Former CIA Chief of Disguise Explains How Spies Use Disguises [video] | Hacker News Reader

Former CIA Chief of Disguise Explains How Spies Use Disguises [video]

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197 pointsmiiiiiike82 comments

With Facebook and facial recognition, spies can be identified before they even know they want to become a spy. There is literally a lifetime of facial recognition data on social networks for youths and college grads as they post their pics online, and if they get recruited to become a spy in their 20s, there will already be enough information to identify people globally, as they walk through airports, shopping centers, etc and have their pictures videoed constantly.

Facebook, et. al is a treasure trove of data for purposes like these.

The video describes mostly about what they would do under active surveillance e.g. people following them. Some of the prosthetics she describes also may throw off facial recognition.

I would assume that in front of the headquarter of any major intelligence agency, there is a dozen minivans, one for each foreign agency, taking continuously recording+facial recognition of employees coming in an out. Useful to spot foreign agents when they come through your airports security.

One would imagine SAD/SOG types are not exactly walking in through front door there are prob protocols in place for this type of things.

Unless we are talking about something like Russian GRU than they will basically list GRU building as their registered address in various open and semi open databases.

What are you talking about? Active GRU agents don't get designated as GRU and get embedded in other units.

Even on the direct action level, they aren't listed as GRU anywhere, wear the uniform of some regular unit in the area, and have paperwork saying they are a regular soldier.

You are not following events around Skripal poisoning are you?

haha, I guess I am not. My "knowledge" comes from history books about the USSR, so I guess I expected them not to be total xxxx ups.

This was such a total balls up that I wonder a little bit wether they did it on purpose so people wouldn't take them so seriously in the future.

Nope you just have to stop projecting what USSR was onto Russia outside of mostly same territory there is not much left as far as capabilities especially as far as human capital.

Referring to https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2018/10/04/305-car-registrat...

Which is kind of a feel good story, point and laugh at those Russian idiots bungling things again.

Cool, thanks for the link.

SOG I suspect typically comes in through the skylight :)

Or a mousehole C4 charge placed on the exterior wall :)

Do you remember when that guy recorded parking lot activity at the CIA headquarters and nobody caught on until he later published his findings?

Sounds interesting. Link?

Don't think that parking outside the FSB or GRU HQ is going to be possible for the CIA or SIS. Or vice versa.

Hiding a fake base station to capture phones and wifi devices near by strikes me as one possible gambit (result of playing a lot or rpgs's over the years)

Or in the case of the FBI and the Russian Embassy in D.C, you just buy the small house across the street. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/fbi-spy-house

Won't very good prosthetics thwart facial recognition? Maybe you can't change the distance between your eyes, but with the prosthetics she describes you could certainly change other geometries: forehead, chin, cheekbones, ears. etc.

Maybe. Chinese surveillance is so advance it can detect a suspect in a crowded area pretty quickly. Its dataset is too huge.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillan...

There's no reason to assume that China's tech actually works in the field.

In totalitarian china, everyone is a suspect, so detecting a suspect is trivial.

That article does a decent job of explaining that the surveillence is as much pseudoscience and propaganda as scientific technology.

>>>> China’s national database of individuals it has flagged for watching — including suspected terrorists, criminals, drug traffickers, political activists and others — includes 20 million to 30 million people, said one technology executive who works closely with the government.

...

Officials said humans still sift through the images to match them to people’s identities.

...

In Zhengzhou, police were happy to explain how just the thought of the facial recognition glasses could get criminals to confess.

Mr. Shan, the Zhengzhou railway station deputy police chief, cited the time his department grabbed a heroin smuggler. While questioning the suspect, Mr. Shan said, police pulled out the glasses and told the man that what he said didn’t matter. The glasses could give them all the information they needed.

“Because he was afraid of being found out by the advanced technology, he confessed,” said Mr. Shan, adding that the suspect had swallowed 60 small packs of heroin.

There have been quite a few reports recently that wanted criminals were captured because of this technology. Some of those had been escaping from police for many years. It’s about capturing criminals not detecting suspects.

Most interestingly, it happened several times that criminals were caught during watching Zhang Xueyou’s (a pop star) concert. An article mentioning that:

https://qz.com/1285912/chinas-facial-recognition-cameras-kee...

