“(…) the slides for a talk on “CSEC – Advanced Network Tradecraft” that was titled, “And They Said To The Titans: «Watch Out Olympians In The House!»”. In a different, more critical spirit of “watching out”, here is an initial reading of the slides. What can we learn about how organizations like CSEC are spying on us? What can we learn about how they think about their “tradecraft”? What can we learn about the tools they have developed? What follows is a rhetorical interpretation.”

No, I do not think so, and for two reasons. One, any government agency interested in our research is free to approach us openly, say who they are and what they want. It is then for the individual researcher to decide whether they want to enter into an exchange and support their activities or not. Indeed, as most of our research findings are in the open domain anyhow the results as such can legally be picked up from there without asking for consent. Using the research as such is not what is at stake here – the issue is the attempt at interacting with individual researchers and under a false identity.

Two, I’m sure there is a specific term in legal theory for this, but the gist of the argument goes like this: in a democractic context the state cannot legitimize ex post the breaking of laws by pointing to desirable outcome having been obtained in a particular case. Acting with a false identity constitutes such a breach. There are very strict regulations for when a government agent may assume a false identity in order to obtain, say, criminal evidence. Each and every particular instance of doing so requires prior authorization by a court or a state attorney – if you fail to do so the evidence will be invalid, no matter how relevant to the case it might later be shown to be.

It might be a bit odd to take the argument to this extreme, so let’s reconsider the specific context: A DH conference is not a meeting of drug dealers where undercover agents can expect to obtain information that is otherwise inaccessible. And so there is absolutely no need and no justification for this type of activity.