Bulgarian Intelligence Community
State Agency for National Obscurity[edit | edit source]
The agency has successfully hidden its activities from the public for over 10 years because, unlike its tryhard counterparts in developed countries, SANO hides in plain sight, fronting as a repurposed bookstore in Paradise Mall in the capital of Sofia (Bulgarians don't read books). This works in their favor both ways when they publish their yearly report - the taxpayers won't read that they did nothing and the Council of Ministers won't read that they'll keep doing nothing.
SANO has a unique approach to the need-to-know system. Their success lies in the fact that there is nothing to leak, so the only secret that needs protecting is that nobody does any work. When they need state financing, they can't explain what they need it for (it's "classified"), so it looks as if it's super secretive and important. A pyramid of paradoxical groupthink of self-interested individuals is thus formed. Employees pretend that they write reports, their handlers pretend that they read them, the directors pretend that their directorate is the most secretive, and the state pretends that it's giving the agency a budget which is so secretive that it's not even visible in the agency's bank account.
SANO also has to compete for that mysterious budget with the State Agency for Private Security and the Private Agency for State Security.
State Agency for Private Security[edit | edit source]
SAPS is a step up from the National Service for Parking, who only provide taxi services for the political elite, even though both state agencies' private service expenditures are covered by taxpayer money. The agency is located in a strategic, unreachable place in Sofia where no one can spy on it - directly opposite the US embassy.
Their main activities revolve around organizing teambuilding events and theoretical lectures with taxpayer money. The goal is to learn information which is practically inapplicable, so that the agents can't leak any useful information to gossip news sites regarding methods and sources of intelligence.
The base requirements for becoming a SAPS agent are:
- The applicant must only have Bulgarian citizenship, but one or two other citizenships are fine, so long as 3rd parties cannot verify that fact.
- The applicant must have a Bachelor's degree (the field doesn't matter, but programmers who can activate Windows XP and install a Bulgarian phonetic layout are prioritized)
- The applicant must have a clean criminal record or pay the courts to "lose" the case files.
- The applicant must have a clean bill of health and not suffer from substance abuse. If they do, they should lie about it on the tests. Should they run into trouble with the law as part of their work, they can "suddenly" develop spina bifida or a substance abuse problem and get a more lenient sentence.
- The applicant must not owe loans to a private party (if the private party is a SAPS agent, that circumstance is counted as an advantage in the hiring process)
- The applicant must score a minimum of 15 out of 30, but no more than 21 points on the Narcissism, Sociopathy and Machiavellianism scale, according to the agency's mental illness classificator.
- Should the applicant apply as part of the "My uncle worked for State Security" family program (which is not publicly advertised), a limitation enters into force, which obliges all family members to work in the same directorate, so as to prevent conflict of interest.
Additional requirements for operative agents:
- The applicant must not look older than 40
- The applicant must show up to the physical test and pretend to run and do some pushups (measurements will be estimated, not counted)
- The applicant must impress the examiner with their soccer skills
Additional requirements for analysts:
- The applicant must pretend to speak a foreign language well enough to convince an examiner who doesn't speak foreign languages
- The applicant must write an essay on a topic that they know a lot about, and convince the examiner who knows nothing about it that they know less than the examiner
- The applicant must score a healthy neutral incompetence IQ between 89 and 99 on the IQ test
Private Agency for State Security[edit | edit source]
PASS is comprised of former socialist-era State Security agents who simultaneously receive pensions and salaries from their former employer, as well as fees for private counseling which they provide for them as well.
Most of their work, however, revolves around publishing memoirs about the good old days of defending the state against dangerous anti-communist threats like jokes about dear leader, as well as the illegal smuggling of Beatles vinyl records.
General Directorate for Combating Organized Stupidity[edit | edit source]
GDCOS is a specialized directorate within the Ministry of Eternal Affairs, which is tasked with monitoring social media for humorous comments which induce prostate twitches and erectile dysfunction in the political elite.
Their main activities revolve around taking citizens' ironic posts seriously and sending heavily armed operative agents to suspects' homes in order to get a pen-and-paper assurance from the latter that they were, indeed, only joking.
GDCOS agents are highly-decorated professional programmers, lawyers and counter-terrorism operatives who swiftly neutralize threats with the aid of cutting-edge software like Recuva and Facebook Hacker uploaded to a 4 GB aliexpress thumb drive, as well as Event Viewer and your browser's history.
GDCOS are still entirely dependent on tips about what's happening in Bulgaria's cyberspace from their colleagues from Interpol and Europol, since they still do not possess the know-how of writing international subpoenas for access to information.
National Service for Parking[edit | edit source]
AKA the National Service for Protection, is comprised of romanticized former taxi drivers with pocket sound recorders from alibaba, who drive the political elite in recycled funeral cars from Germany.
They are the Vehicle Transport Control's main competitor in law enforcement on the road. Their main activities revolve around driving against traffic when they turn corners, so as to "intercept threats sooner", as well as teaching young pedestrians to be patient and not run on the crosswalk, by getting to the crosswalk first and giving the youngins a brief ride on the car hood until they cool down.
NSP drivers also discourage regular drivers from illegal parking by blocking sidewalks in advance.
State Improvisation Agency[edit | edit source]
AKA the State Intelligence Agency, is a Bulgarian private travel and reservations company with a state budget which provides former and current employees of the Bulgarian Intelligence Community with vacation lodging abroad. It poses as an intelligence agency and has no intentions to hide from Google Street View's camera cars.
SIA's mission is to fool foreign countries into thinking that Bulgaria is sending them well-prepared diplomats who are totally not intelligence agents on punitive leave abroad until the dust around them settles.
According to credible rumors written on the back of a Kaufland receipt and posted on woke-alarmist.bg, SIA's ex-director of archives discovered telekinesis while attempting to scratch his head with his service pistol without touching it, which resulted in three fatal shots to the back of his head and no fingerprints on the gun.
State Agency for Electronic Extortion[edit | edit source]
SAEE is the successor to the State Agency for Technical Operations when the latter became obsolete after rotary dial phones became extinct and you could no longer eavesdrop on your neighbors by tapping into exposed cable wires.
The now modernized agency has many 1st year law students at its disposal. They play an indispensable role in using legal extortion as a means of obtaining call logs and browsing history from private mobile and internet service providers.