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.

  • TherouxSonfeir@lemm.ee
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    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
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      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

  • geekworking@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fiction is fiction.

    In real life, stalking the victim for months, sniper shots, or anything that involves any sort of sofisticiation or team of people is asking to get caught.

    KISS principle. A successful hit would be as simple as possible, happen fast with no prior interaction, and involve as few people as possible.

    • Jaytreeman@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I read a book a long time ago that talked about how many environmental activists end up in car accidents. In North America if you were an activist you were very likely to get in a car accident at night along a well known route…

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I just read a story about a Tesla Model S that abruptly turned left into a median and accelerated straight into it, killing its occupant on impact.

        • Jaytreeman@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Most new vehicles could do that too. Most vehicles come with driver assistance that includes braking and accelerating. They almost always have a Bluetooth connection as well.

          • SheDiceToday@eslemmy.es
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            1 year ago

            Shoot, it’s not even new vehicles. The report I remember from a college team that trialed ‘car hacking’ was from 2014 correction, 2011.

    • whaleross@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Indeed. Still, I’d assume if the hypothetical high profile target has security up to par, it requires a little more than to go in and start blasting. Even if very little planning is required, it would be because the hitman has sufficient expertise, indirectly the planning already being done over years of experience.

    • whaleross@lemmy.worldOP
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      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.

  • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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    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

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    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…

  • can@sh.itjust.works
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    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
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      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
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    1 year ago

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

  • val@infosec.pub
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    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.