Spying Operations

Spying has been part of human activity since time immemorial. Many of the techniques of spying today were developed in the courts of Renaissance Italy and Elizabethan England. Successive generations of spies and spy agencies have distilled the experiences of the past, learning more sophisticated methods of acquiring and passing information while undermining the ability of the enemy to do the same. In the 20th century, both world wars and the ideological struggleknown as Cold War created an insatiable demand for information. World War II was responsible for the vast Soviet spy networks and the rapid development of cryptography. During the Cold War, the great intelligence agencies - the KGB and the CIA - applied new technologies, such as computers and spy satellites, to espionage. The end of Cold War did not eliminate the need for spies but served to increase the scope of their international involvement and the intensity of their conflice. [This information was extracted from Ultimate SPY]