These doubtful little seeds come from Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-Review, a guy you may not have heard of, but who's known for being well-connected i the mobile industry—though his beat tends more toward the Nokias and Sony Ericssons of the world, with occasional reaches for Apple scoops. Anyway, he's been on a Twitter rampage, as captured by Phandroid, and he has a theeeoorryyy:

First, English isn't his first language, so ignore the weird phrasing. Second, what the hell does that mean? It's actually pretty simple.

You know, given how similar the Nexus One concept is to prior Android development phones like the Ion or the Dev Phone One—hardware by HTC, software experience controlled by Google, unlocked, handed out to Google employees—I could easily believe that this phone is just the next Dev phone, designed to give developers something roughly comparable to the next generation of Snapdragon-powered Android phones to develop on. And I'd even believe that they're going to sell it to the public unlocked, and put a little marketing muscle behind it. That actually makes more sense than rumors of a Google plan to either revolutionize, rape, pillage or save the wireless industry. (Pick one!) And it'd explain many people's general unease about assuming this phone revolutionary before we know anything about it. So, Eldar, I'll bite: This is a mass delusion. What else?

Intrigue! But who? TELL US WHO!

This is just a ploy to get the internet to talk about you, isn't it? Dammit, Eldar! You got me. You can judge his theorizing on your own—I don't buy it, because I don't really see what Apple would have to gain here—but either way: we all need to calm the hell down about this phone. The rumors about it are fascinating, sure, but the with every actual fact we uncover, this thing gets a little more boring. [Phandroid]

Apparently, US government officials have been advising frequent business travelers to keep separate electronics for use in China that they only use there. This includes computers and cellphones. And if you used your normal phone over there, it may be time to toss it.

It's all about corporate espionage, as one bugged phone or computer in the hands of a powerful exec could end up costing millions of dollars if info falls into the wrong hands.

It's both totally nuts and completely sensible at the same time. This is the age we live in, friends. [Geek.com]

Secure Computing says that an agent only known as T was responsible for the gaffe, which took place on a Colombian passenger train. Apparently the fallout from the incident resulted in a number of agents having to be relocated for safety purposes. But MI6 assures us all that they now take more secure precautions with sensitive data. [Secure Computing via Wired]

The Joint Strike Fighter, also known as the F-35 Lightning II Fighter, is the most costly project in Pentagon history, so it's a little bit problematic that some spies scampered in and nicked an unknown, but undoubtedly large, quantity of data without getting anywhere near caught. The cyber-spies encrypted the data on its way out, so nobody's really sure where they came from or where the data went, but some IP addresses have been tracked to China, prompting a little bit of back-and-forth between the DoD and the Chinese government.

A Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made "steady progress" in developing online-warfare techniques. China hopes its computer skills can help it compensate for an underdeveloped military, the report said.

The Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China "opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes." It called the Pentagon's report "a product of the Cold War mentality" and said the allegations of cyber espionage are "intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations."

Though the most valuable information, including data on the F-35's flight control and sensors, is inaccessible (stored on non-networked computers), nobody's really sure exactly what happened, and nobody, from the manufacturers to the researchers to the Pentagon's press team, wants to talk about it. It's a pretty alarming read, check it out. Wall Street Journal, image also via WSJ

A senior intelligence official told the Journal that "The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," along with the Russians. What's scary is that it's not just a few isolated points, but it's happening all across the whole country. Oh, and that the utility companies actually running the grid had absolutely no idea.

The reason US intelligence—who detected the intrusions and informed the utility companies—suspects the Commies is because the attacks are so sophisticated. They left behind backdoor software designed to muck up the works that "f we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on." And if you've seen Live Free or Die Hard, you know what happens when hackers go after our infrastructure. People die, Justin Long cries and cars run into helicopters. It's absolute chaos. I pray to god when that day comes, Bruce Willis is not sipping cocktails on a beach earning 20 percent Alan Rickman. [WSJ]

• Robotic critters, from the insectothopter of the 1970s to the robofish of today

• Cigars developed to kill, confuse or humiliate Fidel Castro—not surprisingly, one would have made his beard fall out.

• The beloved skyhook—yes, the thing that yanks people from the ground up into airplanes. Learn of its origins, early animal test runs and its one successful on-record mission.

• The Soviet's most amazing spy gadget, dubbed "The Thing" by befuddled CIA agents who didn't know how on earth it worked. It was built by Theremin, inventor of that wacky musical thingy, himself a part-time Soviet agent and researcher.

• Spies, spying and spy talk. Yes, the book may be focused on hardware, but man it's full of crazy stories about spies. The most interesting tales are about the Russians who were leaking info to the US, often upon pain of death. Stories of American traitors are pretty familiar, but you rarely get to hear about what went on over on the other side of the Curtain.

Meanwhile, here's a recap of what I did cover, in case you missed it:
• My interview with the authors
• Blow-up Sex Toys as In-Car Decoys
• A Speedboat Disguised as a Junk
• Hide and Seek, CIA Style
• The Inflatable Rescue Plane
• Animal Agents, Live and Dead
• A Gallery of CIA Spy Cameras

Anyway, I enjoyed the book and the authors, and I highly recommend it for a Father's Day gift. Needless to say, I've not received anything in return for this endorsement except a copy of the book itself, which they can have back when they pry it from my cold dead hands. [CIA Spycraft; Amazon Sales Page]

Gear Crazy
No offense to Steve Carell, but I'm not talking about goofy Maxwell Smart crap—I'm talking about serious Bond-grade hardware: Inflatable getaway airplanes, remote-controlled spying insects, cigarettes that fire .22 rounds, hallucinogenic cigars, about 100 other tobacco-related instruments of deception and an ingeniously camouflaged speedboat or two, not to mention digital audio recorders and CCD-based digicams developed decades before their commercial appearance. They've all been built by CIA engineers and used successfully, at least in the test phase.