A recent article did some stats and claimed that a total of 55 criminals were captured at Zhang Xueyou's concert. http://www.chinanews.com/sh/2018/10-24/8658284.shtml

> It’s about capturing criminals not detecting suspects.

It's as much as capturing criminals as to detect suspects/find suspects.

It's the same with lie detectors. There's little evidence that they work all that well, but they're great for bluffing.

I read about one suspect who confessed after cops hooked him up to a "lie detector" that was actually a photocopier. They pushed the button and it printed "LIE," and he broke down.

Bunk’s interrogations were always the best... https://youtu.be/rN7pkFNEg5c

Facial recognition is less important for spies; faces can be changed rather trivially. Gait analysis and recognition is big too, and more prevalent than you might think. It's employed by large chain stores to track serial shoplifters.

Could you point me to more information about this gait analysis and which stores do this?

> Gait analysis and recognition is big too, and more prevalent than you might think.

The video did talk about changing gait, though it did mention it was difficult because it's so unconscious, so you have to use some object to make you consciously aware of it.

There must be some spy shoes and leg/arm braces that distort gait.

The video did talk about rather low-tech solutions, constrict the movement of one of your knees lightly by putting a bandage round it, or stick a pebble in your shoe.

I don't buy it. Facial recognition has had as many failures as successes, probably more because we only hear about the times it works, not all the times it fails. It seems like it is something ridiculously easy to fool. I know you all love fancy tech, but there are and will be amazingly low-tech ways to defeat these systems.

As far as developing profiles of every living person with a goal of knowing which ones will become spies, all I can say is good luck with that! Spies have been recruited from all walks of life, it cuts across all socioeconomic strata and all personality types. There isn't just a James Bond Type A personality type that becomes a spy and to think that betrays how little you have thought about this subject.

Also, probably every person from China who comes to the US has been evaluated as an asset and may or may not be one, so figure 100% potential there.

> I don't buy it. Facial recognition has had as many failures as successes, probably more because we only hear about the times it works, not all the times it fails. It seems like it is something ridiculously easy to fool. I know you all love fancy tech, but there are and will be amazingly low-tech ways to defeat these systems.

Also, with a large enough population, you'll also have to deal with doppelgangers (e.g. https://twinstrangers.net/). Probably too many false positives to be very helpful, unless you're willing to spend a lot of money sorting through them.

BTW, you're shadowbanned, and seem to have been for some time. All your comments are invisible to most users unless someone vouches for them.

> BTW, you're shadowbanned, and seem to have been for some time. All your comments are invisible to most users unless someone vouches for them.

How can someone vouch for it if it's invisible to them?

You can opt-in to seeing dead comments with the showdead option in your profile.

Thanks, I like reading controversial stuff.

https://www.theonion.com/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-...

This might be fake news but I thought this was hilarious when I saw it.

"Russian spy service punishes trainees who drove through Moscow in a luxury convoy to celebrate graduation – and allowing themselves to be photographed "

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3691711/Russian-spy...

Or it was planted by the Russian spy agency as a decoy. Hmmm...

I wonder how good the disguise "technology" is that they won't disclose in a public YouTube video.

I don't know why you'd want to disguise yourself as the opposite gender unless you could pull off the voice, your cover would be blown almost immediately.

I still don't place any stock in intelligence operatives working in embassies, I can only imagine it works because intelligence agencies aren't sophisticated enough yet. You have a (relatively) small group of staff, and you know a portion of them are spies. Many "official covers" are extremely weak.

> I don't know why you'd want to disguise yourself as the opposite gender unless you could pull off the voice, your cover would be blown almost immediately.

Only if you speak. The solution then, if this were for some reason necessary, is "don't speak."

Relying on not having to speak is extremely sub-optimal. I'm not sure how many situations you can get in that you have both the time required as well as the need to disguise yourself as someone of the opposite gender.

You could pretend to be mute, of course, but this can attract more attention in certain scenarios.

You can train your voice to speak convincingly like a female. Transgender women do this all the time. The training does not take that long (a few months) and would be good for disguising your voice in a number of ways, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they did this.

In my limited experience they aren't that convincing.

