Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Collateral Damage

As people worry about how much our own government spies on its own citizens, pleas keep in mind that we rely on these technical means of collecting information because our human intelligence is so outclassed by our opponents:

The revival of the Cold War with Russia in 2014 (as a result of Russian aggression against Ukraine and American allies in East Europe) has had some interesting side effects. One is a growing rebellion within the CIA against the Cold War mentality that continues to tolerate superior Russian ability to plant and operate spies within the United States while frequently succeeding in turning (into double agents) spies the United States believes it has operating inside Russia. Many CIA officials believe the U.S. is already falling victim to another XX campaign.

"XX" refers to "double cross"--Russia's tremendous success in turning so much of our informant network into double agents feeding us bad information.

And so we rely on methods that can, at the generous end of the motivation scale, "unwittingly" suck up information about Americans who have nothing to do with enemies, external or internal.