for messaging, blocking unencrypted
| communication and Apple/Google "phoning home" (perhaps through an
| unlocked-bootloader phone running AOSP/LineageOS), blocking data
| exfiltration through USB MTP/ADB/exploits (and possibly
| safeguards or automatic wiping upon hardware/RAM/CPU/TPM
| hijacking), automatic timer/face/accelerometer-based screen locks
| to prevent a phone from being used for long after being seized,
| and automatically wiping devices if they don't receive a signed
| "all clear" message from a server every few days (to guard
| against putting a phone in a Faraday cage to block out remote-
| wipe signals)?
|
| Of course this is mostly idle speculation, and I haven't tried
| implementing any of these ideas, even though I feel they would be
| useful to many.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| The descent into criminality by the RCMP chief is shocking.
|
| Obviously, opportunities were there since the article points out
| poor controls and personnel reviews, but still, being that there
| are no clear motives established, its hard to fathom a chief
| going out of his way to make this breach happen for financial
| gains on the side.
|
| The article remarked that his stint as a mole started 8 years
| into thr job (2015) - but there is no analysis on whether money
| mattered a bit more then than it did in 2019. However, whenever
| the breach started, I assume it became difficult to unwind
| without compromising himself in the process.
|
| Deeper analysis of his motives would make for a interesting read.
| speeder wrote:
| I wonder what is going on with RCMP...
|
| The mass shooter in Canada that happened recently, there are
| suspicions it was RCMP related too. (and RCMP itself did some
| weird shit during the shooting, like the cops shooting at
| firefighters O.o)
| akiselev wrote:
| _> It's still an incomplete picture. Ortis stood at the top of
| his field, not struggling on the middle rungs. Why risk it all?
| In his book The Anatomy of a Spy: A History of Espionage and
| Betrayal, Michael Smith describes four main motivators for
| going rogue: lust, money, ideology, and revenge. Ortis fits
| awkwardly into those categories._
|
| This is journalistic negligence. They are obviously referring
| to _MICE_ or _MALICE_ which are mnemonics for analyzing motives
| in counterintelligence that stand for "Money, Ideology,
| Compromise, and Ego" and "Money, Anger, Lust, Ideology,
| Compromise, and Ego" respectively.
|
| The simplest explanation is "Ego" in this case, which is
| probably why the article went out of its way to point his self
| confidence bordering on arrogance, yet replaced it with
| "revenge" to leave an air of mystery. He likely just enjoyed
| playing James Bond with all the opsec and secrecy that goes
| into that. The reasons for betrayal like that are often the
| most banal.
| watwut wrote:
| Why is it hard to imagine? The opportunities are there. You get
| to know the right people. You are already dealing with risky
| smart acts that you have to be ok with.
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