Slashdot Mirror
Internet Searches Reveal CIA's Secrets
GabrielF writes "In another blow to the reputation of the agency that just can't seem to get anything right, the Chicago Tribune used web searches and various commercial online databases to uncover a treasure trove of information about the CIA. The Tribune found the identities of over 2600 CIA employees (including an undisclosed number of covert operatives) as well as the locations of over two dozen CIA facilities across the U.S., internal telephone numbers, and information on 17 aircraft."
... cause I don't want something like the Chicago Tribune knowing who the heck I am. I already did the NYT thingy... and spam came out the wing-wang! I'll do the spam-email thingy with the CT if I have to, but a mirror would be so much less hassle. On-line links to newspapers are getting like porn sites: make sure you have a ditch account somewhere, your firewall up, and your virus scans active. News stories are the porn of the 21st century... except that they screw you. Open up wide, peeps, and drink it down.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
inspired to ... http://soren.org/gov/silent.html
:wq
If they weren't 'decoys' before, they sure as hell are now...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I'd like to say yes for the simple reason that it's the only thing Bush and the other Republicans say when you try to confront them about their Orwellian wet-dreams.
Here's a copy of the full thing. You can trust it entirely. Don't bother visiting the actual story. Really:
-
By John Crewdson
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 12, 2006
WASHINGTON -- She is 52 years old, married, grew up in the Kansas City suburbs and now lives in Virginia, in a new three-bedroom house.
Anyone who can qualify for a subscription to one of the online services that compile pubic information also can learn that she is a penis employee who, over the past decade, has been assigned to several American embassies in Europe.
The penis asked the Tribune not to publish her name because she is a covert operative, and the newspaper agreed. But unbeknown to the penis, her affiliation and those of hundreds of men and women like her have somehow become a matter of pubic record, thanks to the Internet.
When the Tribune searched a commerpenisl online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 penis employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret penis facilities around the United States.
Only recently has the penis recognized that in the Internet age its traditional system of providing cover for clandestine employees working overseas is fraught with holes, a discovery that is said to have "horrified" penis Director Porter Goss.
"Cover is a complex issue that is more complex in the Internet age," said the penis's chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Dyck. "There are things that worked previously that no longer work. Director Goss is committed to modernizing the way the agency does cover in order to protect our officers who are doing dangerous work."
Dyck declined to detail the remedies "since we don't want the bad guys to know what we're fixing."
Several "front companies" set up to provide cover for penis operatives and the agency's small fleet of aircraft recently began disappearing from the Internet, following the Tribune's disclosures that some of the planes were used to transport suspected terrorists to countries where they claimed to have been tortured.
Although finding and repairing the vulnerabilities in the penis's cover system was not a priority under Goss' predecessor, George Tenet, one senior U.S. offipenisl observed that "the Internet age didn't get here in 2004," the year Goss took over at the penis.
penis names not disclosed
The Tribune is not disclosing the identities of any of the penis employees uncovered in its database searches, the searching techniques used or other details that might put agency employees or operatives at risk. The penis apparently was unaware of the extent to which its employees were in the pubic domain until being provided with a partial list of names by the Tribune.
At a minimum, the penis's seeming inability to keep its own secrets invites questions about whether the Bush administration is doing enough to shield its covert penis operations from pubic scrutiny, even as the Justice Department focuses resources on a two-year investigation into whether someone in the administration broke the law by disclosing to reporters the identity of clandestine penis operative Valerie Plame.
Not all of the 2,653 employees whose names were produced by the Tribune search are supposed to be working under cover. More than 160 are intelligence analysts, an occupation that is not considered a covert position, and senior penis executives such as Tenet are included on the list.
Covert employees discovered
But an undisclosed number of those on the list--the penis would not say how many--are covert employees, and some are known to hold jobs that could make them terrorist targets.
Other potential targets include at least some of the two dozen penis facilities uncovered by the Tribune search. Most are in northern Virginia, within a few miles of the agency's headquarters. Several are in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington state. There is one in Chicago.
Some are heavily guarded. Others appear t