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25% of US Hackers Are FBI/CIA Informers
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports that the FBI and CIA have 'persuaded' up to 25% of US hackers to 'work' for them. 'In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as "carders" – hackers specialising in ID theft – have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars. ... The best-known example of the phenomenon is Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker who turned informant on Bradley Manning, who is suspected of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks.' What implications does this hold for privacy? Or is it just good work by the authorities?"
As you may have guessed, the estimate appears to be based only on the number of black hats, rather than all hackers.
Informer informs on YOU!
Paranoid yet?
I want to know how many of these CIA 'hackers' aren't adults.
surely there is a whiz kid out there just waiting for a movie to be made......
There's one behind you right now.
It's effective work by the authorities. However, if people under FBI or CIA are actively encouraging or facilitating illegal activities that may not have happened otherwise, I may have some heavy objections as to whether it's "good" work.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
In other news 47% of all news articles are speculative bullshit with no grounding in reality. See we can all make up numbers.
They say there are vast, anonymous networks of hackers, yet somehow they know they they've gotten 25% of them to work for the FBI? How do you calculate 25% of an unknown number? Or is there some Hacker registry at 2600 magazine that I'm not aware of (not being a hacker myself, I didn't get an invitation to join).
I love how none of these first post fuckers ever manage to actually be first.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
It's getting to the point these days where you just aren't sure which criminals you can trust.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
this article comes almost immediately after a report on chinese hackers and their nefarious actions against google.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Considering the choices, work for us or go to jail/we'll make your life miserable, it's obvious that most choose to join.
The real question is how much are they being paid? Once you step over into the dark side, there's no turning back.
You might as well make the best and the most of it.
to stay afloat, full of warez, script kiddies, child pornographers, etc etc etc.
You're telling me that indiscriminate thieves have a mercenary attitude which makes them prone to turn on their partners in crime?
Mind blown.
Well, they do something similar on the pedo circuit, where it's probably 75% cops trying to harvest the few real pedos. Both the "dirty old man" and the "innocent pubescent girl" of urban lore are likely to be law enforcement officers, and possibly even colleagues at neighboring desks.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
fight fire with fire...everything burns....nothing is left.....way to go, keeping the world in an ever present state of lies, deception, and a totalitarian government
This is a natural by-product of the of a national gestapo using "useful idiots" as proxies for doing their dirty work. Federal informants are often permitted to break the law and are paid very handsomely, often with provided housing and up to hundreds of thousand dollars a year, for their work.
Since these informants work for money(what "hacker" works for the fame of being a snitch?!) , they are more likely to embellish or even fabricate evidence to back up their claims. The FBI don't care about that, because if charges are bogus they will entrap of go fishing to find another charge to justify the time and cost.
The real question is, how much money is being spent on informants("cyber" or otherwise)? Could that money be better spend on schools or infrastructure? Why is it that scumbags with questionable pasts are being paid forty-thousand dollars(or more) a year while we and our families are eating ramen noodles for dinner and wondering how we're gonna pay next month's rent?
The answer is part of the government's broader plan to turn half the population against the other half. The ones who drink the kool-aid get to feed their families. The rest are radicals and terrorist pedophiles who deserve to be jailed and even used as near-slave labor. The big security complex is the only future in an America with large numbers of returning warriors and no economy other than the unsustainable one of making and busting criminals. Greed eats itself.
Yes, all of those things are true. No, I will not look them up for you, use your Google Fu - start with "lodi ice cream man terrorist, " level/tier 1 informant," "FBI infiltrate environmental groups," "prison labor builds patriot missiles," and go from there.
Why are people wasting time whining about exposing foreign informants? What concerns us is the network of domestic informants, aka Stasi 2.0. McGruff the crime dog says - "If you snitch, you get a bullet in your dome for being a coward."
-- Ethanol-fueled
I'm so glad that SOMEONE has figured out the clear definition of the term "hacker".
Can you please post it here?
I call shenanigans.
There is simply no way this is anything CLOSE to accurate. This is pure FUD and self-promotion. First, they don't have accurate stats on how many ID theft operators there are (if they knew who was doing the stealing, they'd be able to close them down, right?), so this is just a "guestimate" to make people who deal with bulk operators worried that they might be dealing with a "dishonest crook", and to justify their budgets.
