Brag About Exploits, Go to Jail

[John Young]

James Donald wrote:

>And if he had, like Snowden, kept a low profile, instead of flicking 
>a towel in their faces, they never would have detected it.

Swartz bragged to a slew of people and was caught.
Manning bragged to Lamo and was caught.
Kiriakou bragged to a journalist and was caught.
Sabu bragged to cohorts and was caught.
Barrett Brown bragged to the world and was caught.
Several Anonymouses bragged and were caught.
And so on, dozens in just the last decade.

Jim Bell bragged online and went to jail. So did Carl
Johnson. Cops love braggarts, brag themselves to
braggarts to keep prisons happylands.

How many did not brag and remained uncaught? There
are likely thousands of them. Many of those work with
or emulate spies who do not brag as rule number 1.

Snowden wanted to be identified, so it is alleged, and
has been caught as intended.

Is this nuts or what, vainglorious stupidity, or a commonplace
ruse to get the enemy to expose its capabilities, or to flaunt
one's own hybrid of authentic and fake to spook the enemy,
to seel products, to boost budgets, to manipulate public
opinion. The fundamental purpose of leaks.

Keeping a non-existent profile is worth considering, along
with a hundred pseudos.

And putting a high-profile out there is what the Internet
was intended to do, fake, sock, pseudo, anon, sucker.

Not to be overlooked: the essence of comsec and
crypto is deception. So laugh at the open source ruse
on the way to the pokey.