It appears as though accused Russian spy Mikhail Semenko was an active social networker.  Semenko and his comrades are a case study in espionage 2.0.  He had accounts on LinkedIn and Facebook.  He even ran a blog on the Chinese economy.  What are the lessons here?  Well, first, you should know who you’re connected to on these social networking  sites.  A Facebook news feed could have been a great source of intelligence for Semenko, if he was friends with the right people–say, a congressman on the right committee who posts a little too much on his Facebook account or even a mid-level civil servant working in a sensitive national security position.  It seems hard to believe, but it’s true.  Spies aren’t just after things like weapons designs and highly classified documents.  More mundane and seemingly innocent bits of information, such as a person’s schedule, location or patterns of behavior, can be equally useful to a foreign agent.

If you’re a foreign agent, Facebook is a great way to target potential sources.  As such, people who work in sensitive positions, especially three-letter agencies, should be careful about what they put into these publicly searchable profiles.  This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised.  In military parlance, this is called operational security. Unfortunately, there are a lot of silly kids who don’t practice operational security.  I’m not suggesting that we need a Joe McCarthy of Facebook–only that people in sensitive positions be mindful about what kind of information they disclose and to whom.

Also, check out Jim Robbins’s account of his recent encounter with Semenko at a lecture in Washington.