Pitifully transparent.
37% of FBI/CIA informers are double-agents.
what's good for the goose is good for the gander...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I fail to see how anyone could possibly claim to have any estimate even remotely close to the real number of hackers in the US. If they have some log somewhere, then it seems to me that 100% of hackers in the US should be informants, because the rest have been found and arrested. This story is nonsense, nothing but propaganda to keep people from losing faith in the FBI's capabilities on the internet while all these stories about Lulzsec and Anonymous are going around.
Somehow this reminds your humble geezer of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Is why FBI/CIA needs so many gifted programmers
*Yeah i know its 2011 BUT IM STILL FIGHTING FOR THAT JARGON, DAMNIT!*
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
does the FBI have adequate control over its hacker informants? For example, an FBI informer riding in the car that carried the killer of Viola Liuzzo. And who else is running hacker informants?
The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers, a Guardian investigation has established.
This sounds more like the voice-over narration to the introduction of a cyberpunk B-movie than a remotely decently written article...
and I have to say, very effective FUD and self-promotion.
My biggest problem with this sort of scheme is that they are facilitating the very thing that they are claiming to combat.
Are they luring people into committing crimes that they would not have committed otherwise? I'm guessing that the answer is yes, even if it is unintentional. After all, a lot of wrong-doings wouldn't be done if there wasn't a social framework (e.g. forums) to reinforce the behaviour.
I wonder how much of illicit credit card money finds its way back into FBI budgets. To fight crime, you know.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It should say 25% of known hackers, which would be a more believable/accurate statement.
Bow before me, for I am root.
As you may have guessed, the estimate appears to be based only on the number of black hats, rather than all hackers.
Good luck on your rms-like quest to redefine the common usage of a term to suit your desires.
Slashdot, news about hackers, stuff that's stolen.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
the FBI didn't "turn" Lamo. His hypocritical moral superiority turned him into a rat. Lamo is lucky he has no friends like himself. I have trouble believing he as any friends.
The Admin and the Engineer
I'd prefer stats on the proportion of hi-tek(TM) identity thefts prevented or prosecuted compared to the total.
It seems to be having as much effect as the War On Drugs(TM).
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Dear Guardian,
Please define "hacker" before I read your article and the associated advertisements. No, no, it's OK, I'll wait.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
To put that in perspective, here's the current FBI Agent breakdown:
0% of known men
0% of known women
25% of known hackers
100% of known little girls.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
...aren't at liberty to say which agencies of which governments we're working for.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Pretty soon it'll be like the situation with "radical" student groups in the '60s; afterwards, many members found out that not only were they *not* the only police informant in the group but that essentially *everyone* was working for the cops...
The headline is a little misleading, in that the left off the last part. It should read "25% of US Hackers are FBI/CIA Informers After They are Caught". They are informing to get out of the previous shit they got caught for, much like drug informers.
"But this one goes to 11!"
The Slashdotters deny, deny, deny, or justify and rationalize that it's just fine. But if China *supposedly* hires hackers to do their bidding, and of which there is as little proof as displayed here, this is worthy of airstrikes apparently. Western hypocrisy on display right here.
What about ThinThread and other domestic surveillance programs? We know they're catching all US traffic at the ISP level. So if you're hacking computers in the US they can trace you back to the plug at the wall, from there they know you're either the person paying for the connection or someone leeching off his Wifi. A little detective work and they know if you live on the same block or if you're a roving wifi hacker who lives somewhere in downtown Portland.
Now how many non-US governments are doing the same thing and sharing this data with them? They already know who you are and what you're downloading, they simply don't have a reason to bust you right now.
So yeah, I bet they do have a pretty good estimate of the number of currently active hackers at least in the US. There's a profile on each one, and they know about zero-day attacks before anyone else does. It's just on the down-low since it's illegal. Do something big enough and they'll find a way to use it against you.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I've had my run-in with this before. I'm just a generic every day sysadmin and have no real involvement with the security community, short of idling on IRC with a bunch of more active people. Here are my experiences:
In 1997 or '98 I was the sysadmin for a mom 'n pop local ISP. We got hit by a massive DOS attack - keep in mind this was in the pre-smurf/DDOS era, so it really did warrant the attention of the feds. The owner contacted them, and they talked to me about getting any logs we might have (which of course I was ready to provide). I asked them where they wanted me to send them, and... "No, why don't you meet us out somewhere? We'll buy you lunch.". Despite the offer of free food, the alarm bells were going off by this point. So, I met them at a local coffee shop, and out of the 30 or so minutes I was there, they spent maybe two minutes discussing the DDOS with me, and the rest of the time attempting to get me to inform on the local 2600 group. I declined repeatedly, and they continued to make more forceful and threatening requests. Every time I disagreed with them, they looked at each other - and this was the creepiest (and obviously rehearsed) behavior I've ever seen. They never did get those logs from me.
