I doubt it, unless you're including agents of assorted national governments as "terrorists". Private groups aren't going to have the resources to long-term plant members who may never find anything relevant. If your thing is fomenting revolution in Chechnya, having somebody end up being second attache to the embassy in the Philippines or monitoring the cocaine trade in Colombia is a waste you can't afford.

Now, I'd be surprised if the governments of Russia, China, Israel, Cuba, India, Pakistan, et al. were not trying to infiltrate the CIA. They've got long time horizons and resources that the poor schmuck who's humping a cannister of poison gas from Saudi Arabia to Damascus can only dream of.

And there are stories already, where some rebels tell an AP reporter that their guys were just transporting/storing the shit for another group, and didn't know what it was, and there was this accident, and a bunch of their guys got killed.

Could even be true. Of course, it could be a cover story for a rebel gas attack intended to be blamed on the government ("we didn't do it on purpose!"), or one rebel group setting another up to take the fall, or it could be Syrian government disinformation (Russian news sources are carrying this story), or it could just be another rumor in the fog of war.

Meanwhile, Obama says the US has proof it came from the Syrian government, of course the details are secret, but he wouldn't lie to us.

You can't trust anybody to be telling the truth in situations like this. Everyone may be lying.

True.

But if they don't catch the gunman, who's to say who did it? You're right, the CIA would probably be blamed, and it would be horrible PR for the US. Good thing there aren't any countries that would like to bring the US horrible PR.

But if the CIA wanted to avoid horrible PR, shooting probably wouldn't be a good choice, it looks so intentional. After all, a lot of people die in auto and pedestrian accidents, and judging from dashcam youtube videos, Russian highways are a madhouse anyhow. Or sometimes they just get sick, and die in spite of the efforts of doctors to save them. Or drink too much and fall off balconies. Get lost and have an accident while camping. It's scary really, the variety of things that can befall even the most careful person.

Not officially, no. And we know how scrupulously the various government agencies obey the law.

Well, the US scores pretty bad on the "control" metric (DMCA, TOS against servers, throttling, etc.). Not too bad on censorship, unless maybe you try to put up a website for some organization on the government's current (and arbitrary) list of enemies. As home of the NSA and its kindred organizations (who sometimes lie in court about where their data came from), probably the most "monitored" of any country, though places like China and Saudi Arabia try pretty hard, too.

And I'd say the "data privacy" is just as important as "controlled, censored, and monitored". The US scores terrible on that metric.

She's not an attorney.

Just because they won't let you see it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. For example, when they pass along mail to the DEA, who then lies to courts about where they got it.

If he shows up for DEFCON, maybe I'll agree with you.

According to TFA, it cost $200, two months' wages. Of course, that was at the hotel gift shop, and it's entirely possible that NK hotels are as good at gouging customers as hotels in other places, and that it might have been quite a bit cheaper from some other store.

"English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James Nichol
Under those conditions, it would be unwise to expect too much precision as words move into English. Not to speak of the fact that over time, some English words change meanings. And the young whippersnappers think everything that happened before they were born is "ancient".

Besides, the original article was written by Germans.

For certain values of "our".

Most wars do nothing but evil.

Maybe I just have extremely low demands. But when I want to know what a particular error message means, or if some unknown program that seems to be running is malware, or if the latest "OMG This Unlikely Thing Happened" post is true, or how to knock the password off of a protected pdf file, or how to spell "indefatigable", or where the hell "Bozy's Bar" (where the meetup is) is, or where I can get a cheap replacement bumper for my car, I use a commercial search engine. Maybe your problem is searching for "anything", I find it works much better if you have a particular subject in mind.

That is true. I think you've got to use how the government is reacting as an indicator. If this was just some loon who'd made up a few bogus powerpoint slides, would Joe Biden be calling Ecuador to suggest that they shouldn't let him in? I guess maybe if it was a major disinformation campaign on the part of the government, but it's hard to think of why they'd do that. And now they've got the EU pissed off, too.

Oh, that's so harsh. It's just that you need to get them to precisely define the words "collect", "any", "information", "millions", and "Americans". I'm sure that if you did, you'd reach a point where you thought "oh, 'no' doesn't mean what I thought it meant". (The words "on" and "of" are probably safe, though you never know). It's like how the word "sex" can mean different things depending on who's talking.

Who, exactly, would prosecute them if it is found that they have looked at the school papers of some kid in another country? Or made use of them in any way they wished? Hell, the TOS probably let them do that no matter where the kid is.

Not to speak of which, the secret police have a very long view. No, they're unlikely to be interested in a 12-year-old, but maybe they're interested in the kids parents or relatives. Anything in there that might be useful for blackmail? To target someone for kidnapping? And down the road, if that 12-year-old becomes the country's leader, you don't think that it would be valuable for the secret police to have all his school work since he was a child? I'd think that would be very useful, especially if that country has something the US wants, or perhaps is not on good terms with the US (either now, or 30 years from now).

The reasonable explanation is that the writer is not in the US. And we have made it clear that such people have no rights in the eyes of the US.

For a US citizen, having it offshore might be better. There's a lot of potential failure points, either way.