
"Watching for Watchers" - STRATFOR on telling when you are target of a crime - pesco
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100616_watching_watchers
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euroclydon
I think this article is a great, _sophisticated_ version of those chain emails
that are targeted at women, telling them not to get into their car in some
manner in a parking lot.

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hugh3
I was fascinated while reading this, but eventually realized it was targeted
more at paranoid loons than secret agents.

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jerf
I think you have to consider the matter from a Bayesian perspective before
just labeling it as "for paranoid loons". If I behaved this way in my
environment, I would pretty much be being a paranoid loon. On the other hand,
if I were riding the New York subways every day, it would be nice if there
were at least a few civilians keeping an eye out for things. (Not everybody,
though; that's a recipe for hundreds of false positives.) There are other
people who aren't being paranoid loons, like researchers who use animals; for
them this is a real concern.

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inmygarage
There's this generally misguided sense of what "intelligence" means - that
spooks are different from you or me. I don't believe it. All sorts of people
pass information back to the government in both formal and informal ways, paid
and unpaid. Does this make them spies?

All this article is saying is that the vast majority of people are so out-to-
lunch most of the time that they don't even notice when sketchy stuff is
happening right around them. And the very reason this happens has been proved
out in the comments - because people don't want to think of themselves as
"paranoid loons" or crazy conspiracy theorists.

While tech intel is a bit different than the so-called "situational awareness"
described in the article, I think we all participate in the intel process in
some way (though maybe not directly by talking to the government, but remember
how there's no more privacy on the internets?)

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motters
I notice that they imply that Greenpeace is a terrorist organisation.

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hugh3
No, actually they include Greenpeace in the category "criminals and terrorist
organizations", which is more accurate, since Greenpeace has been known to
commit crimes.

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bcl
Reads like the narrative from Burn Notice. But better.

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shasta
Am I the only one who felt the intended audience was surveillers rather than
surveillees?

