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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.
It's getting to the point these days where you just aren't sure which criminals you can trust.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
In other news 47% [1] of all news articles are speculative bullshit with no grounding in reality. See we can all make up numbers.
1. "We can invent references, too, and nobody will bother to check them." - Gettysburg Address, 1812.
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.