I had a dinner with the Agency where they discussed this list of needed innovations from entrepreneurs. So I felt inspired to take a spy shot of the collateral…
One agent had just arrived in from Pakistan, another told older “war stories” from India, and a third relayed cute stories of how he used a vast array of spook technologies to try to track the whereabouts of his 15-year-old daughter. When she got a Mac, and listened for interference in the FM band, she was able to evade almost all of them (data logger in the Palm Pilot battery; tracker in the iPod leatherette case, GPS phone under seat of car, spyware on PC). I had to ask if he was from SD-6.
The first speaker was fumbling with his lapel mic:
“Um, I’m not used to speaking in front of microphones that I can see.”
“I don’t think I have ever received a polite phone call. It’s usually ‘Hey, you twinks…’”
“We basically stopped hiring for a ten year period. Now we have an old cohort and a bunch of new guys.”
“The Soviets moved slowly and predictably. They were great. It took them a great effort just to synchronize their clocks.”
“We have 35 power experts. They do nothing but power.” (I noticed that the energy signature of data centers and devices is the new give-away signal of espionage – versus an information signature)
“The Agency is scared of the Internet.”
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