Internet Blows CIA Cover

[NYer]

Tracking covert CIA operatives is only a mouse click away. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-060311ciamain-story,1,123362.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true)

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.

Only recently has the CIA 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" CIA Director Porter Goss.

"Cover is a complex issue that is more complex in the Internet age," said the CIA'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."

[CHE]

This is what you get when you hook everything to the Internet for no good reason and the government pays corporate America to collect information on everyone and everything.

My credit card and bank card worked just fine during the 80s. Now they get stolen on a monthly basis by the millions. The banks say that I have more features, but they don't work any better or any faster than they did before the Internet was turned over to the public. The government will now require medical records to be digital to "save time [lives] and money, and to make it more secure." Medical expenditures and insurance rates will rise, and the number of people "saved" will be counted on hands and feet, and every single person's medical record will be stolen during the course of his or her lifetime, not to mention the fact that select corporations and the government will have access to them at all times. For nothing.

[NYer]

Glenn Reynolds points to a Question from Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=179962&cid=14901890)

What the hell happened to the spy agency? CIA Agents now chat away on unsecure cell phones, check into foreign hotels using GSAs (US gov't issued credit cards), and leak every other intelligence briefing to the press. They might as well start a group on MySpace and issue bumper stickers and T shirts. The fact that Google can catch sensitive information means these guys have failed the test of keeping our government's secrets secure.

Indeed...