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CIA and Gen Z

washingtonian.com

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Re: CIA and Gen Z

#81

Post by bigger_inside »

cesnja wrote: post #72
nebula8804 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen Z/Gen Alpha grew up in a world with social media being already established and so they are aware of the pitfalls. Millenials are screwed because they starting using social media before fully understanding the ramifications(because most people did not know how this was going to play out in the early days).

Myspace and similar sites from that era disappeared pretty nicely, though.

yes, there's a curve here. My early online days were in the time of GeoCities, and later CollegeClub (anyone remember that?); I had pretty significant online presences then, but they're all gone. The Archive doesn't have them, and that was before everything was scraped. I'm fairly certain this is all gone. Then comes the intermediate period when everything was starting to be scraped, but nobody realized or cared; that's where today's younger millenials find themselves. And then the present, where we all know what's happening, and some people just don't care, and others go to great lengths to obscure...

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#82

Post by ungamed »

cm2187 wrote: post #78
high_5 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder when will Hollywood make a movie where they hire someone explicitly not social media just because that's the most perfect cover for an undercover position. An then they make a fake social media presence to cover the un-tracks.

You can’t backdate the fake stories in the snapshots of social medias websites that foreign agencies have taken. Between that and face recognition I just can’t see how you can create a fake identity these days.

When the social media companies get told to make a face account.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#83

Post by mytailorisrich »

altantiprocrast wrote: post #4

> One would think it’s basically impossible to get millennials and zoomers into covert jobs. The youngest of this bunch of young people have spent their entire lives online, some since their parents blasted out their first ultrasound picture as a pregnancy announcement, before they’d even gained sentience. > how exactly are you supposed to achieve this level of anonymity when you’ve flung untold reams of identifiable…

It's not an "OK boomer" stereotype (which is rather an insult than a stereotype, by the way), it's a general point. It's obviously true that people putting their lives online may be an issue in that field of work (and also an advantage).

One would think that's a slightly lesser problem of the US government than for other countries, though, because essentially all platforms are American. So it's potentially easier for the US intelligence services to 'scrub' someone's online presence than it is for other countries' services.

For instance, they also need to be extremely careful of leaks of real identities because of this as these days these can be used for online scrapping in order to collect pictures and more details. This is taking into account that, if I remember correctly, the database of federal employees and their fingerprints was hacked a few years ago so that we may assume that China (since the finger was pointed at them regarding that hack) has a list of virtually all US Federal employees, on which they can let data scrapping farms work.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#84

Post by Joker_vD »

mcny wrote: post #75
mindslight wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until there are laws putting a stop to the ongoing abuse of the current identification system by commercial surveillance (ala GDPR), a stronger identification system is a non-starter.

My ask is much smaller. Any document that the law requires you to carry has to be free of cost to the person and it must be convenient to get (or get again if lost or stolen). That means both the first issue and subsequent issues need to always be free of cost. If I need to visit some office to get it, such office must be at least as ubiquitous as a United States Postal Service office, and ideally more open hours, no…

> a very expensive continuous undertaking

"Very expensive"? Sure, if you allow private subcontractors to charge $2500 for printing and laminating a 60x92 mm piece of plastic, it will be very expensive, no doubt about that. But it does not have to be that way, as the experience of many other countries with mandatory government-issued IDs shows.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#85

Post by atlasunshrugged »

jjk166 wrote: post #54

> If the whole point of being a spy is that nobody knows who you really are and no one can ever find out, how exactly are you supposed to achieve this level of anonymity when you’ve flung untold reams of identifiable content across the digital world? When everyone has an online presence, the absence of such a presence raises huge red flags. I would expect every spy on earth nowadays has tons of pictures on social med…

Love the #Coup2022, now the CIA is desperately looking to plug a leak on their plan, thanks a lot jjk166!

