CIA Officers Under Digital Surveillance

In a CNN article (April 22, 2018), Jenna McLaughlin wrote "CIA officers working overseas used to expect to be followed after hours by adversarial spies hoping to find their sources. But now, foreign spies often don't need to bother because technology can do it for them... Digital surveillance, including closed-circuit television and wireless infrastructure, in about 30 countries is so good that physical tracking is no longer necessary."

Of course the fact that governments use digital tracking to keep an eye on suspected spies and foreign embassy personnel should come as no surprise. We saw in January 2018 how Strava's fitness tracking apps exposed U.S. military bases.

As early as 2010 (and probably well before that) there were concerns that your personal cell-phone served as a tracking device, recording everywhere that you went - creating records available to the government. So, of course if a foreign government can determine what cell-phone is carried by a suspected CIA officer, that government is going to keep an eye on where that cell-phone goes.

You don't have to be a CIA office for this to be a concern. Other government and military personnel assigned overseas should be aware that they may become targets of foreign government digital surveillance. The same concern applies to corporate executives and businesspersons travelling to sensitive meetings, as well.

If the government knows where you are, it knows who you are... and very likely it knows everyone with whom you come into contact.