02Jul Spies among us
They were neighbors, they were co-workers. They tended to the garden on weekends and walked their children to the bus stop on school days. They facebooked and youtubed, paid taxes, bought lovely homes and, allegedly, spied on the United States of America on behalf of Russia.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, eleven men and women, including four married couples, three with children, were arrested for crimes connected to, but (surprisingly) not including, espionage. These men and women worked for more than a decade to blend in to American society. Far from the gripping ‘James Bond’ image, they lived mundane lives in normal neighborhoods. In no case did their neighbors suspect that they were anything but what they said they were, but in fact their orders were clear: “You were sent to the USA for a long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e, to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels [intelligence reports] to C [Center]”, according to the FBI affidavit describing intercepted messages.
The eleven alleged agents are being charged with money laundering and “acting as unregistered foreign agents”. At this time, they are not being charged with espionage, as they were never actually caught transmitting Classified information to Russia. Reportedly, most of the information that they had transmitted was open source intelligence available to anyone that can use Google. That, in itself, is but one example of how the face of espionage has changed over the last several decades. In addition to traditional espionage techniques (referred to colloquially as tradecraft), such as dead drops, invisible ink, coded transmissions and swapping bags at train stations, this case is interesting in that it integrates more contemporary methods as well. This group hid messages in computer images (a scheme called steganography) and used laptops with wireless cards to connect to private and unsecured wireless access points (such as those in residential areas or coffee shops) to send messages that would be tracked back to the location that they were when they sent the message, rather than their own homes.
As it was, it was determined that the alleged agents were not effective at their given task. However, Claire Lopez, Senior fellow at the center for Security Policy and former operations officer for the CIA, cautions that it may have only been a matter of time before they refined their technique, or simply got lucky, and that they may have been able to produce intelligence of value, if left in place long enough. “Their value is not just in acquiring classified information”, says Lopez, “There’s a lot that goes on that’s not simply stealing secrets and sending them back to Moscow.” This is a fact of which the OPSEC community has long since been aware.
The OPSEC community has also long since known that social networking is, in fact, a tool used by the adversary. This case brought that fact into stark focus, when it was revealed that one of the men, based in Seattle, was a frequent user of the professional social networking site LinkedIn. Another, Anna Chapman, became a sort of media sensation after the story broke, when she was found to have created several social networking accounts, posting everything from mundane statuses to risqué pictures of herself.
It’s possible (although we may never know for sure), that these alleged agents were “amateurs”, as some claim, and were not acting in an official capacity for the Russian Government. It’s possible, as has also been theorized, that they grew to love life in the United States, and purposely extended their mission in order to form genuine community roots. Their motivations are now a matter for the legal system. What should be noted by all security personnel is that each of these individuals lived in this country for over a decade without arousing the suspicions of their neighbors, friends and coworkers. There is an actual, real-life threat (as exemplified by this, the largest alleged spy ring ever broken by the FBI), and proper safeguards must be maintained in order to mitigate it.
One can only assume that as technologies increase, and prices for them decrease, the threats will only become more sophisticated and much more difficult to detect. These particular individuals were detected by the FBI- not by neighbors, not by coworkers- before they had done any demonstrable harm. The question that one is left to ask themselves is, “If they were in my workplace today, would I know what to look for?”
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