I would venture to say that if the spies were merely scamming their employers and passing on information which was essentially worthless, then those involved will never be heard from again. If their handlers back in Russia were editing the information to make it that much more valuable for the higher-ups, then it would be interesting to see if the handlers disappear from view, as well.
I don’t know how big the Russians are on military espionage these days…but what about commercial stuff? The Russians want to improve their industrial performance-what better way to do this than steal advanced technology?
The Chinese do this all the time.
Hi, the cold war called, they want their paranoia back.
…what advanced technology? The secret of building inefficient V8 engines? And why would Russian companies need some bunch of sad amateur spies working for the government to help them in industrial espionage… when they could hire actual pros if they were so inclined? Just saying… You’re thinking of Soviet spies in the 70’s, when computers were a mystery to the soviets… Russia today is pretty much comparable to France.
Back when I was doing interesting work, espionage by the Chinese was a huge issue.
It very much is now for the work that I do.
Espionage in general (as in planting someone to spy) is ridiculously ineffective. It’s like spooks need to act like they’re doing something that seems heavy to justify their existence. For the most part they’re just self-defined “patriots” that think they’re right and everyone else is naive. Of course, the amount of background checking and security clearance BS ensures that nobody who even has the least bit of a clue about how the bad guys operate would ever be able to get a job there and enlighten the right-wing douchebag idiots in charge. Remember when we fired a bunch of arabic linguists for being gay? The military/spooks/cops, etc. can’t find their asses with two hands and a flashlight, other than to commit dumb atrocities in the name of “patriotism”. Fuck them and the people who think they’re groovy.
Catching spies is what my sister-in-law does, and she’s damn good at it. I’ve seen the (unclassified) commendation she got. BTW, she’s an avowed lefty. No right-wing douchebaggery there, at all.
They may not have been delivering any information to Russia, however they may have been originally tasked to provide safe houses and logistics help for any of the GRU/KGB/Spetsnaz teams that might have occasion to drop in.
Declan
Paranoia? Germany accuses China of industrial espionage.
R&D spend in advanced western Economies - including France - far outstrips that of Russia. The level of new technology developed is not comparable. (In fact, France’s R&D expenditure is nearly twice that of Russia - source (look for GERD on R&D)). It simply not true that advanced technology is not a desirable target for espionage.
You do realise that niether government is likely to reveal what they got from the spies, it could be damaging; highly damaging.
That is quite interesting, I’ve been wondering about the message behind it since I first heard about it. Putin is a teetotaller, so we are not talking about some sort of Stalinesque bull session. My guess is that the ‘event’ was created as a signal that they are Ok - but who is the signal aimed at ? Presumably rank and file FSB as normal Russians don’t matter, and most foreigners would regard it as cute but baffling.
At a guess this was a signal to people at the level of taxi driver or very minor official to be nice to them - rather not give them a hard time.
As for ‘spies’, you’ve got the obvious, for example the Cultural Attache who acts as a pleasant two way flow, the Military Attache who acts as a beacon, the businessman with an interesting line in slightly exotic equipment (I was once offered Israeli Army Encrypting Modems)
The KGB penetration during Roosevelt’s time was understandable, people genuinely reckoned that the USSR was a lot better than Germany and Japan, ditching friends and changing ones mind is not all that easy.
It feels like an out-dated concept in terms of gathering data because it was largely made redundant after the fact by the Internet and the Internet’s rapid expansion.
However, if it was about influencing decision-making at the policy level, it’s still valid as one the (discovered) Israeli spy rings demonstrate.
…catching spies, while I’m sure is technically spying, is looking at it from a different angle. I was overgeneralizing just a tad, though, I admit.
Well, in the case of the Cambridge, MA couple, they were living a couple of miles away from MIT-which happens to have some of the largets software development groups in the world. A few years back, a local reporter went into MIT and found how easy it was to get access to just about everything-he was able to get into unlocked labs, and even was making copies of documents (the security officers didn’t even challenge him). A photocopied ID card was enough to get anywhere.
The Russians are not stupid-I am quite sure that these folks were earning their keep.
The really interesting stuff isn’t hooked up to the Internet, so old-fashioned techniques are needed.
they were reporting back on the us food markets. they were paricularly obsessed with wegman and trader joe.
they will try to bring this type of shopping to russia. “siberia sofya” will turn out not to be as popular as trader joe. the frozen north style just doesn’t go over as well.