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I doubt that. It is more likely that it is not considered a significant risk compared to everything else. How exactly is this information useful to adversaries? It certainly won’t help uncovering illegals, because their passports are kept away from Western databases. It doesn’t help to block spy operations, because you can connect passport numbers to specific actions only after they happened or you used other methods to detect spies. It doesn’t help breaking plausible deniability to blame Russian government officially, because you would need the hard evidence. So what’s the point in protecting this information more?


> because their passports are kept away from Western databases.

Except unless they get arrested in the West and their secret passports fall into Western intelligence hands.

> It doesn’t help to block spy operations, because you can connect passport numbers to specific actions only after they happened

But getting caught must be no fun.

> It doesn’t help breaking plausible deniability to blame Russian government officially, because you would need the hard evidence.

Nonsense. A block of sequential passport numbers for supposedly unrelated people you suspect of being spies is evidence plenty hard enough.




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