Tony Blair is a lame-duck Prime Minister, just as George Bush is at the end of his political life. Tony seems to be having more fun with it.

He was doing a little saber-rattling with the Persians over their nuclear weapons program, and he was at his puckish best when they asked him about the fake rocks that the Russians claim his diplomats placed in Moscow .

You would think that Russia would have plenty of rocks, just as they do gold and oil, but that is not true. These were special rocks. Hollow they were, and capable of data storage and wireless communications up to sixty feet.

The Russians are quite upset about it. They claim that espionage ended in 1994 by gentleman’s agreement, and the British conduct is out of bounds. They have a grainy video which shows a figure in a bulky winter coat toeing something that could be a rock, and an inset photo of a rock with its top off, revealing the transmitter and hard drive.

Conclusive proof.

Mr. Blair laughed the matter off, saying that Her Majesty’s Government never talked about national security issues, unless they felt like it. Which he didn’t.

My position is that you should not use fake rocks unless they are really good fakes. One of the problems with successful espionage is the exfiltration of data. In the old days, that meant a complex process of dead-drops and signals to exchange information or documents. It is a problem as old as the craft itself, which as you know is the second oldest in the world.

Modern technology permits wireless communications, which means that a secret �hot spot� could quickly transfer data from a hand-held device in the safety and privacy of a passing car, no dismount required.

But with every improvement comes another challenge. This one is range and power. The more power, the further the rock can transmit. But that means the signal is that much more likely to be detected by some student lounging in a nearby Starbusk-ski. Also, the more power required, the bigger the battery has to be, and the shorter the service life. Someone has to periodically venture out to replace the battery to keep the device working.

If I could solve the battery problem, I could solve a lot of espionage problems, not to mention a host of issues associated with cell phones and personal massage devices.

So the dead drop, or hot spot in this case, still provides a target for surveillance.

The leaders of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, have been warning about the threat of espionage from the old adversaries. The bloodless coups in Ukraine (I still want to call it �the Ukraine .� Some habits die hard!) and Georgia have made them wary of foreign interference. Mr. Putin is determined to bring everything under centralized control.

FSB sources say their counter-intelligence service had uncovered nearly a hundred foreign intelligence agents working in Russia . For them, the threat is real and imminent.

I can’t blame Mr. Putin for the paranoia, since it is only that if they are not actually out to get you. Here in America , they don’t even have to worry about battery life.

I saw this week that Larry Franklin, the intelligence analyst, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for leaking a draft National Security Presidential Decision (NSPD) on the Persians to the Israelis, though their local lobbying organization, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

I knew Larry and AIPAC in passing, which is to say that I occasionally saw Larry in meetings at the Pentagon, and one time I received a call from an AIPAC staffer. I have no idea how he got my number, unless he read it on the wall of a public facility someplace, but I knew it was trouble and was polite but evasive.

He didn’t call back, for which I am grateful. I am opposed to foreign espionage just like Mr. Putin is, just in case anyone is listening. They say that Larry is cooperating with the Feds to build the case against the Israeli agents, and I am pleased I do not know him any better than I do, which is to say, not at all.

That is how Larry’s sentence was reduced to what it is, and I don’t know what the formula for time-served and good behavior makes it in reality. It could have been life, like Jonathon Pollard, the Israeli agent who looted secrets from the Navy. Seven years sounds like a long time, but it is certainly better than what Pollard is looking at.

I do know that Larry’s wife and five kids are going to have a challenge with it. But Franklin and Pollard are just the tip of the ice-burg, and after all, they were going against a hard target.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of foreigners wandering around the country. They are looking for national security information, of course, but there is a more valuable commodity at stake. The target is the intellectual property of U.S. companies, which can be purchased, or stolen, and then reverse-engineered or simply copied.

Most Chinese companies are working with pirated versions of MicroSoft software, which is only a symptom of a pandemic of piracy. If you reduce overhead and add low labor costs, the Chinese business model is unbeatable.

That is all happening up front. Batteries are not included, since there is absolutely no need for them.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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