Social Media Pose New Riddle for CIA

 

Social Media Pose New Riddle for CIA

By ANTON TROIANOVSKI and SIOBHAN GORMAN

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323398204578487173173371526.html#printMode

 

Effective spycraft has long called for cover-a job, family or routine that would keep a government agent from drawing undue attention. Now, that calculation extends to spies' use of social media.

 

Only in the past few years has the Central Intelligence Agency issued standardized guidelines on how to use social media, according to one former intelligence official. The line these guidelines draw appears to be thin:

Revealing too much on Facebook and Twitter risks tipping too much to the other side. But given that social media use is becoming ubiquitous, revealing too little could also arouse suspicion.

 

"Technology is changing the spy business in so many different ways," the ex-intelligence official said. "It's very easy to find out a lot of information about people."

 

The question of how much a spy should divulge online became a touch less theoretical this week after Russia unmasked what it said was an American spy-saying it had detained Ryan C. Fogle, a junior political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, amid what it alleged was an effort to recruit a Russian officer.

 

U.S. officials declined to say what agency employs the detained man. His family wouldn't speak about the situation. The CIA declined to comment.

 

Regardless, the detention of the 29-year-old Mr. Fogle, a 2006 graduate of Colgate University, makes him one of the first members of the social-media generation whose online activities could be read against allegations that he spied.

 

Mr. Fogle's Facebook page, as visible to his 243 "friends," offered details about his social life, contacts and travel plans. One of those friends provided The Wall Street Journal with images of how Mr. Fogle's page appeared to them.

 

On that page, Mr. Fogle said he worked at the State Department, posted photos of a tour of a Moscow Cold War bunker and of Mont Saint-Michel in France and Krakow, Poland. He bantered with apparent colleagues about flights back to the U.S. He also indicated he had plans to return to the U.S., including a date and flight route, and said that over Memorial Day weekend he planned to hang out at a restaurant in Arlington, Va., Ray's the Steaks.

 

Mr. Fogle's level of sharing appears restrained, by the standards of his generation. His 243 friends isn't large for someone of his age group. The publicly accessible version of his Facebook profile doesn't include a photo of him or personal information.

 

Personal information is, of course, the coin of the Facebook realm, and each user determines how little or much to divulge. The CIA, in setting standards for its own employees, appeared to draw its own lines.

 

The issue is particularly sensitive for young government employees who went to college when Facebook was already ubiquitous on campus. They are part of a generation that shares personal information more widely and rapidly than before.

 

The agency's social-media guidelines, described by the former official, allow even undercover officers to maintain Facebook accounts under their real names. "The rules had to catch up with the technology," the former official said.

 

But there are limits. While officers can't post details of their work projects or travel, they may post personal notes on travel and photos, according to the ex-official. Officers were encouraged to use discretion to avoid compromising their agency status.

 

Facebook friendships between undercover officers and people openly working for the CIA were discouraged, according to the former official. Among other things, such connections could be used to identify undercover agents, through link analysis.

 

When the policy was issued, it led to a quandary for CIA officers, the ex-official said: Whether to defriend undercover officers. Doing so en masse could have had an unintended effect of alerting others to an undercover officer's status.

 

Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

 

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