

The CIA Meets MIT - bootload
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1102963&lastnode_id=0

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trotsky
Funny story, but clearly an adolescent fantasy. "Charles I. Andersen Music
Company" -> CIA isn't going around cutely inserting their initials into covert
front companies. "careful investigation of the garbage bags from that office
revealed that the CIA had suddenly felt it necessary to send all of their
documents through the shredder several times" -> CIA used burn bags during
this era, the idea that they would have been throwing away single shredded
documents of anything sensitive is pretty silly - the weaknesses of shredding
were well known to them.

I fully understand that it's popular to portray US intelligence as full of
bumbling incompetence due to ones politics, but I think in reality that's
rather rare. Wasteful? Often. Machiavellian? Sure. Misguided? Plenty of
examples. Chronically stupid? Nah.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_I fully understand that it's popular to portray US intelligence as full of
bumbling incompetence due to ones politics_

That conflicts with the evidence available. We know that in the last few
years, CIA officers went to Italy and conducted an illegal operation that was
trivially easy for Italian police to reconstruct. Why was it so easy? Because
the CIA officers checked into airlines and hotels using their real names. Why
did they do that? Because they wanted to collect the frequent flier points.

This is an organization that clearly employs a lot of people who are...not
skilled at spycraft. This is not a question of politics.

~~~
stcredzero
I heard that during the Vietnam war, all agents were issued the same Rolex
watch, which was designed for the purpose of agents bribing their way out of
trouble, should the need arise. The taxi drivers figured this out and started
just taking agents to the CIA safehouses without needing to be told where they
were.

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Locke1689
Hmm. Sounds apocryphal. By Executive Order 12333[1] the CIA is legally
prohibited from collecting intelligence inside the United States in the vast
majority of situations. The CIA cooperates with the FBI in these cases.
Hypothetically this could be some kind of base for foreign intelligence
operations, but that seems unlikely considering that I can't find any
supporting evidence for the event occurring with some basic Google searches.

[1] <https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/eo12333.html>

Edit: Let's be clear here: yes, there are a million _hypothetical_ reasons why
this story might actually be true. Unless someone can find a reliable source
that confirms any of the details in this article I'm going to remain
skeptical.

~~~
daydream
I doubt the office was for spying. More likely it was for working with
emerging technologies coming out of MIT.

~~~
Locke1689
Possibly, but that still doesn't explain why I can't find any source
confirming any of the details in this article.

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laughinghan
An even better sign would have been:

    
    
      <- Central
        *Intelligence*
         Artificial ->

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bootload
I like reading about social hacks like this.

While the story might not be true, it highlights that people are the weakest
link. For instance, why didn't the secretary press the _"suit"_ ,
_"contractor"_ and _"construction worker"_ a bit harder? Then there is
process. A process might be asking for visitors to sign, a sign-in book and
then supply a business card which can be verified, checking name, address etc
against a printed phone book. The weakness of social hacks is a legend or
background story. The harder you dig the weaker a deception should appear if
it's false.

The key to this social hack is gaining the confidence of the secretary (Suits,
clip boards, plans) at the same time making sure the secretary does not link
any of the incidents together while organising a false scenario: _"Mitigating
the social engineering threat"_ (Kevin Mitnick)~
<http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=3443>

These are some of the keys to executing the _"long con"_ ~
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/hustle/con_jargon.shtml>

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nopassrecover
If this isn't just an urban legend it makes you wonder how easily influenced
security policy might be. For instance, if a student was to walk past and talk
about how they use electron microscopes to recover hard disks this might
influence hard drive deletion processes without any proof that this was
necessary.

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baddspellar
Not quite.

Here's the actual story.
<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/techsquare-0317.html>

"The most intriguing tenant, still invoked by almost everyone who spent time
in the building, was the Central Intelligence Agency, which had an office on
the third floor under the name R.K. Starling Associates. The office spawned
numerous pranks and jokes; one of the best known was a hallway sign that read
"Intelligence," with arrows labeled "Central" and "Artificial" pointing to
either side"

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sz
"Charles I. Andersen Music Company"

Would CIA really do this?

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siddhant
OT: Almost every other term on the post links back to their own website. This
is the Wikipedia approach of SEO, isn't it?

~~~
lt
Everything2 is older than wikipedia, and has always been like that.

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vamsee
Hilarious.

