While you’re all giddy about the transparency of the new web and the rise of consumer / citizen created content, common sense should tell you that stuff like this is going to happen.
And while there’s no way to know if that specific incident on Craigslist is real (the story is probably a fake — try googling Tomkins and Scott LLC), the potential is there.
If you as one person can develop the conversation, you know that you can also alter the conversation. Just ask yourself how many times you have commented anonymously, used multiple gmail/hotmail accounts to game a site, or did anything slightly subversive to the online conversation.
Now imagine if you had resources and an organization behind you.
And as corporations and media who are used to controlling the message finally learn how the whole outfit works, this will become a problem.
Not everything is in google or can be cross referenced freely on the net. It should be noted that google was founded, in part, using CIA “seed money”.
Is the Craigslist article true and accurate? I tend to think, probably, yes.
“PAO now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation. This has helped us turn some “intelligence failure” stories into “intelligence success” stories, and it has contributed to the accuracy of countless others. In many cases we have persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests or jeopardized sources and methods.”
page 7 of CIA Memo
There can be no doubt that the CIA and other agencies are acutely interested in the internet, and will endeavor to control whatever they can. Craigslist is centralized, one stop shopping. That is a structural weakness which can be easily exploited.