You know the type. High security, weeks or months of stakeout, sniper three blocks away…

The hitman sorta things I recall from the news are either planned and executed by national intelligence agents or some savage gunning and running from hired brutes, but never the variant with sophistication and private sector.

    • whaleross@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for that rabbit hole. Interesting. It would make sense for a clever and reasonably tech savvy person at that time to put messages in the HTML thinking it would be sufficiently hidden, and to come up with the strategy to mask business traffic from casual traffic by being an overly popular image host. Then again, people in some sort of intelligence biz that use terminology of secure data storage should also know that obscurity is not not security. If it’s a LARP, it is an ambitious one, but people that are armchair military do have a weird mindset of their own.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    You don’t really think jumping from a building is the preferred method of suicide in Russia, do you? ;-)

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
      0·
      1 year ago

      The leading cause of death among Russian journalists is suicide by jumping from a building with two gunshot wounds in the back of your skull after eating a bunch of polonium

  • can@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 year ago

    but never the variant with sophistication and private sector.

    If they’re good at what they do why would we hear of them?

    • whaleross@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      Because if it does happen even infrequently, it would be unlikely that not at least a few had a media leak or some upset spouse exposing it.

  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    There’s a reason rich folk hire armed private security, ride in bulletproof vehicles, and hold kidnapping insurance.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    You could ask Jimmy Joffa. Or any Mexican politician who speaks out against the cartels. Not sure they will be able to answer though since nobody has seen them in a while…

  • val@infosec.pub
    0·
    1 year ago

    The private sector, like corporations? It happens to a degree but you’ll find connections to both intelligence agencies and organized crime pretty quickly. Just look into Coca Cola’s assassinations of union leaders in Colombia if you want an example.

    There is a fairly significant amount of planning that goes in to these, but it doesn’t have the “cool” of fiction. Killing in reality is brutish and horrific.

    • whaleross@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      I was thinking just anything outside national intelligence basically.

      Oh yeah, the Coca Cola murders! Looking it up now I’m surprised it was in the 90s and even 00s and today nobody cares. For some reason it would make sense if it was in the seventies. Oil and mining industries come to mind as well for murdering unionists. I’d imagine it still happens in poor countries and never reaches the international news, while the murders being of the most brutal massacre sort imaginable.

      You’re absolutely right. I’d never expect real life murder to be cool. Even less it to be a business that is supposedly covert and underground but where everyone is hot and flashy with charming eccentric quirks and everybody knows everybody.

      At best I’d assume a couple of paranoid individuals with antisocial traits carefully exchange information and experiences over a quiet drink at some anonymous hotel bar,. While keeping a close eye on each other, because why would an independent professional murderer trust an elite competitor or even a colleague, regardless either of them being in it for the thrill or the money.

  • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
    0·
    1 year ago

    There’s good documentation of soviet hits on dissidents and people they considered provocative. Also the CIA and russian attempts on castro