...there's some person who goes to work in the morning and does something that looks and feels almost exactly like what most of us here do all day...
For a moment, I thought you were talking about the police informants themselves.
Not that I'm fond of cybercriminals but it's somewhat ironic to see one sort of infiltration of an enterprise (say, informants at a drug dealing operation) threatened by another sort of infiltration of an enterprise (criminals spear fishing the police). Not all police informant program are problematic but plenty are imo and moreover, the need for police informants more or less comes from things like the drug war, which allow permanent criminal enterprises which need to be put permanently under siege.
For a moment, I thought you were talking about the police informants themselves.
Not that I'm fond of cybercriminals but it's somewhat ironic to see one sort of infiltration of an enterprise (say, informants at a drug dealing operation) threatened by another sort of infiltration of an enterprise (criminals spear fishing the police). Not all police informant program are problematic but plenty are imo and moreover, the need for police informants more or less comes from things like the drug war, which allow permanent criminal enterprises which need to be put permanently under siege.