After that I didn't hear anything until around 2005 or so when one of my ex-coworkers from another company called to tell me two men came by looking for me, and that they had government plates on their car. They left a card, but since I'm not under any obligation to call them, I never did. As the years went by, I received more calls from different people with a similar story.
And my last run-in with them was only a year or two ago - someone called me from a cell phone claiming he was with the FBI, and he had my computer and I needed to come to the local field office to pick it up. I found that to be rather unlikely since I tend to hang onto them until they're dead, I certainly wasn't missing one, and then they (minus the drives - I still have those) go into the bin. After a week of ignoring his calls he stopped bothering me.
To this day I have no idea what they wanted, but the entire thing reeked of ill-spent tax dollars.
I really don't care anymore, so the hell with posting as AC...
Insert witty
What then? You can't really do anything about it whether it's intentional or unintentional.
And if a team of informants want to set you up, there are enough laws and enough ways to make it happen.
Adrian Lamo wasn't "persuaded" to do what he did. He chose to. Willfully. He did this because he is without merit on any level.
When it's cases like Lamo's and the CIA gets involved they aren't beyond torturing somebody, or killing, or threatening to kill.
So if Lamo were going to be tortured alongside Manning unless he helped them, that would turn Lamo too.
the control is work for us or go to a pound me in ass prison and lose the right to use any kind system that is even in a little way like a pc.
Surely they will be stopped by the login banner which clearly says "If you are a federal agent, log out now!"
before the big corporations got involved. i am talking 1995-2000, when i used to hang out on there alot.
you would have constant server hacks, massive problems with servers going down, networks splitting, etcetera. the whole thing was run by a mysterious group of admins, who would GLine you for making controversial political statements and annoying operators of certain channels, but these admins would freely allow child porn channels and warez channels to stay up for years on end.
and who was hosting these servers? places like universities, big ISPs, etc etc etc. That was where the names resolved to.
so yes, i am being totally serious. there is not very much logical reason for a university or business to host a massively bandwidth hogging haven for criminal activity, full of drama and expense that was almost entirely devoted to non-educational activity. I mean how did they ever justify it in their budget?
Unless the Feds put it there on purpose to help catch people, it just defies reason.
How is it different from the web in general? I don't know. I don't know how 4chan stays afloat either.
But now I have a pretty good idea.
Am I a paranoid conspiracy theorist? No, I just read a lot of CIA & FBI history books. They were heavily involved with the media in the 60s, I am just thinking it is a logical progression for them to be involved in the same way in cyberspace.
The CIA isn't even mentioned in the article. Good job.
It's most likey 25% of convicted hackers turned. They are probably defining hackers as site operators AND black hats who dealt in wares, keys, hacks, etc... or worms, viruses, data theft. Think about it, they can only know "hackers" they've caught. I would have thought the turn rate would be a lot higher considering WHY most people choose to venture to that side (it's not for you), the offer isn't probably extended to everybody. And of course to add a little humor, the people they actually want as informants, they can't catch. Script kiddies ahoy.
Your mistake is assuming there needed to be a thoroughly sound logical reason for the institution to engage in it.
In reality, these things tend to be rather accidental and chaotic. The people providing the funding for the computers were giving it to the unis to come up with basically whathever (i.e. research). They didn't want to know in detail what was being done with every cpu or every hard disk. The people running the irc servers were hooked, doing it for fun, and some other strange reasons that fall under "human nature".
The inconsistencies you noted are just typical human nature. It won't change, btw. The idea that institutions or humans act rationally just does not correspond to reality.
It astounds me that the CIA/FBI are naive enough to believe that leaking this tripe is going to frighten pre-pubescent hackers into leaving Sony alone.
