I think those old technologies are still around, because it's hard to train older spies on new technology. They learned that knowledge decades ago and would have a hard time to learn new things. So they let them use the stuff they know, instead of risking some boomer making an opsec mistake by updating their Facebook status on a secure device while doing sensitive communication.
I would wager that is has more to do with leveraging existing infrastructure that is commonly deployed to more than just G7 nations and working with people in those countries who may not have a Q branch handy nor could afford to be caught with gear-turned-evidence.
As well, as any honest engineer knows, new tech is rarely reliable and bug free. You may adopt it for other benefits, but assurance is generally not one of them. So if lives depend on something, you may keep using things that have been proven reliable.
At least the USA and our allies are extremely conservative in adoption of unproven tech and have extremely high standards for security. The article states "modern methods are not safe" and is correct, in my experience. Numbers stations and One-Time Pads are a well-known and proven method, not just the encryption, but the entire process from delivering the pads to receiving the messages.
> It’s even harder to train new people in Old technology
My thought is, that new people are trained on modern technology (how to acquire and set up a secure laptop OS or how to configure a smartphone), and older employees still "run" on the old technology.
This is such a HN response. “If they aren’t using new technology, it’s gotta be [disparagement and putdowns, without any consideration being paid to whether or not the ‘newer’ stuff is worth it, let alone better]”
Around 10 years ago there were some Russian "illegals" captured in Germany. It was really a lot like in the TV show "The Americans".
They seemed to have communicated a lot with radio and coded messages. They also used some Windows software to decode some of those messages. And exactly there they made a mistake and some messages could be restored.
It seems like they only got very limited recurring training after their initial training in the 90s. So they might have had very limited IT opsec knowledge.
The analog radio technology is also far from perfect. In their case the neighbours became suspicious, because they never opened the door at specific times, probably when their transmissions were scheduled. They also sent some radio transmissions from a nearby hill, that might have played a part in their capture.
I'm convinced that some encrypted messages over a commonly used messenger or email provider would be way more secure. They would just disappear within billions of other encrypted messages.
