By John Irvin NOIR Team On the face of it, insider espionage and terrorism would seem to have little in common. The insider spy and his or her handler (traditionally, but not necessarily, a foreign intelligence service) strive to keep their activities as hidden as possible, while the definitive purpose of all terrorism is to…
Despite the use of increasingly advanced technical means, the deception, duplicity, and betrayal of espionage are a human problem that requires a human solution. By John Irvin, NOIR Team In all, around 3.6 million individuals were impacted by two breaches of Office of Personnel Management (OPM) electronic databases, one announced in June 2015 and the second…
By John Irvin, NOIR Team What does a controversial psychology experiment that took place over forty years ago regarding the causes of conflict between prisoners and prison guards have in common with Dr. David Charney’s proposal for the creation of a controversial new US government counterintelligence organization to reduce the threat of insider espionage?[1] It…
By John Irvin NOIR TEAM It would no doubt be like a dream for a 62-year-old former government employee, prolific author, and recognized environmental expert to live out his retirement years on a warm tropical island with a new bride. It would be like a nightmare to instead face a potential 50-year term in federal…
By John Irvin NOIR Team The first part of this discussion [1] concluded with the fairly controversial statement that decades of counterintelligence (CI) focus on what have traditionally been considered the key motives for insider espionage, summarized in the acronym MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise/Coercion, and Ego, further amended with the inclusion of disgruntlement/revenge, ingratiation, and thrills/self-importance) [2]…
By John Irvin NOIR Team In True Psychology of the Insider Spy, Part One of NOIR: A White Paper, Dr. David Charney postulates that the core psychology of the insider spy is an intolerable sense of personal failure, as privately defined by that person. It is this subjective experience that allows the would-be insider spy…
By John Irvin, NOIR Team When the Roman poet Juvenal wrote the line “Who will guard the guards themselves?” he was referring to marital fidelity. In common parlance it refers to the issue of ensuring the accountability of those already in power. However, the phrase also applies to problems facing the US government’s Insider Threat…
By John Irvin, NOIR Team On 17 December, 2014, President Obama ordered restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of a US embassy in Havana for the first time in more than 50 years. The announcement was met with both favorable and critical responses from a variety of interested parties. Of the many…