I asked Bob Wallace—author and former CIA tech office director—about the preponderance of ever-awesomer kids' spygear. We shared a laugh about cheap cameras, false notions of privacy, and unstoppable technological progress. His point? We ain't seen nothin' yet.

Remember that awesome CIA gadget book, Spycraft, written by our spooky friends Bob Wallace and Keith Melton? Well, it just came out in paperback, people—$12.24 at Amazon. Go git 'em. [Amazon]

Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda goes on sale in stores today. I know you think I probably milked it for all it's worth, but there's actually a ton of mind-boggling spy gear in there that I didn't have a chance to cover on Giz, such as:

The freakiest thing about reading CIA gadget lore is that it's all real. The nerds working for the agency's Office of Technical Services were always devising and building gadgets to get people out of—or into—difficult situations. Here's a rundown of crazy stuff from the Spytech book, not necessarily stuff you'd carry…

You know how, when KGB agents are tailing you, all you want to do is roll out of the car while your driver keeps going? Only those agents aren't dumb: If they suddenly see one fewer head inside the car, they're gonna know something's up. Spytechs at the CIA figured that if you brought along something compact yet…

It looks like your typical junk, tooling around on coastal waterways in Southeast Asia in the late 1960s. Think of it in Apocalypse Now terms: It was basically a water taxi for personnel on highly classified missions. OK, so then say that classified mission is somehow compromised—here's what it looks like when it…

I was surprised to learn that the CIA has had a long though not always fruitful relationship with the animal kingdom. In Spycraft, the authors describe many clever animal-assisted devices, from the dead-rat dead-drop pouch to the "acoustic kitty," a cat with a remote listening system embedded in its body. And what's this …