In 2017, a suspected US intelligence officer allegedly held secret meetings with the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was later assassinated. The encounter also became public thanks to footage from a hotel security camera.
Last December it was Russia’s turn. Bellingcat, the investigative website, used phone and travel data from Moscow’s FSB intelligence service to track down three operatives and then attempt to kill Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Bellingcat named all three. and published their photos.
Espionage and covert operations are never the same.
A trained CIA case officer may once cross the border with a wallet full of aliases or confidently travel to foreign cities to meet with agents. Now, he faces the digital constraints that are a hallmark of modern life: ubiquitous surveillance cameras and biometric border controls, not to mention smartphones, watches and automobiles that constantly ping his location. Then there’s the “digital dust,” the personal records nearly everyone leaves on the Internet.
According to current and former US and Western intelligence officials, with advances in artificial intelligence that allow this data to move rapidly, technologies are becoming increasingly powerful tools for foreign adversaries to root out spies. Huh.
“It’s really bad,” a former top US counter-intelligence official said of the impact on US espionage operations. It really challenges fundamental assumptions and attitudes about how you do business.
“Ubiquitous technical surveillance,” as it is known, is now a widespread concern in the CIA, forcing it to develop new, often more resource-intensive methods of recruiting agents and stealing secrets, officials said.
CIA Director William Burns acknowledged during his February confirmation hearing that in the new environment, “operating traditional tradecraft is much more complicated.” “The agency, like many other parts of the US government, is going to adapt.” He added: “I have a strong belief that the women and men of the CIA are capable of this.”
In the Dubai case, Israel has never confirmed or denied its involvement. The CIA has declined to comment on its relationship with the half-brother of the North Korean leader. Russia denies poisoning Mr Navalny.
A January report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said that while advanced digital technologies will help US spy agencies gather intelligence and nab adversaries, authoritarian societies such as China and Russia will benefit from those who attack them. Can control more.
The CSIS Task Force report said that CIA officers “will struggle to maintain the risk of themselves, their agents, and their operational business craft operating in secret.”
In an interview, a senior CIA official disputed the suggestion that the agency’s operating space was shrinking, and said it would employ both new and traditional espionage trade craft. “We go to extraordinary lengths to avoid tracing our officials and the sources we are meeting.”
“Humint is not dead, not by a long shot,” said the officer, using the acronym for human intelligence.
Others are not so sure.
“The fundamentals of espionage, I argue, have been shattered—they’re already broken,” said Duane Norman, a former CIA station chief who worked on an early agency effort to adapt espionage for the digital age. Which is called the “Station of the Future”. ,
As an example, he asks, how can a CIA officer claim to be working for another government agency or private enterprise if his cellphone is not regularly present at that unit’s location, with the ATM attached to him? There is no record of him making withdrawals or paying for lunch. The credit card is in the vicinity, and there is no sign of it on the video cameras?
Having no electronic “signatures” – such as not having a cellphone and no presence on the Internet – is in itself a tipoff for anti-espionage services, Mr Norman and others said.
In a 2018 speech, Don Mayrix, who was then the deputy CIA director for science and technology, said that in nearly 30 countries, foreign intelligence services no longer bothered to physically follow agency officials “when We quit our jobs,” an apparent reference to US embassies. “The coverage is so good they don’t need it. Between the CCTV and the wireless infrastructure.”
A recent top-secret cable from counter-intelligence officers at CIA headquarters to stations and bases around the world warned that a large number of agency informants were being caught abroad, according to officials familiar with its contents. The cable suggested a more difficult operating environment for US spies abroad as a result of widespread digital surveillance. It was first reported by the New York Times.
Intelligence officials declined to provide further details, citing operational secrecy, how such surveillance at the hands of Chinese, Russian, Iranian and other governments could potentially affect the CIA’s mission—or how the agency would respond. giving.
But he offered an outline of what the future of espionage could look like.
Several former executives said that crossing international borders under a fictitious name has become increasingly old-fashioned business due to biometrics such as facial recognition and iris scans.
“It is more difficult for intelligence officers to make up aliases,” said one retired Western intelligence officer, who estimated that he had nine false identities during his career, and credit cards for each.
Much of the espionage would be done in a “true name”, meaning the spy would not masquerade as someone else, but “live his cover” as a businessman, academic, or other professional with no apparent ties to the US government.
Moscow and Beijing have sent “massive influxes” of what are known as non-traditional intelligence collectors abroad, former US counterintelligence chief William Ivanina said. Asked if the US would do the same, he replied: “That would be a great guess on your part.”
Espionage is also becoming a team sport. Where once a lone detective conceived and performed an operation – meeting an agent, retrieving cached documents – in the future, he would need a group to help with digital surveillance and guide a CIA officer around it .
Ms Meyrix described in her 2018 speech how, as a test, a CIA team compiled a map of surveillance cameras in the capital of an American adversary, which she did not name, as well as the type and direction of the cameras. was indicated. Using artificial intelligence, the team planned a surveillance-free route that a CIA officer could travel.
While HQ coworkers glance at a computer dashboard, a CIA officer on the street wearing a smartwatch can tell him if he’s “green” — free of digital surveillance — yellow, or red.
These ventures require more time, personnel and other resources.
It is more “Mission Impossible” than James Bond, and means “less operations, total” with a smaller pool of foreigners recruited to spy for the US, Mr Norman said. “You’re going to expend a lot of energy working on something important.”
There are also endless digital tricks to play with in what Mr. Ivanina calls “the techno version of cat and mouse.” For example, it is possible to “spoof” the location of a cellphone, misleading foreign spies into thinking their mine is in one location when it is safe in another, current and former CIA officials said.
Officials say the CIA, which turns 75 next year, has faced and overcame profound technical challenges in the past. In 1980s Cold War-era Moscow, it was long believed that the agency could not recruit and interview Soviet spies under the nose of the KGB. A former station chief and his associates devised methods, including new methods of short-range communication with agents and disguise, and during that period the agency was able to steer Adolf Tolkachev, one of the most valuable Soviet spies of the Cold War.
“Most technical challenges are surmountable. We commit great offenses, and are not sitting in a defensive crouch,” said the senior CIA official.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed
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