>HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise.
Which they use all the time still, so that's not a real difference. It's not xor with digital surveillance.
Besides what you describe (double life, death, etc) would be a problem for the spy, not the general population. I could not care less about the spies.
But I wasn't talking about spying as much, but for government / police / etc surveillance. Where if they have to deploy humans to spy on some drug dealers or suspected murderer or whatever, is fine. And the fact that they're humans, makes it more costly to mass deploy (and thus serves as a natural check and balance).
Which they use all the time still, so that's not a real difference. It's not xor with digital surveillance.
Besides what you describe (double life, death, etc) would be a problem for the spy, not the general population. I could not care less about the spies.
But I wasn't talking about spying as much, but for government / police / etc surveillance. Where if they have to deploy humans to spy on some drug dealers or suspected murderer or whatever, is fine. And the fact that they're humans, makes it more costly to mass deploy (and thus serves as a natural check and balance).