Private spies hired by FBI and corporations infiltrate Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp

How is this possibly a profit-making private enterprise unless it's funded by government?

It feels like outsourcing a pre-crime department. If this industry exists outside of normal law enforcement it needs unbelievably tight regulation.

What powers do these private companies think they have?

Do they pass information on to actual law enforcement, and if so, does actual law enforcement do any checks and balances on the information they're receiving?

I don't know if this is next level paranoia or just another scary angle of the same level of paranoia post-911.

I'd also like to be employed by the government to play games and chat online:

FBI and CIA spies had created fake personas to hunt for potential terror plots discussed in online games, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, as well as on platforms like Xbox Live. Those initiatives fizzled after the intelligence agencies found little to no evidence of terror communications.

I'm interested in arguments that may justify this existing as private industry.

Edited to add: I like how the single sentence quote from an FBI official needed to include not one, but two, [sic]s.

And

“detect threat actors when they are young or starting out at 14 or 15, that's when I start observing and documenting their malicious activities.”

Talk about justifying the very activity the teenagers are engaging in, ie. fuck authority.

I feel like I want to educate the teens to be smarter, in both their life choices and opsec. I certainly hope law enforcement doesn't treat these teenagers with the blunt object that law enforcement is stereotyped to only be equipped with.

For example:

> The veil was briefly lifted in 2011, when a set of threat intelligence firms plotted to disrupt the hacktivist network LulzSec and attempt to discredit journalist Glenn Greenwald. The contractors, led by the now defunct firm HBGary, devised a plan to infiltrate left-leaning organizations using fake online identities, in a bid to win lucrative deals defending corporations facing public scrutiny.

This oddly makes no mention of the more sensational HBGary bid to discredit Julian Assange directly (see: [1]).

A little further down it reminds us that the Snowden documents

> revealed that FBI and CIA spies had created fake personas to hunt for potential terror plots discussed in online games

but that

> Those initiatives fizzled after the intelligence agencies found little to no evidence of terror communications.

Odd that this should fail to mention the slides[2] accompanying a GCHQ talk concerning the activities of HSOC and JTrig ("Human Science Operations Cell" and "Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group") which show a mature program of "Online Covert Activity" (with accreditation!) was at least planned, with "Full roll out complete by early 2013, 150 JTRIG and Ops staff fully trained" in (inter alia) infiltration and disruption of online communities.

1: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2470522/bank-of-americ...

2: https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-t...

Directly experienced egregious abuse to the benefit of insiders, celebrities, security state, wealthy, etc

I am talking which IP talked to which other IP, or even stuff seen from running botnets of infected machines in certain "interesting" parts of the world.

So the only evidence he has is that the FBI signed up for ZeroFox in the days leading up to Jan 6th?

The official said that the agency was still learning how to use the software

Hmm..

The title makes it seem like FBI hired these companies to infiltrate these groups...instead of what actually happened: These companies sold FBI the data they already had.

Or ist that just illegal to spy on own citizens without a cause, so they use contractors?

The 4th amendment is a restriction on the government not private companies. You have no right to expect people joining your discord server have honest intentions. Why are you using discord to begin with?

You know, there is a reason gang members require newbies to commit a heinous crime when they join.

How can I put it, trust establishment is not a technical problem, anyone can betray you, so find sociological methods to prevent that.

But if you are a criminal, if you justify your harmful means by some ideological ends or use whataboutism to justify stealing from or harming others, the people that gain your trust and betray you are heroes to me! How can you act outraged when they too justify their means by their ends? Don't get mad at someone beating you at your own game.

You all should know that an agent of these companies that engaged in hacking (getting past any security control without permission) is criminally (federal) liable. Conspiracy to committ most serious crimes itself is usually a crime. It's illegal to hack criminals. What is being talked about here is criminals that suck at vetting who joins their chatrooms.

This is what krebsonsecurity does except these companies sell it as a service and they have certain useful commercial relationships.

The FBI, if it was half as competent as people think it is (must be the suits?) would also legally be doing this if it paid people well. Undercover agents have always been a thing, they even get immunity for crimes while on the job! Unlike civilians doing threat intel.

Lastly, this is threar intelligence research & development. There's a whole sub-field in infosec on what to do with intel once you have it. But really, marketing aside, this is HUMINT mostly. The information is technically about threats (humans) but it is usually not about their techniques. More like "look out for this IP" or "you're about to get ransomwares" or "this person's creds at your company is pwned".

I hope I don't piss off anyone but if you really don't like this, make it commercially non-viable by requiring disclosure of compromised info or potential compromise to all affected parties.

Oh, and just to add: I said I hope I don't piss off anyone because like they mention in the article, they monitor you at a young age and will develop enough text from you that you can never type long text like this without being identified (stylometry). But I don't think I've said anything that controversial. Just keep in mind, those of you who dabble in criminal stuff, even at a young age, you're never escaping that stuff. Before it was just stylometry, but I have no idea how much LLMs have improved this technology in recent years.