Spycraft - Melton [262]
An unmodified computer’s operating system leaves “tracks” that allow counterintelligence forensic specialists to recover plaintext copies of encrypted e-mails, regular e-mails, deleted files, cookies, temporary Internet files, Web site history, chat room conversations, instant messages, pictures viewed, recycle bin, and recent documents. Wiping the hard drive by permanently erasing its contents eliminates evidence of clandestine activity, but is often impractical for an agent using his business or family computer. As a solution, a covert operating system can be installed on a tiny concealable USB storage device smaller than the tip of one’s pinkie finger. When the device is connected, the computer boots from the covert operating system inside the USB without leaving a trace of its activities of the computer’s internal hard drive. The agent can then use the computer’s keyboard, monitor, printer, and Internet connection without fear of leaving a forensic trail. The covert USB system is small enough to be portable and easily concealed.
The routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other Internet provider-based network also creates an opportunity for clandestine communication while bypassing telephone networks. Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) encryption techniques scramble the conversations to render them meaningless if intercepted. Future advances in encryption techniques offer the potential to provide secure and unbreakable voice communication. However, until encrypted VOIP communication becomes more common for businesses and individuals, the presence of such software on an agent’s computer will be alerting to a counterintelligence service.
Low-cost mobile telephones, available in many countries, offer opportunities for anonymous communication. If the mobile phones are purchased for cash at randomly selected retail locations such as convenience and discount stores, there is no linkage to the user and calls made on phones with preloaded minutes cannot be traced. If the phone is discarded after one-time use, any link with the user is destroyed.
Prepaid phone cards, first introduced in the United States in the early 1980s, have grown in popularity as a cost-saving convenience for students, travelers, and spies. Telecard companies began to flourish after telephone company deregulation, when advances in satellite and communications technology created excess system capacities. Rather than allowing their global telecom systems to remain idle, the large carriers sold hundreds of millions of minutes of system usage to Telecard companies for fractions of a cent per minute. Telecard companies resell these minutes (priced at pennies a minute) on phone cards at gas stations, airports, convenience stores, and chain stores in countries around the globe. Each prepaid phone card contains a concealed PIN number and allows the user to call at no additional charge to numbers within authorized countries up to the amount of minutes designated on the card.26
Phone cards provide travelers with an inexpensive means of calling home, but for illicit romances, criminals, and spies they eliminate records of the calls and provide complete anonymity. If a phone card is purchased for cash at a location not under the control of the host counterintelligence service, any call made using the card is anonymous and untraceable.27
Cuban agent Ana Belen Montes used phone cards and digital pagers as part of a covcom system for contact with her handler at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York. To contact Montes, the handler would go