I'm probably missing something here but how are you confident that you're not failing to identify the ones who are convincing?

a semi-related question, can people with training in music recognize the difference between a sopranist and a soprano?

because as a layperson i really can't.

It doesn't matter if a few are good at convincing, as long as most are unconvincing. Unless the people who are good at voice conversion are the same people who have done body shape modification aand wardrobe modification and are opposite the people who openly admit about their transness, it's easy to estimate what fraction of trans people are good at changing their voice.

Well this conversation was about spies and I doubt it is very important what percentage of trainee spies eventually pass.

I used to work at a place where there were a lot of transgender prostitutes outside in the evenings. They would proposition me as I walked by (as well as flash their parts at me sometimes). Some were pretty convincing regarding looks but when they spoke you could tell.

(I said "limited experience", but I suppose I probably have a fair bit more experience than most people).

Prostitutes likely wouldn’t have access to the tools and care needed to make their voice sound good.

But ultimately, most trans women are not prostitutes. I know a trans woman who is an executive at a major tech company and you would not even suspect her unless you dove into her LinkedIn profile and googled some of the trans charities she’s involved with.

Could be the toupee problem. You only notice the bad ones, and assume that all toupees are unconvincing? Meanwhile, the effective hairpieces slip by you undetected.

Silicone prosthetics are nearly perfect disguises.

And if you pull off a female illusion well, youd be surprised that most people wouldnt think twice about your voice.

I agree, a lot of it is about the complete package, how you walk, how you stand, which emotions you show overtly, how you dress.

There are plenty of women with very deep voices and you still accept them as women. You just don't notice because you don't hear the voice in isolation.

The speaker in the video claims that they can turn a woman into a man but that it's nearly impossible to turn a man into a woman. In other words, according to her, there is no way to "pull off a female illusion well".

Nearly impossible, sure. But not impossible. There are professional female illusionists you can look up to see the amount of preparation and effort it takes to pull off.

Wouldnt it be trivial to use heat detection laser thermometers to determine that a facial prosthetic is being used. Or simply thermal imaging.

The hosting country, like Russia, knows they are spies and puts surveillance teams on them 24/7. The spy's (aka CIA Officer) job is to make sure their agents (the host country people they are gathering intelligence from) will not be discovered because in worst case that may mean death for the agent.

I've read a few memoirs from CIA officers and typically they are doing a very well planned surveillance detection route (SDR) to ferret out who is following them. If they are headed to a clandestine meet, the plan could include disguises and specific parts of the route where they can lose the surveillance team. Then they can meet freely with their agent.

The sophistication isn't about technology of disguise, it is more about using a combination of the techniques described in the video and well honed skills.

I am just saying, if I am an asset, I do not want to be handled by someone under official cover. I'm sure they take all manner of measures to stay safe, but imagine how much safer it could be when you don't know the handler is in a group of a few hundred suspected spies. I'm sure that's more difficult though.

By "technology" I meant quality of the masks if they even bother with them. It seems silicone masks are very good. I wonder if surveillance cameras are able to tell if a person is wearing one.

>It seems silicone masks are very good. I wonder if surveillance cameras are able to tell if a person is wearing one.

One would think IR imaging would bust masks pretty quick due to differences in thermal characteristics from normal skin.

>* I wonder how good the disguise "technology" is that they won't disclose in a public YouTube video.*

The impression I got of government tech from the Snowden leaks was "script kiddies at scale". I don't think their technology is "better" but they may have unique abilities by virtue of access to large databases such as DMV/passport photo DBs.

Or they can do things like get a court order compelling $COMPANY to pipe any publicly posted profile photo to them with the reasoning it was publicly posted and thus has no expectation of privacy. Other things at scale like that.

I'm wondering now when all these classic behaviors become imprinted. I'm born in America, grew up in Germany for the most part. Apparently I eat and stand like an American.

Probably you watching your parents eat?

A lot of mannerisms appear to be inherited / learned from parents. Just look about some family gathering.

My son's girlfriend acts and talks just like her mother. I was surprised to learn she was adopted!

Learned makes a bit more sense. I would be surprised if that sort of thing is genetic.

Another interesting one people don't notice is counting money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g87HVlu55mQ

I saw this video and didn't think much of it until I saw my friend counting money the Asian way. He didn't know that wasn't how Americans typically did it - I guess you pick up a lot of little things like this by watching your parents.

