So alot of times, when you are dealing with very sensitive information, and the people you are working against are good at analyzing information, you try to deny them any information about how you beat them, their friends, etc. in any given instance.
A terrorist is caught enroute to do something bad.
No one tells the media.
Why?
Because that bad guy's bosses aren't going to know something has gone wrong with their plan until the bad guy has failed to check in for 72 hours, etc. That's 72 hours of interrogation and possible time for direct action for the good guys right off the bat.
Then, they don't know what happened to him.
Is he caught? Being chased and has been forced to go to ground at a safe house and is effectively denied all usage of comms to check in with his bosses? Has he gone to ground under a truck in a vacant lot because he couldn't get to a safe house? Did he get hit by a car? Is he out cold in some nameless hospital in Greece?
Where did he get caught? What country? If he got caught in country X then it was probably British SIGINT that provided the vital clues. In country Y it was probably the 'now friendly to the West' secret police.
Is he dead, or being interrogated in Turkey where the odds are certain he will talk when he's down to 4 fingers? Do you warn the rest of his cell to bug out? Is it worth the risk of your comms being isolated and you yourself having to shift position and maybe getting killed or captured while shifting position?
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A long time ago my Brother helped to catch a guy who was cheating in WB. Remember how very early in WB you didn't have ordnance package #s? How you typed ".bomb 500 2" to put 2 500 lb. bombs on your aircraft, assuming it could carry this?
Well, very early in the WB code this guy was flying the F6F all the time and typing ".bomb 500 -2" and taking 1000 lbs. off the weight of his F6F.
He was only using 1000 lbs. to 'cheat' with, so it wasn't really easy to pin him down. I know PYRO and HT and QUIZ were getting lots of complaints about "This F6F is retaining E way too well" or "This F6F was way too fast". They probably get alot of calls like this at HTC to this day. Very tough to verify. 'How did you know the E state of that F6F when it entered the fight?'...
So my Bro knew something was up. And what he did was dive on this F6F from 10,000' in a Fw 190A-4. And he took many screenshots and used his ammunition counters as a crude timer.
To make a long story short, he was able to help catch this cheater because he could prove to someone that this F6F was maintaining a speed of over 415 MPH on the deck for something like 10 minutes. He suicided on airfield AAA to kill the F6F as it was landing so he could get the ID of the player.
The player was banned, for something like over a year from WB.
But my Bro was also told to tell no one the ID of the player, tell no one he was banned, tell no one how he helped to catch the guy, etc.
Why?
Well say you spot a cheater, who is using a technique that 10 cheaters are using. If the manner in which you spotted said cheater was made public, it's going to let the other 9 guys 'improve their technique', right? They now know one thing they have to defeat to avoid being detected by another player.
Say a cheater is caught and banned. He's probably told 'keep your mouth shut and you can come back in a year and we'll be watching your bellybutton really close'. You have to give him a carrot in a way, for good behaviour, or in spite he could just tell 200 people how to cheat and ruin the AH MA for 2 weeks until HTC can put off all development improvements to fix that one fatal 'bug' or 'loophole'.
So, a couple of really important things to remember:
1. If you do spot a cheater, and he really is a cheater, don't expect to find out about it from HTC after you send your proof to them. For all they know you could be a cheater with 2 accounts, testing to see if they can detect what you are exploiting.
2. Don't expect to hear from HTC that someone has been banned, or if they were caught cheating, or what they were caught doing. Public verification would lead to 500 2 week free accounts starting with people having a fun time screwing up AH for 2 weeks.
3. From semi-personal experience (talking to my Brother about it, seeing the screenshots, etc.) HTC has a history of taking cheating seriously, and of actively pursuing leads about cheating, and of 'taking care of business' when a person is caught.
Just like good guys vs. bad guys in the world of intelligence - you usually only hear about it when the bad guys get away with something.
Mike/wulfie
