Exposing a CIA Spy Network

[Dogmatique]

so, what have you done to hide your IP address? If nothing, it is logged into the servers for this website.

I'm glad you mentioned that....

[aardvarc]

And I guess it just escapes people's notice that more than a handful of us hold positions in law enforcement with direct and official access to Homeland Security and their various offices.

Duh.

[amerian]

Does anybody here really know the law about Intelligence Identities Protection Act ?
Has the law ever before been applied or can it be applied to those who find information in open-source materials ?

[jk]

from Wikipedia:

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (Pub.L. 97-200, 50 U.S.C. §§ 421–426) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime for those with access to classified information, or those who systematically seek to identify and expose covert agents and have reason to believe that it will harm the foreign intelligence activities of the U.S.,^[1] to intentionally reveal the identity of an agent whom one knows to be in or recently in certain covert roles with a U.S. intelligence agency, unless the United States has publicly acknowledged or revealed the relationship.

has it been used? Most likely. Most laws are in response to some action or activity that is currently happening. The law was likely enacted to be able to stop that activity.

note: the statement refers to classified information. Information remains classified even after it is stolen or somehow gained through whatever means until the government declassifies it.

[drthyrd]

Does anybody here really know the law about Intelligence Identities Protection Act ?
Has the law ever before been applied or can it be applied to those who find information in open-source materials ?

If, as you say, you aren't a US citizen on US soil this is a mute point. I am not going to be arrested for driving today, even though me doing so would be illegal in Saudi Arabia. You will not be prosecuted under US law if you as a non-US-citizen, living outside the US, break US law. If you exposed an Operations Officer working in your own country of origin you would likely receive some protection from your country, unless you did so in a manner that also harmed your native land.

That does not mean such an act would be without consequences. You understand that Operations Officers use assets to obtain information that is of importance to US intelligence efforts and important to US national security. Operations Officers without diplomatic cover will not experience the same level of protection in a foreign country as a Ops Officer with official cover and a diplomatic passport and their assets are in more precarious situations as well. The stakes are very high that the Officer will be killed during exposure. Keep in mind the officer's assets face possible execution in their own country in many cases so their motivation to stop your efforts would be the concern more pressing than any action by the Government. The aspect that you will want to consider here is that people's lives are at stakes. Are you OK with doing this if it means people die by your actions? The likelihood of your ability to be successful is slim to none, but you must judge and frame the situation in those terms to calculate your risks. Also consider that the Governments of each country has officials whose offiical job is doing exactly what you hope to do casually. If you want to try to tangle with all these folks, and sort them out and expose them at the risk of the death of some, you probably want to consider your safety rather than the legal consequences.


Three names to google in your CIA reading include Aldrich Aimes, Valerie Plame, and Lindsay Moran. All three can provide interesting information regarding the world of intelligence.

While you posed a disturbing question but I don't harbor any particular concerns about your odds for success. You don't have the wits to go up against the CIA.

[amerian]

The Bible teaches us to plan.

[souperdave]

It also teaches us how to identify an idiot!

[Dogmatique]

It also teaches us how to identify an idiot!

I don't need a religious text to tell me how to do that