Spying for Russia can be a hard life. The feds are on your trail, always trying to find out who you’re meeting with and talking to. That’s why it’s best to make sure your secret agent gear is top quality and working properly. Otherwise, the FBI’s IT department may end up “fixing” it for you.
That’s one of the many things you can see in a series of videos released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday. The FBI released a cache of cover surveillance videos, along with a handful of photos and heavily redacted documents from “Operation Ghost Stories,” the FBI’s years-long investigation of the infamous Russian sleeper spy ring. We’ve known for a while that the Russians were felled in part because of their technical goofs, but the videos show more clearly just how the network unraveled.
Tech problems loomed large for the sleeper network, leading the FBI to secretly record the Russian intelligence version of Geek Squad. Their laptops, modified at Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters in Moscow, created private wireless networks designed to only communicate with the computers of other spy ring members when in close proximity. They also used steganography software to hide messages in image files. Unfortunately for the spooks, their equipment wasn’t always up to snuff.
In one surveillance video from the spring of 2010 (above), FBI agents sidled up next to spy ring members Richard Murphy and Michael Zottoli at a Brooklyn coffee shop. Their camera catches Murphy handing a laptop recently brought back from SVR headquarters in Moscow over to Zottoli. According to the criminal complaint against the sleeper network, the new gear was intended for later delivery to spy ring members in Seattle. The spies had a “hanging/freezing” problem with their communications software, which the new computer was supposed to address.
The now infamous spy babe Anna Chapman often used the same Media Access Control address for her private wireless network, allowing the FBI to sniff out when she was communicating with her boss at Russia’s United Nations Mission. When her communications software eventually went on the fritz, the FBI moved in for the kill.
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