Accused Russian spies lived perfect Boston lives

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/06/accused_russian_spies_lived_pe.html?hpid=topnews

by fady • 16 years ago

47 20 16 years ago

blog.washingtonpost.com

gaika• 16 years ago

Just a warning to anybody using Linked-In or Facebook - journalists are already calling all the "friends" they can find online for details. FBI will be calling soon too. This information is just too easy to find for anybody who has time to type in the name into a search box.

sethg2• 16 years ago

Just for the hell of it, I searched for both Heathfield and Foley on LinkedIn, and I’m a third-degree connection to both of them. (I wonder if this is a sign of how incestuous the Boston high-tech community is.)

rdtsc2• 16 years ago

> how incestuous the Boston high-tech community is.

Or how well the alleged spies have been planted...

huhtenberg• 16 years ago

Just read through this and look at the technical part. Why didn't they randomize their MAC addresses? Why the heck were they using standard protocols in the first place? Oh the glory days of spying when they had a transmitter in a shoe, a mike in the olive and the olive in the martini...

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint1.pdf

fady• 16 years ago

hahah..nice one

redorb• 16 years ago

I would have thought that the FBI would've had a harder time setting up meetings using their undercover guys...

I always thought each spy dealt with very few handlers / I wouldn't have showed to a 'phone call' ~ but I also see they edited the document a lot; I guess the FBI was able to uncover some of their "signals of authenticity" and use them against them;

~ I think the main charge is the fake passport (which the FBI set her up with) ~ of course that charge leads to being a SPY which leads to? life or death in prison

necubi• 16 years ago

> ~ I think the main charge is the fake passport (which the FBI set her up with) ~ of course that charge leads to being a SPY which leads to? life or death in prison

Nobody's been charged with espionage, so neither of those sentences apply. Instead, they've been charged with far more minor things like failing to register as an agent of a foreign government.

dhimes• 16 years ago

Taking the US/Russia relationship at face value, I doubt they'll have to serve prison time. But it does make me wonder: why the sting now? A good strategy for this game is that when you know who the spies are, you play along and let them "spy." Then when the game gets serious you're one step ahead as you already know who to watch and can possibly even feed them tainted information.

Why did the US "fire all of its guns at once" here? Methinks there's more to this.

gargantuan• 16 years ago

> I always thought each spy dealt with very few handlers / I wouldn't have showed to a 'phone call'

Usually in these cases FBI and CIA would plant various stories in the media, and produce evidence during the trial that conceals real sources of information (often defectors and moles).

Otherwise, it seems like the alleged spies and their handlers were just very sloppy.

sabj3• 16 years ago

Growing up in Boston, all my russian friends would joke of such things as this, or other connections. And here I was thinking it was but schoolyard bluster!

sethg2• 16 years ago

I have a biased sample, but almost all of the Russian expats I know are Jewish. Their connections probably involve being interrogated by the KGB.

sabj3• 16 years ago

Of course - and we all knew this. But that didn't make calling the russian math school a mob hideout any less fun.

splat• 16 years ago

Suddenly the 1977 movie Telefon sounds a lot more plausible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qg0w8qbBQo

Accused Russian spies lived perfect Boston lives

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