@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist 2. If you were taking down cell after cell of Russian assets engaged in conventional criminal activity, you could simply reap harvest after harvest along with all the ordinary criminals, & defer espionage prosecution.
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist 3. If you had already broken their secure communications, say, by expelling "official cover" spies who could act as secure go-betweens w/known credentials & breaking all means of encryption, etc, then it becomes very difficult to warn them about the jaws closing.
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist 4. If your adversaries are desperate, willing to accept heavy losses to preserve or drag out the op, &/or believe most of their assets are doomed anyway, they may have trouble deciding exactly when to cut their losses.
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist 5. Given that extracting suspected deep-cover spies is apt to blow their cover permanently, you may not want to pull them out, but simply hold tight and see who survives and remains of use.
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist 6. If this is all happening in the context of a mass-roll-up of the criminal underworld, which many of your assets & operatives are deeply intertwined in, it's hard to say whether a particular cell is compromised or merely unlucky.
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist 7. Remember, if you're an out-of-shape & possibly older asset or "useful idiot," 10 to 20 years in Federal supermax may be an enormous step up from 20 to life in the general population of a state maximum-security prison.
I.e. even a "bad" deal could be extremely persuasive.
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist 8. In summary, we've seen three things particularly targeted by law enforcement for months: corrupt national leaders, child traffickers, & any operation providing immense data on or leverage over the criminal underworld.
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist "PS. Add #Darknet sites - seized or active, intelligence operatives, data sources like the al Qaeda donation/money-laundering records taken during the Bin Laden raid, deep-cover Russian spies under "re"-issued IDs exposed by a #BigData search to check for the preceding ID."
@lauferlaw@ninaandtito@thespybrief@ericgarland@counterchekist "Companies' legal responsibility to their customers for distributing compromised tech, lawyers/other executives' fiduciary duty to their shareholders over any tainted CEO, oligarch or intel/organized-crime handler..."
I considered the flaw in cryptocurrency enabling the mass tracking/takedown of organized crime/Russian intel a modest side project for more than one reason. As we proceed, *why* will become more apparent.