ISRAEL: Spies who blog

Facing competition from a lucrative high-tech industry at home, Israel's domestic spy agency shed a bit of its secretive image two years ago by creating newspaper ads and a Web site to list available jobs and solicit applicants. In a new feature of the campaign, the Shin Bet this week unveiled a blog in which its techies write about their work lives in an effort to attract more of their ilk to the ranks.

The agency, deeply involved in Israel's battles against Palestinian militants, conducts surveillance and interrogations. But the bloggers, who sit at office computer terminals, get less than their share of adventure. So far they sound more concerned with their salaries and knocking off work early enough to spend time with the kids.

"A," a programming engineer, writes that he heard the Shin Bet was looking for high-tech workers and imagined the fictional Counter-Terrorism Unit from the hit TV series "24." The bloggers are identified only by the first letter of their names and appear in black silhouette on the site.

"Who wouldn't want to imagine themselves working in the command-and-control center of the CTU?" wrote "A," before conceding that his job is somewhat less exciting. "Though it's really unfair, I didn't get a siren to put on my car, and I too have to sit in traffic jams."

Brandy, in a reader response to the blog, said she was disappointed. "Maybe I've watched too many James Bond movies," she wrote, "but you make it sound gray and charmless."

— Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem

Image: www.shin-tech.org.il