The extensively researched book chronicles the gear and the people behind the gear, operatives still shrouded in pseudonym (or even anonym) who went around Moscow on cold winter days planting listening devices in hotel rooms or dead-dropping microfiche in the middle of public parks. It's about the nerds in the labs who were asked to make debris-free drills and didn't balk, guys who were asked to mount blow-up sex dolls as pop-up in-car decoys and didn't laugh. (OK, some probably laughed.) In short, it's an incredible page turner, mostly because none of it was dreamed up by Sir Ian Fleming or any of his thousand copycats.

Whodunit
The book is so good because it's written by two of the only guys who could write it. Bob Wallace was a CIA agent for 32 years and the director of the CIA's Office of Technical Services (that is, "office of covert badass spy gear") from 1998 to 2002. A guy who chose spy work over journalism after leaving the University of Kansas, he did his first 20 years the hard way, in field ops. He admits that many of his own early exploits can never be written down.

Keith Melton is an espionage historian, something of an international man of mystery if I ever met one, whose most authoritative claim on this project is that he has the largest collection of espionage devices the world has ever (not) seen. You know that Palm III that features heavily in the 2007 spy thriller Breach, about late Cold War Soviet turncoat Robert Hanssen? Yeah, Melton owns that Palm III—Hanssen's original, complete with stolen state secrets. I asked Melton how he got it, and he just said vaguely that he has his ways. "Let's leave it at that."

Too Many Secrets
I asked both of the authors how they were allowed to release a book filled with spy secrets, and they admitted it had not been easy. By Wallace's account, the CIA tied it up for 18 months. Melton says it's more like two years, and that at one point the CIA deemed the work "the most damaging book on espionage ever to be published," and "a virtual primer on espionage." As you can tell, the CIA eventually consented to the book's publication, more or less intact.

"At one time, all this material would have been classified secret or higher," Wallace says. "But given the change in technology that has occurred, the time that has passed and the fact that the primary target, the Soviet Union, no longer existed, these stories could be written down to fill a major void in American intelligence literature."

In truth, the reason it can be declassified is that espionage involves totally different kinds of machines now, mainly laptops and BlackBerrys, and instead of needing microphones and cameras, agents need software to "listen" to chatter in the ether.

CIA's Secret Gadget Rooms
I asked Wallace if there was a secret room at CIA headquarters where all the gadgets hung from the wall, his answer was even better: there are multiple rooms, one for each department: the guys who did disguises and forged documents had one, the guys who did secret listening devices had one. "It was like going on a Hollywood tour," he says, only as OTS director, he was the guy giving the tours, to visiting congressmen and other senior Washington staff.

"I don't know that I ever had a bad visit with a congressman. You would put things in their hands to touch and feel, to operate and manipulate, and then you'd tell them the operational story that went behind the object: what it was used for, and the product that came from it," says Wallace, adding wistfully, "It was a dream job."

End of Spy Gear?
Melton says that Wallace may be the last OTS director to give those tours, or to bring a briefcase of neat-o hardware to his closed congressional hearings. In the future, directors would be "more likely to come and show you a printout or algorithm, something that could do more than 1,000 spies." Melton explains, "The gadgets are the spies, while the humans are support, now more than ever." How's that for making you feel sad and Matrix-y all at the same time?

If the age of the crazy cool spy gear has come to an end, all the more reason we should celebrate it. For the next several days, I will be posting spy hardware from Wallace and Melton's book with a "CIA Spytech" tag, stuff that will make you laugh, cry or just hide under your dresser for a while. It's amazing, chilling stuff and again, it's ALL TOTALLY REAL. Stay tuned! [Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to al-Qaeda]

He says that he was just hired to write pirate programs to make DirecTV's own network more secure, but one of his projects for News Corp., the "stinger," can talk to any smart card in the world. Another hacker claims that he bragged about using the stinger with News Corps.'s people to reprogram a bunch of Dish's cards, but Tarnovsky claims he's being set up to take the fall.

Dish says the hack attack has cost them over $900 million. Either way, this whole thing is some serious material for a TNT movie of the week. [Reuters via Valleywag]

This do-it-yourself espionage kit can be great for getting your career back on track after that lying HR broad complained about some inappropriate conduct in the break room. All you have to do is use the micro-listening device for eavesdropping, the invisible ink pen and decoder to write hidden messages to yourself, and the two mirrors to peek around corners—and not up dresses! You hear that Maria? Not up dresses!

Available now for $12.99. – Jason Chen

Product Page [The Office Espionage Kit via Neatorama]

Hidden camera footage appeared to show individuals walking up to the rock by the side of a Moscow street, according to media reports. One man was seen on camera carrying the rock away. The rock appears to be about the size of a thick book.

Nifty idea. Question is, what sort of devices would you use to conduct an espionage operation like this one?

Russia: British used 'rock' to spy [CNN (via Designboom)]

The spy coat that comes with its own camera [T3]