Spying

Surveillance, eavesdropping and disguise are all a part of spying.
The International Spy Museum
The International Spy Museum is in the heart of Washington DC, in the United States of America and is solely dedicated to present a world perspective on espionage. The museum is a three-floored building. The first floor occupies its main exhibits and the second floor provides operational spy experiences where you can engage in spy activities, learning the tricks.
Spy gadgets
All spies use clever devices called gadgets. In James Bond movies, the character ‘Q’ designs all the spy gadgets for Bond. He is based on a real man, Charles Fraser-Smith, who created some of the most amazing gadgets during World War II. He thought up ingenious solutions to difficult problems during the war. As a small compass sewn into clothes could be detected, he decided to put magnetized needles inside matchsticks. The match could be dropped into a pool of water and point North, acting exactly like a compass.
Some spy gadgets used in the past are the lipstick pistol used by KGB operatives during the Cold War, the CIA lighter used in the 1970s that doubled as a camera, the umbrella modified with a tiny pellet filled with poison which was used by a KGB operative in 1978 etc.
Gadgets and devices have become more important in spying as human agents can be easily seen and caught but machines and gadgets are very tiny. Nanotechnology is the science of constructing microscopic machines called nano-bots. These can be sprinkled like dust over electronic equipment to send back information. Some examples for modern spy gadgets are, a submarine disguised as a crocodile, the top layer of a pack of playing cards can be peeled off when wet to show a map, the dragonfly micro-aerial vehicle (MAV): tiny and weighs less than a quarter of a gram. In the future MAVs may be able to hover or fly unnoticed, spying on people to photograph documents.
Movies, cartoons and storybooks have also come up about spies and spying, for example Alex Rider storybooks and Spy Kids movies etc.

Secret Code         
Try and solve the following code:
Dxngzr! Thzrz xrz rumyurs yf x dyublz agznt.
(Answer: Danger! There are rumours of a double agent.)

By Shenaya Steinwall (13 years)
Ave Maria Convent, Negombo