Deep Dives | Wikileaks | CIA documents about how airport security works + tips for spies
Introduction
A few days ago, a new Steem initiative came to life called @deepdives, and it consists in participants reporting their findings while exploring the Wikileaks archives, with the goal of creating a repertoire of unique articles capable of bringing value to the Steem blockchain, as well as leaving this information forever stored in a platform that is censorship resistant.
In this article the subject in question will be about giving coverage to 2 official documents from the CIA, explaining how airport security works, and a little bit of information about CIA operatives (spies)
We all have seen in several work of fictions, how spies seemingly manage to use fake identities and travel from country to country without being detected.
Obviously this is not something within the reach of ordinary citizens, and require specialized knowledge and skills in order to pull this off. In this article, there are going to be some official explanations and examples.
The leak
There are 2 documents titled “CIA Assessment on Surviving Secondary Screening at Airports While Maintaining Cover” and “CIA Advice for US Government Operatives Infiltrating Schengen”, and both of them provide data regarding the knowledge about how the security systems in different airports works, knowledge that is required for spies to be able to move between borders without being detected.
When moving inside an airport, the most dangerous security procedure for people with modified or fake documents is called “secondary screening”.
Secondary screening—a potentially lengthy and detailed look by airport officials at passengers not passing initial scrutiny—can significantly stress the identities of operational travelers. Border-control officers at international airports use primary screening to quickly evaluate arriving passengers and identify those that may not be admissible, such as illegal immigrants, narcotics traffickers and other criminals, terrorists, or intelligence officers… Referral to secondary screening can occur if irregularities or questions arise during any stage of airport processing—immigration, customs, or security—and regardless of whether the traveler is arriving, in transit, or departing. Officials may also randomly select travelers. The resulting secondary screening can involve in-depth and lengthy questioning, intrusive searches of personal belongings, cross-checks against external databases, and collection of biometrics.| Source
Suspicious signs in travelers
The goal of this document is to provide all necessary information to make it easier the handling of any type of problems there might be, by being prepared and aware of the inconvenient that can happen inside of an airport.
It is detailed that issues like passport irregularity, discovery of contraband, and watch list hit are the main reasons to start a secondary screening. There is an interesting section, in where it is explained what they call “suspicious signs” people should avoid in order to not look mistrustful to airport officials. These signs are detailed in the following picture:
Tips for spies
The document mentions how specific airports use several tactics to identify suspicious travelers, like one way mirrors and undercover agents, to observe, analyze and look for any gesture that could be considered as nervousness.
They even have information about which travel patterns are considered suspicious according to individual countries, for example “The Chilean Investigative Police (PICH) considers travel originating in East Asia with multiple stops as potentially suspicious. The Gambian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) considers frequent travel to Nigeria and Guinea-Bissau as suspicious. Israel’s security personnel focus on frequent travel to Islamic countries.” | Source. They have surely studied every country before visiting it, to avoid triggering the secondary screening based on previous travel patterns.
Nevertheless, if for some reason, the local official decides that it is necessary to do a secondary screening, then a new type of evaluation starts to take place, involving aspects as body language and the way the traveler responds to the questions that are being asked. They can even go as far as making phone contact with the sponsor of the travel in case there is one, the same applies if the person don’t have enough social media presence according to his profession. For example, they mention the specific case of an individual pretending to work in marketing, and the fact that it could look weird if he didn’t have a twitter account to give credibility to his fake persona. All of these little details are checked by the officials, and if the find just a single thing that looks suspicious, they can make the person return to the city of origin.
The key to a successful travel would be “consistent, well-rehearsed, and plausible cover is important for avoiding secondary selection and critical for surviving it. A frequent operational CIA traveler to Asia and Europe advises that the most effective prevention of secondary is to have simple and plausible answers to the two most frequently asked questions, “Why are you here,” and “Where are you staying.” | Source
Importance of maintaining cover
It is fair to say that these people are masters of deceive, the indicate in a very clear way that the best protection is simply to be a good liar.
Knowing the reach CIA as an organization has, and the fact that it has no problem taking advantage of it, is important for the people to know, because it is a clear proof that there are entities that play by different rules than the rest, and they have the sufficient knowledge and resources to infiltrate all kind of places, and even committing abuses towards innocent individuals. Besides, this also proves that intelligent agencies have no problem infiltrating spies in countries that are supposed to be their allies.
References
“CIA Assessment on Surviving Secondary Screening at Airports While Maintaining Cover”
“CIA Advice for US Government Operatives Infiltrating Schengen”
Curated for #informationwar (by @openparadigm)
Relevance: OPSEC
Our Purpose
This is a great post.
I had never considered how difficult it must be to slip past security as a spy. Imagine that, there are people in a room somewhere practicing lying to customs agents.
They have already studied everything regarding these types of things, easy peasy for those spies.
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YES! Didn't know about @deepdives until I read this post! YES. That's what I'm talking about, I'm all in. No censorship means we could be fighting suppression of information and up until now I kept wondering why people can't see that. Vault7 here I come.
Great work my friend. You really brought the #deepdives challenge alive.