Spycraft - Melton [258]
The remarkable reduction in size of microphones, transmitters, and cameras since 1991 has resulted in easier concealment, less power requirements, and use of smaller batteries with a longer operational life. Tiny collection tools such as digital video cameras and microphones, small enough to be fitted on small robotic “crawlers” the size as a common cockroach, can explore, map, and exploit air-conditioning vents, drainpipes, and ventilation shafts for surveillance. It is now possible to convert any image or sound into a digital format, which can then be encrypted and transmitted instantly across the Internet or by satellite on government or commercial communication links.
For example, advanced software recognition programs can link video images to database programs that enable the surveillant to capture real-time images of license plates to build instantly a database of all vehicles and their owners passing an observation point. Such information, over time, could reveal the identities of security and intelligence personnel involved in activities near the location. Forms of “Face Trace” programs enable video images to be rapidly compared to records in distant databases for identification.
New generations of low-cost radio-frequency identification chips created for the retail industry offer an opportunity to tag an unsuspecting target by embedding a tiny chip in clothing or the sole of a shoe. These embedded passive chips can be scanned as targets pass through electronic choke points and represent a digital version of the Soviet “spy dust.”
Astonishingly small, unmanned aerial vehicles with wingspans of less than one-half inch, carrying cameras and audio sensors, can be remotely piloted to surveil targets from above, or guided into a building to serve as a movable “flying bug.” A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency version is small enough to fit on a thumbnail, yet capable of carrying either audio or video sensors. Ninety percent of its internal power goes toward navigation and propulsion, while 10 percent maintains the sensors. An early CIA version of the flying device from 1976, called the Insectothopter, is on display inside the Agency’s Original Headquarters Building alongside a prototype of an advanced Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) model no larger than a black horsefly.
Public awareness of Cold War tradecraft often focused around the communication techniques of brush passes, car tosses, and dead drops. Despite their sophistication and usefulness at the time, all of these techniques were vulnerable to surveillance by an alert counterintelligence service. In the United States, the arrests of Navy spy John Walker in 1985, and Aldrich Ames, a KGB mole inside the CIA, in 1994, were precipitated by their actions in communicating with their Soviet handlers .14
The advent of the Internet affected all of the “pillars of tradecraft,” but none more so than covcom where it revolutionized clandestine communications. Criminals and terrorists, as well as intelligence services, quickly recognized that the Internet offered unprecedented capabilities to communicate with near impunity. Messages, information, and signals were transmitted in ways that appeared innocuous and defied detection by being interlaced into the burgeoning traffic transiting the Internet. As information flowed through the “Net,” both the identity and location of the recipient and sender could be masked in a bewildering variety of disguises. A Cold War covcom plan that required weeks to plan, and was dangerous to execute, could be completed safely in seconds over the Internet. Encryption and steganography techniques using the latest advances in technology were developed to protect and conceal data in digital files transmitted globally.
The Internet allowed computer users, including bankers, criminals, merchants, terrorists,