The PDA Guerilla: A traitor to his country

One of the things I like about my PDA is the measure of privacy it affords. In a world in which we read constantly about identity theft, in which marketing executives seem to know everything about us from the Web sites we access to the brands we buy at the grocery store, and in which spying on employees is normal practice, and in some industries all but mandated by regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, my PDA provides me with a relatively safe place to keep my most private information and thoughts. I do not think my personal e-mail or the thoughts I jot down in my diary are any business of my boss.

Last week I found dramatic confirmation of just how secure information on a PDA can be from a very unlikely source. Robert Hanssen, the famous double agent who for 20 years spied for the Russians from inside the FBI, part of that time while serving as head of the FBI's Soviet counter-espionage bureau, kept all his top secret records of his dealings with the Soviets on his Palm PDA. I have this information directly from the mouth of the best possible source, former FBI Special Agent Eric O'Neill, who acted as Hanssen's assistant while actually spying on him for the FBI. O'Neill, now a lawyer, was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air on January 31 about how he was able to gain access to that PDA and the information it contained, which broke the case and led directly to Hanssen's conviction. Hanssen is now serving a life sentence in a high security federal prison. This information did not appear in the books written about Hanssen immediately after the conviction because it was still classified at the time.

O'Neill appeared on Fresh Air along with movie director/screenwriter Billy Ray to promote Ray's new film about Hanssen, Breach, which opens later this month. O'Neill was the technical advisor for the film.

He said Hanssen always carried a Palm III in his back pants pocket, putting it on his desk next to his hand when he sat down and carrying it with him when he got up. He had reprogrammed it to increase its security and had everything on it encrypted. This was so effective that even the FBI, which at that point strongly suspected him of espionage and had focused huged resources on the case, could not get at the incriminating evidence they suspected (correctly as it turned out) was contained in the device.

Finally the agency conducted a sting operation. Hanssen was known as a dead shot. Two of his superiors appeared unannounced in his office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., to challenge him to a match in the basement shooting range. Caught off balance, for once he left his PDA behind. As soon as Hanssen was out of the office, O'Neill took it down the hall to a tech team who had set up in a nearby office. They copied the data on it, and O'Neill returned it to Hanssen's office just in time.

I am certainly not advocating spying against your country. However, if a Palm III PDA can be so secure the FBI has trouble gaining access to the information on it, I don't have to worry about my personal records. If Hanssen had not left his PDA behind that one time, he might have eluded capture indefinitely. I know one thing for sure, I am going to see that film as soon as it comes out.

Those who want to hear the interview can buy the program from Audible.com  for $3 US. And you can listen to it on your PDA, as I did, using free software Audible provides. The program's full name is Fresh Air, Stuart Bowen, Eric O"Neill, and Billy Ray, January 31, 2007. And if you are new to Audible, be sure to credit me with recommending you.