Charis's spy problem.

For a good description of the American Black Chamber, see THE CODEBREAKERS, by Kahn. It treats this whole era at some length.
Philip Stanley

Philip Stanley wrote:For a good description of the American Black Chamber, see THE CODEBREAKERS, by Kahn. It treats this whole era at some length.
Philip Stanley

While it has been some years since I read the whole unabridged book, I seem to remember Kahn being a bit dismissive of Yardley's book as a solid history.

I dont know, why Charis should not have secret service with hundrets or thousands of spies and a budget for it.

The SNARCs reports are only bonus to that service reports.

Why SHOULD Charis have an espionage service? They have flies on the wall of every important location. There is virtually no time lapse in reporting discoveries. The reports go directly to the best intelligence analysts they have. Why would they put anyone at risk of discovery as a spy and subject to what ever horrible punishment Clyntahn can come up with?

Your recollection matches mine. From what he says, Yardley was writing a personal memoir rather than a history, with all the issues that such books have. [Cf the critiques of Winterbotham and The Ultra Secret, on the same grounds.] Worse, Yardley was writing a sensational memoir intended sell well and quickly - he had essentially been dumped on the beach and needed the money. Had he done it in the UK or some other place with an Official Secrets Act, room and board would have been a moot point for the next 20-25 years, of course.

jgnfld wrote:

Philip Stanley wrote:For a good description of the American Black Chamber, see THE CODEBREAKERS, by Kahn. It treats this whole era at some length.
Philip Stanley

While it has been some years since I read the whole unabridged book, I seem to remember Kahn being a bit dismissive of Yardley's book as a solid history.

Louis R wrote:Your recollection matches mine. From what he says, Yardley was writing a personal memoir rather than a history, with all the issues that such books have. [Cf the critiques of Winterbotham and The Ultra Secret, on the same grounds.] Worse, Yardley was writing a sensational memoir intended sell well and quickly - he had essentially been dumped on the beach and needed the money. Had he done it in the UK or some other place with an Official Secrets Act, room and board would have been a moot point for the next 20-25 years, of course.

jgnfld wrote: quote="Philip Stanley"]For a good description of the American Black Chamber, see THE CODEBREAKERS, by Kahn. It treats this whole era at some length.
Philip Stanley

IIRC Yardley was investigated and indicted but because the information wasn't classified information he wasn't prosecuted.
While it has been some years since I read the whole unabridged book, I seem to remember Kahn being a bit dismissive of Yardley's book as a solid history.

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It depends :

The Not-To-Be-Spoken-Aloud explanation : people are hating us so much Charis don't even need to pay them to get intel.

The Official-Press-Release explanation : Charis is cooking the books to hide the fact that their economy is crumbling down due to the extremely wise and effective blocus imposed by the mighty Church with the unanimous support of the faithful citizens and pious sovereigns of the continent.

The Clynthan-Special explanation : that intel has to come from traitors within the Church. All those who support Clynthan are faithful to the Church and would never do such a thing. Thus it's those who oppose Clynthan who are leaking intel to Charis. Quod erat demonstrandum : those who oppose Clynthan must be killed.

Granted Charis has the monumental advantage of the electronic mobile bugs but the can not be everywhere and they are so far unable to go into the temple. A Hmit network or several of them could provide confirmation of various sources. Depending on what your intent is, you might want to have some levels of relativly low level paid informants as a buffer and misdirection for the electric means.
Not that The Church has any idea of electronic spying and capabilities of Charis, they don't have any knowlege of electronic communication. However, paying for information is both "traditional" and leaves traces which could be uncovered. Having The Church's intelegence services dig out some kind of "spy" or at least criminal network selling information surely would divert some of it's attention. That would be rather tough on the people caught but you are not going to deliberatly expose them even if you would perhaps never want to work with them again once the the war with the Church is over except to keep an eye on them for other possible criminal activity. Really iffy line between "our spies" their spies, their people who are spying (and know it) for us and people who are in it for either just the money or any one of a dozen reasons.
Even at a couple of months removed (remember, the spying might be transmitted in real time electronicaly but the movement of people and things will take time) from humit comming in and the electronics gathering, a comparison can lead to identifying several things. One of the capability of translateing plans into actions (and so affect your responses). Another is judge the competence of the people implimenting the plans. Yet another is where the information leakes FROM so you get clues as to how things disbursed or distributed and the time frames. Data, it's all data.

The advantage of a publicly known spy network is that it can provide a cover for unknown sources.
The British did this with the Zimmerman telegram - having read a copy from an intercepted encyphered message they then had the decrypted version stolen from the embassy in Mexico for public release to the American government while covering the knowledge that the German diplomatic cyphers had been broken.
The Americans and British did similar things during the second world war to cover the breaking of the Japanese and German military cyphers having forces "stumble upon the enemy" with enough force to do damage.
(Which led to the Russians using captured Enigma machines for a number of years after the war, until they caught on that the Americans and British were decrypting messages without the code books faster that they could with the code books).
There are advantages to having bodies on the ground too to cover places like the temple that are off limits to technical resources or to carry out longer term sabotage or recruitment operations. Person to person conversations can have a greater impact than a message nailed to a wall.

Brigade XO wrote:Granted Charis has the monumental advantage of the electronic mobile bugs but the can not be everywhere and they are so far unable to go into the temple. A Hmit network or several of them could provide confirmation of various sources. Depending on what your intent is, you might want to have some levels of relativly low level paid informants as a buffer and misdirection for the electric means.
Not that The Church has any idea of electronic spying and capabilities of Charis, they don't have any knowlege of electronic communication. However, paying for information is both "traditional" and leaves traces which could be uncovered. Having The Church's intelegence services dig out some kind of "spy" or at least criminal network selling information surely would divert some of it's attention. That would be rather tough on the people caught but you are not going to deliberatly expose them even if you would perhaps never want to work with them again once the the war with the Church is over except to keep an eye on them for other possible criminal activity. Really iffy line between "our spies" their spies, their people who are spying (and know it) for us and people who are in it for either just the money or any one of a dozen reasons.
Even at a couple of months removed (remember, the spying might be transmitted in real time electronicaly but the movement of people and things will take time) from humit comming in and the electronics gathering, a comparison can lead to identifying several things. One of the capability of translateing plans into actions (and so affect your responses). Another is judge the competence of the people implimenting the plans. Yet another is where the information leakes FROM so you get clues as to how things disbursed or distributed and the time frames. Data, it's all data.

There is another advantage. An agent ring is capable of being penetrated. It ought to be possible, therefore, to use snarcs to monitor the agents, with the hope not only of gaining good humint, but also of identifying double agents, tracking them back to their controllers, and maybe getting a better handle on Clyntahn's intelligence operations. For one thing, the EoC still has very little idea of how and where the Rakurai operatives are coming from. IIRC, present investigations into that are based on mass surveillance, and picking the important nuggets of information out of that amount of data is going to be close to impossible, even for Owl and Nahrman. For one thing, the importance of much of the data will only become evident in hindsight.

I don't say they will necessarily get much, but they should get something.
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