Russia‘s state security service, the FSB, has accused British diplomats of spying in Moscow. It backed claims made in a Russian TV report which showed footage of what it said was British agents retrieving data from a fake rock planted on a street. […]
The programme said four officials from the UK embassy and one Russian citizen, allegedly recruited by the British secret service, downloaded classified data from a transmitter in the rock onto palm-top computers.
Well, at least they went high-tech . . .
I believe it was CIA case officer working in Moscow in the 80s who was arrested and PNG’ed for using a lump of coal as her dead drop device. Like in the middle of a Russian winter Ivan would ignore a lump of heat-producing material just sitting around on the streets of the capital.
Then there was the show on the History Channel (I think) pointing out how case officers in Moscow figured out that leaving a room-temperature storage device at a dead drop site in the middle of winter tended to melt snow around it (I think the operative phrase includes the words “sore thumb”).
It would appear that one thing we don’t share with the Brits (despite our “special relationship”) is tradecraft lessons learned. Not they wouldn’t have figured this out on their own (they can think, they just can’t cook).
