Spies and secrets

Ever since there have been organised states, there have been agents working behind the curtains, as well as things that regimes have sought to protect from prying eyes and ears.

The revealed activities of both these agents and sites are fascinating to some travellers, even if the themes exposed, events and specific methods (aka tradecraft) involved can seem brutal, controversial or in some instances downright surreal.

Understand
"Hence it is that which none in the whole army are more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies. None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved."

- Sun Tzu

While the history of espionage goes back to ancient times, it is usually the spy stories of the 20th century that have created the public impression of the business; especially World War I, World War II in Europe and the Cold War.

In the typical case, an intelligence agency is a government organ which collects information about foreign governments and other target organizations. Some of them are CIA of the United States, SIS (or MI6) of the United Kingdom, SVR of Russia, and Mossad of Israel. Their staff consists of intelligence officers, who should not be confused with spies, secret agents or assets, who are recruited (usually from within a target organization) to provide secret information. There are two main categories of spies: A mole is recruited by an intelligence agency, and then makes a career in the target organization to get secret information, whereas a defector is an official who decides to provide information for the enemy (in some cases fleeing their homeland). A double agent is an agent who pretends to work for the intelligence organization that recruited them, but is loyal to the target organization. In some cases, people who are "outed" as double agents then proceed to become "triple agents" and so on, although this is more common in fiction than in reality.

Intelligence officers regularly work under cover of diplomatic missions. Diplomatic immunity limits the host country's enforcement methods; a common reaction is to expel a suspected intelligence officer as a persona non grata. Intelligence officers and agents recruited outside the diplomatic system are called illegalists or non-official cover. Little is known about the extent of those.

In a few cases, an intelligence agency can carry out assassinations and sabotage operations against enemies, either using their own officers or through an agent. Intelligence agencies also often work with local political dissidents in foreign countries to overthrow governments deemed unfriendly to the interests of the agency's country; the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953, and the failed Tibetan Uprising in 1959 are prominent of examples of local revolutions assisted by the CIA.

There are several operation methods. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is a highly specialized intelligence process which intercepts radio and telecommunication signals, usually in a separate agency such as NSA in the United States, or GCHQ in the United Kingdom. Secret messages are usually encrypted (cryptography is the art of creating ciphers), intelligence agencies need cryptanalysis to decipher them. From World War II to the 21st century, cryptology and signals intelligence have been supported by government "big science" projects to develop electronics, computer technology, aviation and space flight.

A security agency fights crime and espionage (counterespionage), and protects strategic targets such as leaders or buildings; in the U.S.A., both the FBI and the Secret Service have this function, while the corresponding agency in the UK is the Security Service (or MI5), Russia's equivalent is the FSB, and Israel's equivalent is known as Shin Bet. A secret police is a government security agency directed against internal opposition or other individuals and groups a more or less authoritarian government has decided to harass, arrest or worse. Examples include the Gestapo of Nazi Germany and the Kenpeitai of Imperial Japan. Some government agencies have had multiple roles, such as the KGB of the Soviet Union, which was both an intelligence service and a secret police force.

Despite the glorious and mysterious image surrounding espionage, most intel is actually gathered in rather "boring" ways. One example is to measure the security preparedness of the US by the number of cars in the CIA parking lot. Another example is Tom Clancy who had to answer some uncomfortable questions about "revealing military secrets" for his description of submarine engines in Hunt for Red October - turns out he could point to books available in public libraries as the source of all his information, combined with a bit of educated guessing. The most famous spies are ironically those who failed their missions and got caught.

In the 21st century, cyberwarfare is increasingly becoming an important part of conflicts between nations, in many cases even more so than actual military action. The countries generally considered to have the best cyberwarfare capabilities are the United States, Russia, Israel, the United Kingdom and China.

See
Most facilities for intelligence and national security are very restricted to visitors. Intrusive photography is prohibited, in many cases. The most interesting places to visit are usually museums, and decommissioned buildings.

Germany






ECHELON sites
The Five Eyes, an alliance of the major English-speaking democracies &mdash; the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand &mdash; have been co-operating on signals intelligence since World War II, when the British at Bletchley Park broke nearly all the German and Italian ciphers and the US broke many Japanese ciphers. They expanded their co-operation during the Cold War and continue it today. The best-known of their projects was codenamed ECHELON. This is widely considered the most powerful spying alliance in the world.

The governments involved still consider everything about these programs top secret, but quite a lot about them has become public. The main sources are an investigation by the European Parliament early in this century and leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. They have a worldwide network of intercept stations and can collect nearly all satellite communications plus much else. We list some here; see Wikipedia for a much longer list.

There are also stations in several friendly countries, at least Germany, Japan, Brazil and India. Controversially, they were also revealed to have stations located within their respective embassies.

None of these sites are open to the public, there is not much to see from outside &mdash; just big antennas or domes which cover antennas &mdash; and photographing them may be actively discouraged.

Stay safe
"Dance like no-one is watching. Encrypt like everyone is."

Most people are at almost no risk of being seriously spied on, though if you visit a country whose government is hostile to yours and/or is highly authoritarian, the risk may be larger. You may also be at risk if you have valuable commercial or research data. If professionals &mdash; government, corporate or criminal &mdash; specifically target you and you do not have professionals on your side, then your chances of successful defense are somewhere between slim and nil.

However, there are also less specific threats such as advertisers tracking web activity or government programs that hoover up data en masse, such as ECHELON or the Great Firewall of China. It is possible to defend reasonably well against these.

One simple defense is to use a "burner" phone or laptop; set it up before travel with as little valuable data as possible and wipe all data when you return. See Internet_access and the EFF page on Surveillance self-defense for other methods.