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At CIA Starbucks, Even the Baristas Are Covert
An anonymous reader writes with this interesting story about what it's like to work at “Store Number 1,” the CIA's Starbucks. The new supervisor thought his idea was innocent enough. He wanted the baristas to write the names of customers on their cups to speed up lines and ease confusion, just like other Starbucks do around the world. But these aren't just any customers. They are regulars at the CIA Starbucks. "They could use the alias 'Polly-O string cheese' for all I care," said a food services supervisor at the Central Intelligence Agency, asking that his identity remain unpublished for security reasons. "But giving any name at all was making people — you know, the undercover agents — feel very uncomfortable. It just didn't work for this location."
Talk about hyperbole. No, operational security isn't a concern for even those at CIA Starbucks on a daily basis. The reason they don't like names or number tickers or anything else that could directly or indirectly produce a pattern that can track their actions because they're so very aware of how everyone else not part of their system is or can be directly or indirectly tracked through a pattern of their actions. Although I guess if the Chinese and Russians are doing the same thing as part of their systems, it's not wholly unwarranted to think they may end up being tracked.
It's not rampant paranoia because everyone really is trying to get them? No, it's still really rampant paranoia. The thought they they might (1) engage in some top secret op under a variety of aliases, (2) use another series of aliases with their Starbucks coffee, and (3) it's (2) that's the linchpin on how they were secretly poisoned or whatever is absurd. Why? Because (a) it's unlikely they'll be adequately tracked through operation (1), (b) even if they were it's unlikely they'd choose CIA Starbucks as the source of their plan to kill you, (c) even if they did, they don't need to rely upon an alias on a cup to determine it's your drink when your drink may well be unique enough, the person to poison you will likely verify it's actually you before adding the mix to the drink, and there's literally hundreds of ways to kill you that are less obvious (a name on a cup of a prominent dead person looks suspicious as would a tracking number if it's loudly spoken at any point) if you're trying to quietly assassinate a person.
No, this is all about some pretend thing in their heads that they're special enough to kill and yet smart enough to be hidden. The truth is most people are aware of how unimportant they are as a target and don't even attempt to hide themselves. But even those who try don't generally blend in very long--and by standards of the CIA, very long would be the rest of your natural life. The CIA/NSA/FBI all take advantage of this, have a certain level of loathing of the "sheep", and don't want to be placed into the same category because it fundamentally goes against their feelings of superiority of not being so "stupid".
Honestly, "operational security", "ongoing investigation", and "national security" are the words of cowards more often than a real and meaningful thing used to actual protect the populace at large. And I should know as an Anonymous Coward, right?
*Captcha: botulism