The Art of Spying The art of spying has taken on a new meaning. There are so many new ways to spy on people, governments and the entire world, it has changed everything. Countries are spying on their own citizens in some cases and it isn’t only dictatorships and communist countries, but even many of the so called free democratic countries. We are heading for a world where there is absolutely no privacy. In the days before computers and electronic surveilling devices, most spying was done by humans infiltrating the organizations to be spied upon or the individuals who were up to no good. This method has not disappeared and is still used in some instances. For example, police are known to infiltrate gangs using police who seem to look like the perfect fit for gang members. Some cults were infiltrated by federal officers and so were some hostile governments. What might be considered different by how this method is used today is the fact it has been used to spy on allies. Terrorist organizations have also been infiltrated from time to time which has probably saved the lives of countless people. Human spying was employed by the Chinese on us when one spy had been in this country for countless years, I believe over 30 and was a respected scientist. He was put in charge of a secret program and eventually stole all the data and fled to China. We don’t know if he was coerced into doing it because he might have had family or friends in China or he was an undercover spy for all those years planted here. There are so many different devices which can be used to spy, the list is enormous. Take cameras for example. They can be hidden everywhere and you would not notice them. Most of them have a microphone so everything you say is noted. Some of these devices broadcast to another location where all the data is saved or others can record the data right there. A while back it became somewhat popular for people to spy on their babysitters when they were out. One of the popular devices was a camera built into a teddy bear. It wasn’t what I would call a very sophisticated method and was spoken about so much I began to wonder if any babysitter would fall for that anymore. The camera picked up things like teenage babysitters having their boyfriends over when no one else was around and even showing some babysitters either paying no attention to babies or mistreating them. Industrial spying has increased and you can’t tell if you are being spied on at meetings and such without special equipment. That tie clip that guy you are meeting with is wearing could contain a tiny camera and mike or his watch, pen or something else could by photographing, listening or both. Spying has become more technological. When one realized they can be spied on without devices in the room it becomes even more unnerving. Aiming a device at the windows can pickup the vibrations which can be converted back to speech so you can be heard by this method and recorded. There have been some very famous cases. Some of them involved employees of government agencies who had worked there for many years. One was the case of Aldrich Hazen Ames who was arrested by the FBI for espionage in 1994. This guy was working for the CIA and had more than 30 years on the job. His job was spying on the Russians and had been doing it for about nine years when he was arrested. His job had been to target Russian intelligence officers so the CIA could hire them to spy. He turn himself and was secretly working for the KGB who paid him. When he was convicted, he got a sentence of life without parole. He would use what were known as dead drops and leave documents there and get paid by money left there for him with instructions. His unexpected wealth tripped him up. He had given the names of American spies to the Russians who had them executed. Apparently, his wife knew what was going on and was also sentenced to prison but received only 63 months in prison. There was a story which stated a Chinese spymaster defected to the United States and gave us information about how Covid started in the Wuhan Lab. If this is true and we have done nothing about releasing that information that would be a huge black mark on the Biden administration. This was no small fish. It is said Dong Jingwei was the vice minister of state security. The story which appeared in a news paper states the spy escaped with his daughter and when he got here, he handed President Biden the info. It is said Chinese diplomats demanded he be returned. We have come far from those spy movies where the actor takes out a small camera after sneaking into a room, breaks into a safe or desk and takes photos of papers. That was common stuff in spy movies up to the 1970s. On the other hand, A Chinese scientist was convicted in 2019, of stealing trade secrets and giving them to the Chinese government. It was said they were worth north of a billion dollars. He pled guilty during the trial. I guess he knew unlike China, we wouldn’t kill him. He had worked for a company developing next generation battery technology. If China comes out with a radical new battery, they can thank us. This is something which is constantly going on in this country. Even China’s newest military planes look a lot like ours and that is because it is said they have stolen much of the technology from us. America had been keeping Chinese scientists under observation in this country. It is unfortunate they have to be watch so closely. It certainly didn’t catch all the spying, but it did catch some. It also causes depression among those honest Chinese scientists who want to make sure there is no spying. A trial was held and a Chinese scientist was cleared. I imagine it is very stressful being a Chinese scientist today working in this country. One way of spying without danger is using satellites to take photos of secret places on earth. Probably every country with a satellite in orbit has done this and it has gotten a lot easier. When we used to have film cameras the film had to somehow be returned to earth, but today the data is just beamed down. This makes it possible to spy and never get caught because you were never on the premises.
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