25% of US Hackers Are FBI/CIA Informers

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports that the FBI and CIA have 'persuaded' up to 25% of US hackers to 'work' for them. 'In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as "carders" – hackers specialising in ID theft – have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars. ... The best-known example of the phenomenon is Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker who turned informant on Bradley Manning, who is suspected of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks.' What implications does this hold for privacy? Or is it just good work by the authorities?" As you may have guessed, the estimate appears to be based only on the number of black hats, rather than all hackers.

Re:How do we know Lamo wasn't tortured?

[catmistake]

ah, that's not what happened. Lamo was not being pressured by the FBI nor tortured by the CIA. He was not being solicited by anyone. He took it upon himself to decide that someone like Manning, who like himself exhibited signs of mental illness, should not have access to state secrets. He believes he's a repatriated hero.

Re:I have similar concerns

[icebike]

There is no such thing as control over an informant. If they had control over them they would call them "Agents".

Your implied question here is: should the FBI recruit any informants, and by extension, take any information from someone not totally under their control.

I don't think that any of us want to live in a society where the police had enough manpower that input from the common man in the street was totally useless to the police. Therefore the question itself poses a veiled accusation.

Clearly police informants in general usually get something in return for their services, some may be altruistic (a desire to clean up their neighborhood), but there are a lot of small time crooks are simply not worth the time and effort, especially when you can twist their arm a bit and get information in exchange for them being over looked for a while.

Where murders are undertaken by criminal organization, informants deeply entrenched in the organization are hardly in a position to hold up a hand and say, look guys, I don't think we should to this because it would be wrong...

Re:How do we know Lamo wasn't tortured?

[catmistake]

Lamo is a drama queen. If he sufferred rendition, that's all he'd be talking about. If you saw the PBS special last week, you would have seen him interviewed inexplicably wearing a trench coat indoors... like he was Deep Throat or something, which is some fantastic internal irony for him, because he dropped the dime on today's Deep Throat (Manning).