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Black Hat 2013 - OPSEC Failures of Spies

6 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2014–2019 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN commenters cite it as a compelling demonstration that metadata identifies people, and as a great watch on sloppy CIA tradecraft.

Matthew Cole's Black Hat 2013 talk on operational security failures by CIA operatives. It covers the Abu Omar case and how sloppy tradecraft with cell phones exposed officers through call records and metadata.

“This is one of the best videos I have ever seen countering this argument.” (HN, 2014)

1 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 2 citations · Talks

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@guitarbill Aug 2019 Recommends
on HN thread Why the CIA Doesn't Spy on the UAE
who could forget the Abu Omar Case, where the CIA kidnapped an individual in Milan. but they left evidence due to sloppy OPSEC. so we know for sure they used to do much worse. I guess most spying activities don't warrant such a detailed investigation though, so we never find out. the Black Hat 2013 talk on this is a great watch: [this video]
Investigation of the Abu Omar case and sloppy CIA tradecraft

Citations, criticism and jokes

@godgod Oct 2015 Cites it
on HN thread CIA Director John Brennan emails
While not a talk by Applebaum, this video is semi-related and showing OPSEC failures by CIA using cell technology: [this video]
Shows CIA OPSEC failures using cell technology
@keehun Sep 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
What none of the privacy-related prose defense by Facebook addresses is the abundant value of the metadata that Facebook will be able to harvest. Check out what leaking even just the metadata can tell about you.[0] [0]: [this video]
Shows what leaked metadata reveals about you

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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