US Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security Countermeasures Directorate has recently launched a new public exhibition on cold-war era eavesdropping gadgets entitled, "Listening In: Electronic Eavesdropping in the Cold War Era." Scientific American posted a slide show ("Spying on the spies") of the exhibition and much of the text written about the devices, from old-school keyloggers to phone tap detectors. The permanent exhibit is located in the lobby of a State Department building in Rosslyn, Va.

Perhaps one of our DC readers can help us out and confirm the location. According to the State Department's list of field offices, there are 2 buildings in Rosslyn within a few blocks of each other: 1400 Wilson Boulevard and 1801 North Lynn Street.

MASON A3B RECEIVER: U.S. State Department engineers working for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security needed a receiver in order to find devices subversively transmitting signals to the enemy. The best kind of receiver was one that could be moved from room to room without looking like a radio, and the Mason A3 more than fit the bill.

The State Department's DIPNOTE blog posted a video of Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy and State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack discussing the process for creating a passport and its new security features. For the video's transcript, go to http://video.state.gov.

Diplomats take a shine to Wikipedia-like app

Thanks to my colleague Shirl Kennedy at DocuTicker.com for posting direct links to this "in the news" document.

Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States and Brazil to Advance Cooperation on Biofuels

Also online is this DOS News Release.

The U.S. Department of State has just released the 2006 Annual Report on Human Rights.

The 2006 Annual Report on Human Rights Consists of the Following Sections:
+ Preface, Overview and Acknowledgements, and Introduction
+ Africa Country Reports
+ East Asia and the Pacific Country Reports
+ Europe and Eurasia Country Reports
+ Near East and North Africa Country Reports
+ South and Central Asia Country Reports
+ Western Hemisphere Country Reports
+ Appendices
+ Related Material

You can access archived versions of the Annual Report on Human Rights back to 1995 here.

Last week, DOS released the 2007 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.

Note the * to links to a PDF of a revised report. The website notes:

The 2007 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report has been revised since its original posting to the website.