What is in my head is my intellectual property. There will be no flash drive, no research notes, nothing to find that is digital. I am done with digital archives. As an ethical journalist I must retain source confidentiality. But more importantly, I must quarantine information that is incomplete, of a sensitive nature, or simply not ready for redistribution to the general public. They are coming for the journalist…

First they came for the journalist… | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) – Tammy Swofford – 11/8/2013.

Web-based “open source” political analysis from the “second row seat to history” (mine) need not be either so paranoid or secretive: our sources are indeed out in the open.

For the journalist — the real journalist — on the street, however, and chasing diplomacy and war stories, or just the inside track on, say, the Muslim Brotherhood, the worry with what to do with the HUMINT equivalent of a powder keg of new information would seem worth consideration in association with all channels digital and vulnerable to prying robots.

The right-side of the American political psyche, that which has made a fetish of the demonizing of President Barrack Hussein Obama (oh my), has been scratching its collective head — at least the part of it that is not a part of Booz Allen and other Beltway Incognitos feeding at the annual $52 billion Black Budget trough — over the American capacity for snooping through the e-mail and such.

Reminder: Edward Snowden is now working for Vladimir Putin in a post-revolutionary Russia being driven back toward the familiars of authoritarian oligarchy and nascent Big Brother Government.

Putin’s Snowden strategy: three views | World | DW.DE | 12.11.2013

Never mind Uncle Sam.

Uncle Mao and Uncle Vlad and a lot of other uncles — even if fictitious like Uncle Bond — have their own share of questions, relevant technology, and college and graduate students (!) through which to answer them.

Foreign Spies Target U.S. Universities as FBI Seeks Campus Help: Surveillance – Bloomberg – 4/5/2012

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“Political Spychology” has become a rich field for mining from outside the fringe of the secret clearance-holding community.

I mentioned “college and graduate students” tongue-and-cheek before having a look-see on the web.  In fiction, of course, and common academic history, there’s often the beatnik handing out the socialist newspaper on the corner, and there’s no end to student agitprop for this cause and that.  Le Carré employs them regularly (in real space, I’m on the final wandering pages of A Perfect Spy).  Today’s student spies would seem beyond political agitation: in fact, it’s better not to agitate at all while quietly picking up the secrets of the technology universe and sending some home, perhaps, before their time.

From the above cited Bloomberg link:

Foreigners on temporary visas make up more than 40 percent of graduate students in science and engineering at leading universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology. China sent 76,830 graduate students to U.S. universities in 2010-11, more than any other country and up almost 16 percent from the prior year. While the vast majority of international students, researchers and professors come to the U.S. for legitimate reasons, a small number — voluntarily or under pressure — may be supplying information to intelligence services. In addition, more Americans are heading overseas for schooling, becoming potential targets for recruitment by foreign governments.

The Jihad obsessives stir the mud in the water some as they make their way upstream into the inner circles of Arab-Muslim and Islamofascist worldviews and for that may well have cause for worry as regards state tapping.  Be that as it may be, government at every level would seem out ahead of them, and that as perhaps it should be.

The Associated Press has revealed the New York City Police Department monitored Muslim college students at schools throughout the Northeast, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. In one case, the NYPD sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

Spying on Campus: New York Police Caught Monitoring Muslim Student Groups Throughout Northeast | Democracy Now! – 2/21/2012

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When on October 1, 2013, Samantha Bowden crept unannounced into the classroom of University of Central Florida communications professor Jonathan Matusitz, she wasn’t hoping to advance her education on the sly. Rather, Bowden, the communication and outreach director for the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL), was doing something of which Campus Watch has been frequently accused, but has never done: spying on a professor in an effort to embarrass him and, with luck, even harm his career.

Spies in the Classroom: CAIR vs. Campus Watch | FrontPage Magazine – 10/28/2013.

Related Reference

The Department of Homeland Security Helped Itself to a Journalist’s Documents | VICE United States – 10/28/2013.

NZ Disputes Report That it Spied on Journalist | InHomelandSecurity.com – News & Analysis of Critical Issues in Terrorism & Homeland Defense – 7/29/2013: WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — “New Zealand on Monday disputed a newspaper report saying its military conspired with U.S. spy agencies to monitor a freelance journalist in Afghanistan, a report that has provoked concerns over how surveillance programs revealed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden might be used to spy on reporters.”

Department Of Homeland Security Schemed To Spy On Political Opponents – 2/18/2012.

Is Homeland Security Spying on You? | The Investigative Fund – 6/6/2013: “ITRR turned its attention to law-abiding activist groups including Tea Party protesters, pro-life activists, and anti-fracking environmental organizations. The bulletins included information about when and where local environmental groups would be meeting, upcoming protests, and anti-fracking activists’ internal strategy.”

Homeland Security Given Green Light to Monitor American Journalists | TheBlaze.com – 1/9/2012:

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has writtenpermission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”

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U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, documents show – Washington Post – 8/30/2013

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Information Warfare: The New Russian Cyber War Force – 9/8/2013: “Noting what’s going on in China and the United States, the Russians have decided to catch up.”

US, Russia to install “cyber-hotline” to prevent accidental cyberwar | Ars Technica – 6/18/2013.

Category:Russian intelligence agencies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Category:Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Russian influence operations in the United States – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sergei Tretyakov (intelligence officer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Cyberwarfare/Cyberintelligence thread – Military Current Events – tank-net.com – 3/28/2009

Chinese intelligence activity abroad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “The United States believes the Chinese military has been developing network technology in recent years in order to perform espionage on other nations. Several cases of computer intrusions suspected of Chinese involvement have been found in various countries including Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, India and the United States.”

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Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing: Tim Shorrock, Dick Hill: 9781400157723: Amazon.com: Books

Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet – NYTimes.com – 10/28/2013.

[VIDEO] College students ask President Obama to spy on FOX NEWS employees – 6/17/2013.

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