Advances in Spying Countries have been spying on each other since the invention of countries. Some say it was going on way before that. They believe when we were just all tribes, one tribe may have tried to slip a person into another tribe by befriending one of the tribes members. I can’t attest to that, but it certainly seems to make sense to me. Human spying took on an entire new face when we entered the technological age. Not only were human spies used, but there were devices used which didn’t need a human presence to intercept or import data. While this first device did help the country that used it, like everything else, it soon was in the hands of others negating its advantage. When technological inventions come out the problem is they spread like weeds and sometimes some of them can be a threat to the world. Unfortunately, we humans are more interested in getting a temporary weapon advantage than assessing the long range problems a particular advantage can cause. Look at the atomic bomb for example. Developing it may have caused the ultimate end of the world. It is true it saved us from having at least a million casualties by invading Japan. No one ever stopped to think eventually this would many others want to have them and some of these others would definitely use it again if they got it. Another problem we have is we are in a perpetual arms race and it has been going on for thousands of years. This feeds into the use of spies and spying devices. Almost every country wants to know what the other is developing so they don’t fall behind in weaponry. Spying is more than that however. Spies are used to know what plans are being made and a government’s attitude toward certain things. For example, one government might want to know what another country’s reaction might be if they invaded another country. I am sure Russian spies and devices were spying on us and others to see if they invaded the Ukraine would any of us send soldiers to fight on the side of Ukraine. They must have thought, since Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries at the time, we wouldn’t help. They were half right. No western country sent soldiers there, but they did send equipment. This screwed Russia who thought the invasion would be over in about 3 days. We did not send enough equipment for them to win, but enough to damage our military’s readiness. Sometimes the information gotten is not reliable. During the Cold War the Soviets wanted to steal the plans for our space shuttle. Our spies found out their spies were engaged in finding those plans. We cooked up a scheme where we let them find an altered set of plans and they built their shuttle using them. They thought they really had something and built the Buran. That was the name of their stolen shuttle. They couldn’t wait to launch it and when they did, they were in for a big surprise. When it returned to earth, it was totally useless. It was damaged beyond repair because the heat shield and tiles didn’t operate correctly. NASA must have had a good laugh over that. The birth of the computer in some cases, has caused more harm than good. It used to be spies only went after another country’s secrets. This changed a couple of years after the home computer was invented. Criminals everywhere became spies in essence. They not only went after government sites, but also after individuals. I have to wonder if there is anyone out there who hasn’t been the victim of some computer, email or phone scheme or attack? I know it has happened to some people I know and even to me. The emails promise money if certain payments are made or punishment from a government agency if money is not paid. The phone schemes pretend to be from agencies like the Internal Revenue Service demanding payments or making believe a relative needs money to pay a lawyer because he or she has been thrown in jail. The hacking is just want it sounds like, people trying to get into your data or financial accounts which you have online. They also hack things like medical data. The criminals are having a grand old time and many of them cannot be touched because they are in other countries. The development of spy devices kept improving. The Soviets and the Americans both mounted high powered cameras on satellites which kept getting more powerful. The spying got so bad we had to make some of our secret materials underground as did the Soviets. Before we had digital cameras in the satellites we had to develop a system to eject the rolls of film, protect them and drop them back to earth where they would be caught by a specially equipped airplane. The spy inventions just kept getting better and more powerful. We developed a way of listening to conversations by being able to read the vibrations of glass windows from outside. Then we improved on that by creating a spy device which would let us see peoples outlines through walls. We could now target someone who was inside a building. Advancements in spying didn’t end there. We began to think of new ways to get close to people without them noticing. The CIA developed what it named the Acoustic Kitty. A cat was surgically altered to contain a tiny microphone and a transmitter. When the cat was sent into a park where two men were talking it was run over. After several tests the project was said to be a failure. One would have thought it was almost impossible to get a cat to go where you wanted it to go. As devices advanced and got even smaller, robotic birds started to appear and then things got tiny enough that insects could be equipped with spying equipment. I think we have all heard the saying I wish I was a fly on the wall during that meeting. Now it was possible to be. We have reached the point where no conversation can be sure to be private.
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