I felt the same when moving to Romania, they have a different way of counting money compared to France. I barely paid attention to it until one of the ladies from shop told me.

Cultural difference is found in a lot of small things you do in your daily life, it's just like that scene from Inglourious Bastards when he is showing the German 3 and the British 3.

Yeah, there are lots of little things out there. My wife and I were just discussing how as Canadians, we don't perceive ourselves to have any accent and sound just like "normal" people on American TV, however after she speaks with US based co-workers or folks she meets when she travels, they instantly know after only a simple Hello or maybe 3 words that she is Canadian (and they point it out!). There are just certain words that we pronounce just a tiny bit different that we don't notice because we can say it the Canadian or American way interchangeably, but to Americans who aren't inundated with Canadian TV like we are with American media, we believe they can instantly detect any deviation from their culture's norms. It's kind of maddening because we can't detect the other way around nearly as easy.

She said she'd been caught on words such as Hello, Syrup and Being, to name a few. Perhaps it was just that she said Hello in a happier tone or with different emphasis? I'm not sure, that one seemed ridiculous.

Imagine trying to change all those words you don't even realize you are saying different unless you repeat it with the person multiple times.

>She said she'd been caught on words such as Hello, Syrup and Being, to name a few. Perhaps it was just that she said Hello in a happier tone or with different emphasis? I'm not sure, that one seemed ridiculous.

I lived in Canada for a bit, and I would have guessed sooorry, tomooorow, oout, aboout. At least that's what Ontarians sound like to me. They really stretch those o sounds.

I've lived in Ontario my whole life, North Western and South Western and I've never heard anyone sound like that. It seems like that's such a stereotypical Canadian accent, but I've never heard it and assumed it only existed in the maritimes, although on my recent trip to Halifax I did not hear it. Maybe it's a bit longer and I don't notice, but at least not like the overly portrayed version on TV.

It's very distinct from what you hear on TV. TV doesn't even do the right sound, nevermind the length, but it's definitely noticeable for an American.

It has some similarity to some oh the northern mid-west accents.

It's just so interesting to hear that I have an immediately identifiable accent when I don't even think I have one, so weird. It feels like you have a competitive advantage that I cannot easily copy or get back at you with :)

Perhaps this is also how folks with "real" accents think too (that they can't hear it), but I gotta feel like they can recognize that they sound different from the "people on TV". My wife did however tell me that in a phone conversation with a US colleague that she immediately heard herself sound obviously Canadian after saying something, but I think it was more phrase based, a question followed by "eh?". "Ok, I definitely heard it that time" she immediately said.

I think Australians and so on they know. The Canadian accent, compared to standard American, is much more subtle, but even after living in Canada for 2 years I got so used to it that I wasn't thinking about it in daily conversation. However when I left and came back a year later on vacation it was back to being obvious.

If you spend time in casinos you notice the counting money differences.

There are also occupational differences, and differences in how wallets are used, back pocket vs front pocket vs top pocket, if money is taken out of a wallet or counted inside the wallet, if money clips are used, if the money is folded etc.

I sat at a poker table once with a guy who could swear he could spot drug dealers and money launderers by the way they fold and count their money by counting the roll out and also throw money vs placing it when putting it on the table

So, I also count money like an American (although the video didn't show German counting).

" Apparently I eat and stand like an American"

Interesting. When I lived in Munich I usually could spot American tourists from far away just by looking at posture and the way they walked. But I couldn't tell you what exactly the difference is.

Watching this video makes Bellingcat Skripal poisoining investigations even more hillarious.

Aaaargo!

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

why does hn censor humor? that censorship is creating a feedback loop where creative individuals are left out of the discussions, which seem to be becoming more and more pedantic.

his post, while perfunctory, is still a reference to something culturally significant

imo flagging would be better reserved for more severe infractions and let the community decide (via vote) what is "substantive"

This isn't censorship (dang just made a request). Creative people and everyone is welcome; you just have to follow the rules. If you're really after puns and low effort posts then check out reddit, but even there some communities (like legaladvice or science) will "censor" a user for such posts.

Which specific HN rule bans humor?

That guy at the end who changes into a vest is lols

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