/CIA, I am disappoint
That's their strategy for stopping LulzSec?
Actually, it doesn't astound me. It disappoints me.
The thing that makes me actually partially believe them is the remarkable efficiency of department of homeland security's incredible ability to recruit "neighbourhood spies".
The numbers may be inflated, but make no mistake - authorities have noted just how efficient it is to essentially make a lot of small people into informants on minimal pay. Stalin would have had a major hard-on if he saw what they did in the States, he tried really hard to make the system in USSR to be similar, but it failed because of lack of ability to process large amounts of data at rapid pace.
We have that thanks to computerization and networking, and USA authorities can proudly state that they already have more spies then USSR spying on their own people. I really don't see why lessons from that can't flow into even more valuable hacker world, where informants are so important. Hell, case Manning makes for a great example - the #1 enemy of intelligence machine wasn't caught because of awesome hardware, awesome software or great investigation work. He was caught because someone Manning viewed as a friend and a "comrade in arms" so to speak was actually a snitch who fingered him.
And it's the importance of having snitches like that anywhere you can have them, and making sure that even if you don't have a snitch in a particular organisation, they THINK you do is the proven, effective control maintenance strategy for authorities. So yes, we can doubt the exact number, but the argument that a very large portion of US hackers are snitches is beyond reasonable doubt.
And if you ever doubt that snitches are the most important part of intelligence, look at case Bin Laden. Hunted with best equipment and millions of men for years, no luck. And in the end, the one who killed him wasn't a bunch of SEALs, or an advanced helicopter. It was some pakistani guy who was a snitch and fingered him. And funnily enough, to show just how well our media is penetrated by intelligence, in between massive dick waving about SEALs, helicopters and other thing that really didn't matter in the end, we didn't hear a word about the one thing that really did matter - THE SNITCH.
The headline is a little misleading, in that the left off the last part. It should read "25% of US Hackers are FBI/CIA Informers After They are Caught". They are informing to get out of the previous shit they got caught for, much like drug informers.
I wonder.
Are they pressured, turned, reformed, or "healed"?
I guess, the motives would greatly depend on the circumstances. Someone, who started breaking into systems for the coolness or bragging factor would find it equally cool to be a secret undercover agent. If it was just technical curiosity, a little agreement lets you keep your toys. And someone who helps to stop criminals that steal credit information from unsuspecting grandmas might even get the feeling that they are making up for their past, much more so than someone who helps to intimidate 14 year olds that download the latest movie trash. Someone who hacks for concrete political reasons might be harder to get to the state were they fully cooperate, harder than someone who defines it as part of his post-political cyber-identity whatever manifesto.
On the other hand, motives and your reasoning don't have to go hand in hand. Once pressured you can always try to convince yourself, that it was your duty anyhow.
there has to be a thoroughly sound and logical reason for the FBI to allow child porn and warez to flow through government owned (universities are government institutions) computer networks, for years on end, meanwhile the FBI goes after countless john does for having child porn and/or warez networks running on their personal computers.
I thought those were all Chris Hansen?
I've read countless articles about cc data and identities being sold in "underground" forums but have never come across a link to one. Does anyone know what forums these are? Are they actually that underground, tor .onion? i2p? Does anyone have a link?
Because any informant can say you are the leader. Anybody can commit a crime, you could be in a chatroom, they could say you gave them the order and are the leader when they could be an informant all along setting you up to be "caught". Remember informants can commit crimes to catch criminals and that cops can give them permission to do it. This means they could commit the crime, frame you, and now you're "caught".
What seems a bit worrisome is that with that rate, there's a high probability that undercover FBI agents are dealing with other undercover FBI agents (or from any other agency), and therefore, makes the mess even bigger.
If instead the FBI was dedicated to follow and track CEOs and Executives like those of BP, Chevron, etc. Perhaps the people would be happier to see justice actually works.
If you add up all the agencies from all the countries, you can pretty much extrapolate that almost every hacker is a double or triple agent.
Makes you wonder how much of the hacking is really just Pentagon vs DHS; or FBI vs CIA; or US vs UK; etc.
