[Air-L] Disturbing trends in social networking

[Alexis Turner]

Michael, as Elijah pointed out, these people may just be analysts and 
contractors sitting 
in cubicles, but it doesn't mean they don't have very high level security 
clearances.  I'm sorry, perhaps I'm being a little naive in my shock?  But 
having lived in DC for several years and having driven regularly by buildings 
with all their windows bricked up (keep an eye out next time you drive around - 
it's really rather fascinating to see where these places occur), I am still 
flabbergasted that analysts would be so careless with their information.

Incidentally, Elijah & Michael, my understanding of contractors is that while 
they do a wide variety of jobs, plenty of them are employed as analysts and work in the 
same building rubbing shoulders with the "real" analysts.  I certainly found 
plenty of linkedin profiles that actually used the words "intelligence analyst" 
as a job descriptor.  Fakesters?  Perhaps.  But I kind of doubt it.

As to Alex's comment involving grad students likely being involved in this work 
- sure, that's to be expected.  But do you actually know which ones are doing 
it, or are you left to speculate?  My shock is not that they exist, but that 
they've "outed" themselves, as it were.

To Heather, who pointed out that you cannot access their full network - 
no, you can't.  But many of the individuals had links to their personal 
webpages, where there is further information on their private lives and 
associates.  And using the combination of a name and city as found on linkedin 
is enough to take a short trip to whitepages.com.  I can further envision a 
simple phishing attack using that information, whereby a person creates a fake 
linkedin profile matching the target's associate and requests to be added to 
their "friend's" network.  Voila.  Now they have access to a larger pool of 
names.

Sorry.  I still find it an unsettling, though perversely fascinating, use of 
social networking.
-Alexis


On Wed, 12 Sep 2007, elw at stderr.org wrote:

::> 
::> I'm sorry, but I don't see the "disturbing trend" here. These are analysts
::> (ie, sit in cubicles at Langley and interpret data)  not field operatives
::> (spies). Am I missing something?
::
::
::Folks who *really* work for the intelligence services are generally prohibited
::from revealing that fact for quite some time.
::
::Fakesters, maybe?  That, or policies have changed lately... we knew one fellow
::who worked for No-Such-Agency in the database area, but it was something that
::was just not a topic of conversation...
::
::Most of the folks brought up by the search you link are employees of *defense
::contractors* - regular private citizens, but some of whom have an employment
::history that involves them having been somehow associated with a three-letter
::agency at some point.
::
::And there are *lots* of ways to be involved or associated with the 3-letter
::agencies.
::
::--elijah
::
::
::> > I was tooling around on LinkedIn today and stumbled on the following
::> > horrifying realization: U.S. intelligence analysts announce their names,
::> > what they do, every position they have ever worked in, and a list of all
::> > their associates to a public audience on LinkedIn.
::> > 
::> > http://redheadedstepchild.org/lists/scratchpad/entry61/
::> > 
::> > Has anyone noticed this before?  Other thoughts? -Alexis
::