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Comment by landryraccoon | Hacker News Reader

Really? I would think the opposite.

Anything posted on the CIA website will be thoroughly analyzed by state agencies that are well funded and well equipped to find shenanigans. If the CIA were really doing something to US citizens via something on their public site, it would come out very quickly as it would be an embarrassment to the agency.

Unless you mean that the mere act of visiting the CIA website would be suspicious because you are in a country that might frown upon that, like China? But wouldn’t the CIA site be blocked there anyway?

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Maybe you're right, but I wouldn't assume that everyone, from every IP, who requests a file hosted on the CIA's webserver would necessarily always be served the same content either

I'm not saying you shouldn't check it out for yourself though. While you're at it, maybe the NSA has interesting looking .swf .vbs or MS office documents sitting around at their domain.

I just don’t get how the risk/reward works out in their favor.

The uproar if their malfeasance is detected is far more than the value of any information they would gain.

Wouldn’t it be far simpler and more direct for them to go to Google or Facebook and ask them to hand over everything they have on you, at which point those companies almost certainly comply?

You're absolutely right, and I'm mostly kidding. If the CIA, or pretty much any three letter agency, wanted to inject something nasty into your internet traffic or infect your device with malware I'm certain that they could do it without uploading ironically named ebooks to their server and waiting for someone to post about it on social media. Still... from a risk/reward perspective, I can pirate this book from somewhere else just as easily

The CIA has zero legal power to make such a request.

...though I imagine they have several illegal methods.

If legality is stopping them then you have nothing to fear. They can’t legally hack your computer for visiting their public site either.

> Anything posted on the CIA website will be thoroughly analyzed by state agencies that are well funded and well equipped to find shenanigans.

Comedy gold.

You don’t think that China and Russia are thoroughly analyzing everything posted on the CIA site?

You missed the other qualifiers, at least one of which is important to the debate.

It must be sarcasm. Please tell me it's sarcasm. It's sarcasm, right?

No man, because it's the C-I-A, they have tagged the PDF to track who is reading this.

Did you inspect the PDF for command and control viruses?

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