If they asked all of the hackers, or a select few? If they asked all of them then one could say a few of them probably are. But if they just selected a few of them, then who is to say they did not pick the right ones:? They may of picked a few that wanted to "look good". Other than that if 25% of them are cia/fbi one could say 25% of federal employees are slacking on IRC. There is also a 99% chance that someone on that IRC is logging. The other 1% of cia/fbi on the IRC is viewing p...
...75% are not.
i am talking 1995-2000
Not all servers are like this, it all depends on which servers you visit. I still don't see how it is any different from other public chat channel services on the web beside that it might look more obvious to you on certain networks when simply doing a list and seeing all sorts of strange channels pop up. And in my long history of IRC I can honestly say I've never seen any child porn channels on there (at least nothing that rang a bell with me judging from a public channel list), ever, so I'm honestly wondering which networks you used to visit.
And IRCops glining you for controversial political statements? Maybe you should've kept it in your own channel, none of the major networks snoop your channels for 'controversial' remarks and gline you as a result. Some of the major networks do have rules about racist remarks and other offensive behaviour. Still not any different than any community on the web with moderators in my opinion.
there is not very much logical reason for a university or business to host a massively bandwidth hogging haven for criminal activity, full of drama and expense that was almost entirely devoted to non-educational activity. I mean how did they ever justify it in their budget
Why not? You are still implying that every IRC network is used for criminal activities. Besides, there is a big chance that students themselves were hosting IRCDs back in the day (and still do). This doesn't make it an official IRC network from the university itself.
There are actually still quite a few universities that host IRC networks where, maybe obviously, a lot of IT related students gather to talk about the topics discussed in classes (sometimes with the teachers in the channel), discuss their projects, etc.
Lastly, the point you make about the budget. You can actually host an IRCD with quite a few users without it costing that much. A small network runs fine on mediocre hardware platforms with a decent ammount of bandwidth available.
I guess you were not paying close enough attention to the Bin Laden operation. Along with all the tactical details which should have been kept to themselves they also released intelligence that allowed them to track him to this particular location and it wasn't one Pakistani guy snitching.
72% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
im not trashing freenet nor even IRC. I had many good times on #linux or #python or #c or #asm. I was mostly on Undernet, some EFnet, a little dalnet. Freenet did not even exist when i started, #linpeople was on undernet (or dalnet?). I remember lilo, god rest his soul.
However. On undernet, I personally witnessed people on childporn channels. I used to scream at them. Now I realize they were probably cops. I personally witnessed people get glined for silly reasons. I personally witnessed channel operators who traded netsex for channel ops. I witnessed a lot of things that were improper and corrupt. Then there was the warez. And bestiality. And other things that are hard to explain in a 1996 context, when not 'just anyone' could set up a server.
I'm just saying. When someone says 'oh, by the way, 25% of hackers are cops', somehow that leaps out at me. I am not saying I'm 100% positive, I'm just saying there are a lot of bells flashing in my head. Maybe I'm going all Alex Jones, but I think it's worth looking in to.
As for comparing IRC with the rest of the net, yes. Usenet would be my first analogy - it is full of absolute horror, and yet many major ISPs kept it going for years. And 4chan, in the modern age, is full of illegal stuff, or so I've heard. I'm just saying, maybe something 'explains' their existence too.
Maybe I've been reading too much history of the CIA and FBI. But I don't think its a completely crazy thesis for someone to go do some research on.
Have gnu, will travel.
Oh? I've been following reports pretty closely, and I remember seeing no such information. Early on it was military dick polishing, and later on it was general bullshit about intelligence working. No actual details, other then standard obfuscation to protect sources was ever released as far as I remember seeing.
Do you have a link to a source of any such information? I would be very interested in seeing it.
Does the war on insert noun here in question render law enforcement immune to the law?
Imagine NSA setting up an FBI agent using a drugs for credit card numbers sting, and an FBI agent hooking an NSA agent in a credit card numbers for drugs sting.
If so, what happens if each agency simultaneously deems they have enough evidence to prosecute? Should the respective agents be prosecuted?
Seems like the law should apply equally to all of us.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
TRy this "http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/timeline-the-intelligence-work-behind-bin-ladens-death/"
You left out the possibility that Lamo decided his choices where 1) keep listening to manning and his classified leak plans and not tell anybody and hope his name
never gets discovered by the Feds or 2) alert the Feds and greatly lower you chances of going to prison for being an accessory for someone else's activity.
