Two students from China, studying at the University of Michigan, travel to Florida during their winter break and find themselves in trouble after entering the Naval Air Station Key West, a major U.S. military facility.
spies
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘A Chain of Stupidity’: the Skripal Case and the Decline of Russia’s Spy Agencies
“The new hero of journalism was no longer a grizzled investigator burning shoe leather, à la All the President’s Men, but a pasty-looking kid in front of a MacBook Air.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Current Events, Nonfiction, Quotes
How Russia Has Been Spying in Plain Sight in San Francisco
What was going on at Russia’s consulate in San Francisco?
Posted inCurrent Events, Nonfiction, Quotes
Harvey Weinstein’s Failed Attempt to Hire Private Eyes to Silence His Accusers
Weinstein hired private investigators who used fake names to dig up dirt on his accusers.
Posted inArts & Culture, Crime, Nonfiction, Quotes, Science & Nature
Scientific Conferences Are Filled with Spies
The world’s intelligence agencies send operatives to scientific conferences to collect information and protect themselves.
Posted inFeatured, Fiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Five Stories About Espionage
Today’s spying relies on social media, surveillance, coercion and ambition.
Posted inFeatured, Fiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Five Stories About Espionage
Today’s spying relies on social media, surveillance, coercion and ambition.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Ernest Hemingway’s Private WWII-Era Spy Network
During World War II Hemingway organized a private spy network, which he jokingly called the Crook Factory, and gathered information about Nazi sympathizers on the island. But in a secret, 124-page report on Hemingway, the FBI—which feared his personal prestige and political power—expressed resentment at his amateur but alarming intrusion into their territory, and unsuccessfully […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
On the Difference Between ‘Technical’ and ‘Tactical’ Spies
Why then does the American public still consider all spies to be demons? Why does the public make no distinction between technical spies like Julius Rosenberg stealing useful knowledge and tactical spies like Kim Philby destroying human lives? Perhaps it is because the American public is misled by the American secrecy system. The secrecy system is a bureaucratic monster that classifies vast quantities of information as secret, making it impossible for the ordinary citizen to see the difference between important and unimportant secrets.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Dark Arts: A Corporate Espionage Reading List
Corporate espionage takes many forms and is known by a number of names. At its most benign, it’s “competitive-intelligence,” which is the kind of information gathering that George Chidi describes in Inc. On the other end of the spectrum is the far more exciting—and illicit—line of work seen in Richard Behar’s 1999 story about the pharmaceutical industry. Here are five stories that delve deep into the murky world of corporate information gathering.