this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
156 points (98.8% liked)

World News

38987 readers
3289 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Sergey Ochigava, who had Russian and Israeli identification, faces felony charges of being an aircraft stowaway

Would not be surprised if he was a spy.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Would not be surprised if he was a spy.

Nah, the article says he was wandering around the plane trying to steal food and chat with strangers. That’s a lot of interactions over the course of an eight-hour flight. A spy would surely keep a much lower profile than that… Or maybe that’s how he throws people off his trail!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So, a real life Russian version of Archer. That's...kinda disturbing, not gonna lie.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

зона опасности!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The Columbo of spies.

Actually... That's just James Bond. Straight up telling people his name, purposely annoying the bad guy, because he already knows everything the first 10 seconds of looking at the villain.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Nah see they’ll be looking for the inconspicuous guy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So, typically an employee of an intelligence agency has a diplomatic passport and is attached to an embassy or some such. It is considered generally unacceptable (at least in some countries) to have a cover as a journalist, but other private employment is allowed. Being an intelligence officer with a cover as part of an aid agency is generally not allowed, although that does happen, and results in things like vaccine refusals and the execution of medical personnel who are trying to eliminate diseases. I’m not going into specifics, but one of the places where that happened rhymes with “Wackystan.”

Anyway, the job of the intelligence officer is to recruit spies, like an admin assistant in some government agency. They generally don’t do the physical spying themselves, but they’ll use various approaches to get foreign nationals to send them files and such.

In any case, this person just seems like a cool con man. The absolute last thing someone involved in intelligence wants to do is attract attention (most of the time - some recent Russian operations in the US have been quite blatant), and this person was just having a great time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is cool and sounds believable. Do you have other insights?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

For this, not really. This story just sounds more like a poor man’s Frank Abagnale than a super spy.

The absolute last thing most people involved in intelligence work want to be is “interesting.”

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The best spy would probably say something similar. "IDK." He did take chocolate from the crew, so this maybe a surprise spy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully this man wasn’t a German child, or else it’d be a kinder surprise spy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A kinder surprise gives chocolate, does not take it. 🤪

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well if you expected it, it wouldn't be much of a surprise would it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

So, there's no such thing as a kinder surprise as it says on the package? 🥹

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How many movies have you watched?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Iunno, at least seven.