What if Manning had been the informant? If that turns out to be the case, 2 would be the better choice.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
This is the old one, I've seen it and it doesn't conflict with my original statement. Let me help you translate intelligence speak into english:
August 2010: American intelligence locates the brothers’ residence.
Translation: Informant sold out the residence's location. Informant not very reliable, but reliable enough to start collecting additional informant statements on site.
September 2010: The Central Intelligence Agency begins to work with President Obama on assessments that lead them to believe that Bin Laden may be located at the compound.
Translation: We assessed that information from the snitch(es) was reliable enough to assume that he may actually be there, and they weren't just taking the money and lying their asses off as they usually do on information about him.
There is probably at least two dosen of such sites at any given time or more. President is usually informed as a one-line statement in the large security briefing.
Mid-February 2011: United States government authorities determine that there was a sound intelligence basis to pursue this direction aggressively and develop courses of action.
Translation: After a long round of questioning snitches and flying spy drones and satellites over the site, we have multiple informant statements that match, statistically significant chance of target actually being on site (depending on case and finances, from a few percent to several tens of percent). Deploy our own trustworthy men to check the intel.
March 14: Mr. Obama begins a series of National Security Council meetings to develop options for capturing or killing Bin Laden.
Our men checked out the information, and confirmed snitches' statements. We have a good chance that intel is good and we can work off it.
In the end, it's still the snitch that's the hero. Everyone else is just working off his back.
Who me?
Are quislings who'd sell their grandparents for an extra day's ration.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
At least they're not crackers and just code hackers :-)
You mean we can't trust the thieves and criminals now.
What ever happened to honor among thieves?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana#History
Prominent and widespread use of agents-provocateurs by Tsar police caused in return police be influenced and used by agents-provocateurs. That situation culminated in assassination of Minister of the Interior Plehve organized by police agents-provocateur Azef.Some historians think one of the reason of Plehve assassination was his inquiries into huge police spendings on agents-provocateurs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana#History
Prominent and widespread use of agents-provocateurs by Tsar police caused in return police be influenced and used by agents-provocateurs. That situation culminated in assassination of Minister of the Interior Plehve organized by police agents-provocateur Azef.Some historians think one of the reason of Plehve assassination was his inquiries into huge police spendings on agents-provocateurs.
Yes, they have very good statisticians, just like me.
I knew that 1 in 4 is an FBI-Informant.
That's why my Hacker-Group has only 3 members, so I'm secure.
Lamo?
Poulsen?
"Do you have a link to a source of any such information? I would be very interested in seeing it."
Sorry, his choice of words tell you that he is not a snitch.
Wow what a big assumption you have.
This one link took about 2.5 seconds to find. If I wanted to do 5 more seconds of research to refute your claim that the operation relied on a single snitch I could but why bother since you seem to be able to re-interpet and redefine anything you see if it doesn't mesh with your particular world view. It's a common affliction these days especially when paired with the ease of disseminating information around the planet in an effort to re-write history.
Saturating a suspect group with informers has been an FBI tactic for most of a century. It been been said that 60 years ago, when the FBI was attacking the communist menace in the USA, which was real, 1/2 of the CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA) members were FBI agents. Moreover, it's claimed that since FBI agents paid their dues more regularly than the average member, the FBI was keeping the CPUSA afloat.
Don't know if this story is really true, but it's plausible.
Not mentioning a "single" anywhere in my post. Merely pointing out that presence of large amount of small ground-level low pay informants, as referenced in the OP is important, and this is one of the examples.
Not really sure why you grabbed at "single". The little guy, the snitch, alone isn't enough due to reliability concerns in most cases. But when you have a little guy everywhere, or almost everywhere (25% of all hackers pretty much counts for everywhere), you're largely in the know on anything worthwhile that's happening.
The East German Stasi managed it quite well, however.
I have a feeling this story was leaked by the FBI to creep out the black hats.
They had a whole lot less total population to work with however. This made managing the entire thing easier.
Yes you have a low level script kiddie who probably wouldn't have to worry about being killed (not saying they'd actually be safe) if they inform.
But hackers with a high degree of skill and expertise have probably read about or heard about Assassination politics.
http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm
Read all of it and then comment on whether or not you think informants shouldn't fear death threats.