What a great OP! No one even knows how you did it! 
That’s one of them…invisible ink.
I should say upfront that I realize few people really know how spies, secret agents, operatives, whatever you want to call them, gather information, and that those who do know shouldn’t talk about it. I should also say that if anyone knows of equipment like tiny cameras that fit into the olive impaled on a club sandwich [Simpsons reference; hope that’s allowed in GQ], they needn’t put themselves at risk by telling me about it! I can just see the sticky: “Please don’t post information about espionage methods!”
But I am curious. How do spies gather information?
Is it more often by technological means only, like photographing, or by observing and reporting, with little interaction?
Or is it more common to find a source, a connection…there’s a word for the guy who will show you around.
How do you find such a connection? Maybe he contacts your government, promising to work for you for a fee.
Then there’s infiltration. Methinks infiltration would be done without the help of an insider, so no one else knows you’re really Agent X. But that would be damned difficult.
There are probably fewer physical spies nowadays, with so much technology. How much “hacking” really goes on in espionage?
Just curious. Well, I’m curious because Mr. Rilch and Friend are watching MI:2, and I just can’t deal with either of those movies.
[From what I’ve read; please correct me if I’m wrong] Spying is not action-packed. Spying is not sexy. Spying is not glamorous, luxurious, or cutting-edge. Nor is it accompanied by a techno beat. Spying is sweating your ass off in some skrank village in North Korea, purposely dirty and pretending to be drunk, getting the update from your informant, whom you have never seen, on a paper wrapped around an ice cream cone. Spying is being in a warehouse with three very large Russians and trying to maintain your accent while they burn each other with their Zippos. There are a lot of risks to spying, and they’re not all related to jumping off things and driving fast.
Check out the new International Spy Museum:
Satellite intelligence via the National Reconaissance Office does most of the heavy lifting for the United States.
The Soviets used to specialize in honey pot operations. That entails a beautiful woman (usually) ensnaring a target using her wiles. They have techniques for getting the information they want. Alcohol helps.
A search of the internet using “honey pot spy” turned up 16,000 hits. Many of them dealt with the subject of espionage. Here is one example brought to you by Mossad.
Oh, and a disappearing OP on this topic is one of the more appropriate ones in a while. Good job!
90% of spying is just gathering information. Sending analysts into countries to observe the economy and infrastructure first hand. Pouring through the other country’s newspapers, journals, and other publically-available sources.
You can gather an amazing amount of information this way. Good agents could give good estimates of things like city populations, amount of rail, road, and ocean traffic and therefore measurements of the economy. Lots and lots of stuff. Count the number of people travelling on roads outside of military bases, and where they are going, and you can come up with estimates for the number of officers vs enlisted, and therefore make guesses as to what kinds of operations are going on behind closed gates.
Then there is satellite imagery, and the analysis thereof. Finally, there’s a small fraction of spying that consists of managing and collecting information from ‘turned’ citizens of other countries.
I see. Thank you.