Intelligence services have long used unwitting spies to gain information or advantages against a known enemy. When the task at hand is low-tech, simple to complete and doesn't need to include highly trained and valuable operatives, a handler will be directed to acquire an "unwitting agent" to test security at an installation or to take photographs of sensitive areas which would be done illegally. Once captured, the unwitting agent is abandoned without any real evidence of the request which he/she may have been tricked or paid to accomplish.
Sometimes the unwitting agent is a person who is cornered or caught in a compromising situation who, upon the offer to have his misdeeds forgiven will agree to a seemingly benign mission to gain their freedom or forgiveness. Let's say for example, a student on an international visa may fear losing their legal ground to remain here and is approached by what he thinks is another ex patriot for what appears to be a harmless stunt or photos of something they may know is not allowed but the motivating factor overrules.
Even the prospect of being jailed and deported may pale in comparison to the horrors a state run intelligence service may intimate or flat out threaten: vulnerable family members, loved ones. Even the financial catastrophe may prove to be a very strong motivator to someone who's financial liberty means everything to them. After all, when the jail term is finished, they will be sent home where they may be able to reconnect with their finances and continue their life as they left it: with comfort and security.
Intelligence services are used to this mode of operation. In the gathering of information on foreign soil, Human Intelligence (HUMINT) can involve years of recruitment, training, assembling and deploying of agents, and their recruits into cell networks.
United States' sensitive installations, including military, but also aerospace, financial and research should be on their highest levels of alert now. Our enemies are organized, intent, bold and ruthless. We need to match them in intensity and counter their efforts with every resource. Giving a potential "unwitting agent" a light prison term and deportation isn't deterring one single Intelligence service from taking solid, strategic steps toward penetrating our lackadaisical defenses of some of these installations, expecting only the "slap on the wrist" federal prosecutors have handed out recently.
On March 11, 2019, Chinese National Zhang Yujing lied to a security checkpoint at Mar-A-Lago, President Trump's Florida resort/residence. She got past the security checkpoint and was taken into custody shortly afterwards. According to The South China Morning Post, an English language news service from Hong Kong, Zhang was abandoned, and directed to fire her legal counsel including her public defenders. Increasingly confused and isolated, Zhang stands to be sentenced following her guilty plea. Why would official Chinese help or even acknowledgement evaporate? A quicker sentence and a low-key disposition including deportation is beneficial as opposed to an asset being exploited against you.
January 2020, Naval Air Station at Key West, Florida two men were arrested for failing to stop at a checkpoint. They were detained after being caught taking photographs of military buildings on the installation. Yuhao Wang and Jielun Zhang are in custody. At a bail hearing language has indicated other more serious charges are being weighed besides the trespassing and unauthorized photography charges assumed to be forthcoming.
In December of 2019, Liao Lyuyou, 27 was apprehended after illegally entering the same NAS KW by walking around a fence and photographing sensitive areas and infrastructure.
Checkpoint security at all military installations needs to increase as the threats continue to increase. Over the last year there have been several shootings on similar installations where people who were authorized to enter illegally brought guns and used them in murderous rampages against service members.
Our legal system needs to take note as well. We should have a robust review system of these crimes, and our local prosecutors must work along with Federal DHS prosecutors to maximize our legal apparatus to deal decisively with this form of "cold" warfare.
-katykarter
United States' sensitive installations, including military, but also aerospace, financial and research should be on their highest levels of alert now. Our enemies are organized, intent, bold and ruthless. We need to match them in intensity and counter their efforts with every resource. Giving a potential "unwitting agent" a light prison term and deportation isn't deterring one single Intelligence service from taking solid, strategic steps toward penetrating our lackadaisical defenses of some of these installations, expecting only the "slap on the wrist" federal prosecutors have handed out recently.
