Or they could recruit directly from the OPM database <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...</a>.<p>Even more interesting is that a Chinese company owns most of Grindr. Think of all the possible blackmail opportunities if they could cross reference those. At some point there were security and privacy "concerns" and US, i.e. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investment_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investmen...</a> ruled that the Chinese company had to sell Grindr by 2020.
This article is not a hot news story. It is meant to get the word out to politically connected folks, possibly with emphasis on those on the West Coast, and possibly low-key focused on the relatively large contingent of Democratic policy folks sitting in non-governmental jobs right now (it is the New York Times after all).<p>I suspect the government sources in the article would appreciate it if the politicos above keep themselves relatively clean of unnecessary foreign contacts for the next year as the remaining few folks still in government are probably giving at least 50% odds that the Democrats win again in 2020, and are thus anticipating the possibility of large backlog of background investigations checking in about 1 nano-second after the election.
I figured they already knew since they're watching all social media and communications anyways. In addition, foreign adversaries also hide messages in seemingly random but innocuous comments on forums and blogs made to look like real user communication but makes no sense to anyone but their intended target.
The original paper previously discussed on HN:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547</a>
It's naive thinking that organizations like CIA and their analogies in other countries do not track as much people as possible. And there are not so many, right? Population of the Earth is close to 8 billion, so at least a detailed global social connections graph is what they already have.
A) Obviously.<p>B) It might be better spycraft to use this obvious entry to Chinese intelligence in the other direction. Of course TFA may just be cover for that... are there any details that seem plausible but perhaps misleading?<p>C) These people ain't playin'. No one wants to end up like Shane Todd.
Chinese should be aware of self styled thought leaders and experts pop-up based on current demand on linkedin. I am sure someone would be updating CVs claiming a 10 years of deep experience in suppressing protests worldwide.