Excessive personal debt, substance abuse and failed careers were often the first indicators of weaknesses that could be used to leverage recruitments. Digital spies now have the advantage of processing computerized credit checks on the Internet to recover spending habits, debt loads, medical records, and job-change patterns to identify potential recruits. Future intelligence services will venture further into international banking in a global world of commerce and interlocking financial relationships. Despite their sophistication and usefulness, they were vulnerable to an alert counterintelligence service and often confirmed the actions of the suspect being observed. The Internet has changed this vulnerability into an advantage for the spy.
Spies now utilize the Internet to communicate with near impunity.
Messages, information and signals are now transmitted in ways that appear innocuous but almost defy detection because they are interlaced into the normal and growing usage of the Internet. As information is transmitted or received into the Internet, its true recipient or sender may be masked in a bewildering variety of disguises. What once took days and weeks to communicate from a spy to his handler may now occur in milliseconds. Advanced encryption techniques may be utilized to additionally mask data that may later be imbedded into a digital scan, voice, music or television signal transmitted or received anywhere in the world. Even the world's most powerful computers lack the processing power to analyze trillions of bits of data for patterns to indicate possible imbedded messages.