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#86

Post by atlasunshrugged »

bigger_inside wrote: post #81
cesnja wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myspace and similar sites from that era disappeared pretty nicely, though.

yes, there's a curve here. My early online days were in the time of GeoCities, and later CollegeClub (anyone remember that?); I had pretty significant online presences then, but they're all gone. The Archive doesn't have them, and that was before everything was scraped. I'm fairly certain this is all gone. Then comes the intermediate period when everything was starting to be scraped, but nobody realized or cared; tha…

I missed the CollegeClub days but I think I still have an old Neopets profile, although I don't think there's anything too dangerous on there I could be blackmailed with...

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#87

Post by chrisseaton »

mcguire wrote: post #25

" When you pull up to the CIA headquarters in Langley, you have to shout your Social Security number out the window into a speaker, like when you’re ordering fries at a drive-through. Much like the Union that the Agency was formed to protect, the system, it seems, could be more perfect. " True story: I went to a job interview on Redstone Arsenal which meant I needed to get a vehicle pass. The recruiter sent me an ema…

I think your SSN is more like your user name than a password, so shouldn't matter to disclose it.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#88

Post by egberts1 »

warner25 wrote: post #73
LinuxBender wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless this recently change it is also standard practice in the military to write your SSN on your checks and show your SSN which is on your military ID to anyone at the BX/PX. We had to say our SSN every time visiting the chow hall.

Things have changed. We received a "Department of Defense ID Number" at some point to use wherever SSNs were previously used on paperwork, computer systems, etc. Even ID tags ("dog tags") now have your DoD ID Number printed on them instead of your SSN. Any document with SSNs must be encrypted in transit and stored/processed only by systems with special accreditation and access controls for Personally Identifiable Inf…

ugh, and I am still thinking of what are the perps doing with all those digitized fingerprints hashes.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#89

Post by dredmorbius »

Sanzig wrote: post #6

On Gen Z CIA recruits having pre-existing social media presences: > They’re shrewd enough either to be circumspect users of social media from the start or to review (and delete) old problematic tweets and posts. Is this particularly effective, though? Most social media sites have been scraped to hell and back - surely there's archives of the old problematic stuff. It must be tough working in counterintelligence these…

That. And the fact that one of the best ways to know what's considered of interest or sensitive is to see what's been censored or redacted.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#90

Post by herbstein »

mjevans wrote: post #46
humanwhosits wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like we should stop treating SSN user id like a password

SSN is current the _defacto_, unplanned, person ID and somehow also password. I agree this is insane. A National ID, that is designed to more strongly prove ID and also designed to be used as a secure form of Authentication for Authorization services... THAT is what I'd really love politicians to approve. I'm currently in the process of upgrading my enhanced ID drivers license to a Passport (done) and then applying f…

> A National ID, that is designed to more strongly prove ID and also designed to be used as a secure form of Authentication for Authorization services...

I can share that here in Denmark we have a system exactly like that, and have for more than a decade. It's called "NemID" (lit: EasyID), soon to be changed to "MitId" (lit: MyID). While there definitely are some problems with the current implementation, having a 2-factor auth solution in front of every government, banking, insurance, etc. web service is very helpful. [0]

Keep in mind that my only interaction with individuals from the government, on the phone or otherwise, is when picking up books at the library and renewing my passport. Everything from filing my taxes through registering a child for school to reporting a move is done with a NemID login and a simple, guided form. [1]

My taxes are pre-filled with the information they've already gathered from my employer and the bank through which I handle my stock portfolio. The only thing I manually have to put in is my union fees and how many times I drove to the office -- both giving me a sizable deduction.

Doing my taxes at the end of the year is simply a formality too. At the start of the year I do an advance statement with what I expect to earn, and my monthly taxes are automatically pulled based on that. The end-of-year tax calculation is to ensure I didn't pay too much or too little -- the difference being due either way in April.

All of this to say -- a sane, digitized interaction with public institutions is not only a possibility but a fact in certain countries.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NemID -- the entry is critical but not unfair. The MitID changes mitigate many of the big points.

[1]: https://lifeindenmark.borger.dk/ -- It's both a "guide to Denmark" but also has the aforementioned forms. Try going through the "Health insurance card" order flow. You can't accidentally order one without a login.

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