Spies amongst us: Comedy or Cyberthreat?

Commentary and news coverage of the 11 Russian spies charged last week by the U.S. Department of Justice have oscillated between speculation about an imminent, new Cold War to comedic comparisons with Boris and Natasha from Bullwinkle.  At this point in time, it would seem the latter is more accurate.

Ten of the people were arrested in New York, Virginia and Massachusetts, while the eleventh – Christopher Metsos – was picked up in Cyprus.  Metsos is believed to be the “money man” of the spy ring, but he has since disappeared after a court in Cyprus – an island with close ties to Russia – freed him on roughly $35,000 Cdn. bail.  If he was indeed the money supplier to the Russian spies, $35,000 must have seemed like pocket change.

Much of the media coverage seems focused on the cute-as-a button Anna Chapman, often referred to as a “femme fatale,” “glamorous,” and “hot.”  Yet not only is it dubious that Chapman ever had access to policy secrets or even policy-making circles, it is also doubtful that this story would be receiving so much media attention if she looked like radio’s “shock jock” Howard Stern.

FBI agents from the Justice Department’s national security division have been following these 11 spies for about a decade, yet despite the years and effort involved in what appears to have been a fairly exhaustive probe, none have been charged with espionage.  All have been charged with “conspiracy to act as an [unregistered] agent of a foreign government;” and all but two – Chapman of Manhattan and Mikhail Semenko of Arlington – have been charged with “conspiracy to launder money.”

Exactly what the accused spies did as part of their long-term, “deep-cover” assignments on behalf of the “Service” – short for Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR), the successor to the Soviet-era KGB – remains unclear.  So far, safety-deposit boxes, roughly $100,000 USD in cash, short-wave radios, and laptops have been found.  American officials claim their case is gaining strength with new evidence, with “well over” 100 decrypted messages between conspirators yet to be revealed, compared to a handful of such messages mentioned so far.

It is perhaps this latter finding that may take on its own life.  In addition to faintly quaint methods such as invisible ink, the alleged spies purportedly used cyber-age technology.  For example, they communicated by having two agents with laptops containing special software pass each other casually as messages flashed between them, and they exchanged data with Moscow central by embedding/encrypting it in ordinary-looking images on publicly accessible Web pages, a modern form of a technique known as steganography – hiding messages so that only the sender and intended recipient suspect their presence.

Given that President Obama’s first formal national security strategy has included cybersecurity as a central component, and that legislation introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman is rocketing through Congress, recent events may very well be used to buttress the bill’s chances of success.

On one hand, when you think about it … the very last thing a spy should want to be is amusing.  On the other hand, who knows: are there stunning disclosures yet to come from these suburban spies in Yonkers, Boston, and northern Virginia?  And will “uncovered” events be used to help pass the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act?