The news lately has been about the terrifying power of Russian intelligence agencies, who are accused of things such as destroying American democracy and assassinating dissidents in the heart of British power, so here is a reminder that Russian spies are just like Western spies, which is to say that they’re also stupid fucks:
Basically journalists were looking for info on a couple of Russian spies identified by the Dutch. Seeing as Russia is corrupt as shit, the traffic police’s car registration database had been sold on the black market years previously. The journos found the people in the database and saw that the address registered was for the GRU’s cyber warfare branch (the GRU is the Russian agency responsible for military intelligence). The spies registered because GRU officers are exempt from drunk driving charges, traffic stops, etc. So the journos looked in the database for other people registered under the same address as the GRU building. The end result was that they found the names, dates of birth, cellphone numbers, government ID numbers, and whatnot for 305 Russian spies. And all because the spies wanted to avoid traffic tickets.