The problems of Puffin Party security

Here’s an interesting story of a Russian military intelligence officer deployed into Ukraine, apparently under plausibly-deniable cover, whose communications were meant to hide in plain sight among the chaotic noise of the Internet. Specifically, he’s a gamer and re-enactor in private life and he tried to use the channels of this subculture.

Unfortunately for him, it only cuts both ways up to a point. You can’t operate in the apparent anonymity of the Internet without also accepting its distinctive threats, and Anonymous got into his e-mail account with hilarious consequences. What appeared to be a trivial and frivolous subculture providing nonthreatening space turned out to expose him to everything Putin hates in the form of a genuine security threat.

I have just been reading Danah Boyd’s fine It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, and an important point that sticks out is that a working definition of privacy is the ability to choose your audience.