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Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
31–40 of 159 posts
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#32I wonder if they give a class in juggalo paint at the farm, and other means of bypassing facial recognition programs. The tenure of a field operative these days must be incredibly short
Interesting point. One could assume that having full access to both the intricacies of the system and the ability to purge/hide people from it would help domestically, but what about international spies? Juggalo paint to fool facial recognition in Texas is one thing, but may backfire in Shenzhen..
They just walk around in Batman getup.
Why do you think the international wholesale market for cosplay is located there?
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#33This is well known but often ignored for convenience. Go to any restaurant in the DC area around lunchtime and you'd be amazed at what you can learn from the table next to you.
This is very much in the security training government and military have to take annually as well.
It is, but people are terrible about it anyway. At a minimum, it is a field day for social engineering attacks because you can learn to speak in the languages / abstractions of that specific organization which automatically leads to trust-building.
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#34I wonder if they give a class in juggalo paint at the farm, and other means of bypassing facial recognition programs. The tenure of a field operative these days must be incredibly short
How resilient is facial recognition to good old fashioned spectacles with optionally attached plastic {nose, eyebrows, moustache}?
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WNRdX9cxL...
There’s 2^3 + 1 disguises / operations right there for ya!
2^4 + 1 if you {,don’t} include a beard hung off your ears.
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#35Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#36I wonder what criteria is used to determine "the most operationally optimal seat in the restaurant". If it's a standard formula that most agents use because it's tried and true, then it could be viable to bug one or two tables in select restaurants in the DC area. Basically, cast a wide net and see what information you get. Same could apply at restaurants where business deals are discussed in order to perform insider…
My wife likes to sit in what she calls 'the Mafia seat', the seat in a restaurant that is best-protected by walls, etc, from behind, and that gives the best view of the rest of the room, so you can see what or who is coming. She's not in the mafia or allied professions, AFAIK, but I'd wager that similar metrics are used by the professionals.
This sort of seat is seldom ideal for those who need to leave the premises quickly.
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#37This is well known but often ignored for convenience. Go to any restaurant in the DC area around lunchtime and you'd be amazed at what you can learn from the table next to you.
Back in my Portland days I got the DL on some of Nike’s soon to be announced Jordan’s when an obviously high ranking Nike designer popped open his MacBook and proceeded to have a design review at a local coffee shop! Maybe not the most actionable information but kind of fun to see.
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#38to "the Farm," a secret CIA facility in Virginia where their grueling training included all the obligatory skills of what Fox refers to as "the Bond business": how to flip or crash a car; how to use a Glock; how to parachute; how to use a speedboat; how to withstand torture; how to use a grocery bag and duct tape to bandage a punctured chest; and how to commit suicide This is over-egging the pudding a bit.
I’ve had a bit of interaction with the Farm. As a kid, my dad and I would sail past it (as close as you can get without being blared at). I’ve heard explosions coming from there, and seen people rappelling from helicopters into the woods.
Later, I was a physics student at a university very close to Camp Perry. We were able to detect microwave transmissions on odd bands, at odd hours, that seemed to be directed from or to the camp. There was a helicopter that flew over campus towards “the Farm” every Saturday at midnight, for some reason.
Perhaps most memorably, I had a very unpleasant interaction in town with someone who, I found out in the Washington Post a while later, was Aldrich Ames.
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moore's Law says you now bug every restaurant table in DC.
Crowdsource. Pay people to run an app when they go around DC, that records constantly from their mic, and uploads it to the cloud along with their location. I’m sure someone has already thought of this!
> I’m sure someone has already thought of this!
...probably the CIA.
Re: Eat, Drink and Be Wary: Ex-CIA Officer Reveals How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moore's Law says you now bug every restaurant table in DC.
Crowdsource. Pay people to run an app when they go around DC, that records constantly from their mic, and uploads it to the cloud along with their location. I’m sure someone has already thought of this!
They call it Alexa.