So this quietly happened a few days ago, but so did a lot of other shit, and totally missed it.

Just happened to stumble across it because I was reading about the Inslaw/PROMIS scandal and the former FBI agent (who was also working for the KGB and died in federal prison a few years ago) who claimed to have given a copy of the software (which was allegedly used to spy on other countries) to his KGB handlers.

He was spying at the same time as Aldrich Ames in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Both Ames and Hanssen compromised the names of KGB agents working secretly for the U.S., some of whom were executed for their betrayal and were run by the same NKVD officer, Victor Cherkashin.[4] Hanssen also revealed a multimillion-dollar eavesdropping tunnel built by the FBI under the Soviet Embassy. After Ames’s arrest in 1994, some of these intelligence breaches remained unsolved, and the search for another spy continued. The FBI paid $7 million to a KGB agent to obtain a file on an anonymous mole, whom the FBI later identified as Hanssen through fingerprint and voice analysis.

Anyway happened to be looking into Ames out of curiosity and saw he died a few days ago.

I had never heard of it until recently, but the software that was allegedly used to spy on governments in other countries back in the 80s, (PROMIS), is really interesting to me, because it was advertised as an automation/easy button for court and police data, that was allegedly sold as even having the potential to someday predict crime before it even happened…

It’s kinda weird we don’t talk about that more. Seems kinda relevant in 2026 🤷‍♀️