Spy Agency Gets Ruffled Over Furby

WASHINGTON - The National Security Agency has targeted a new national-security threat capable of blabbing secrets to U.S. adversaries: the Furby.

As harried parents scrambled in the weeks before Christmas to get their hands on these homely, high-tech cyberpets that can repeat what they hear, the supersecret spy agency put out a "Furby Alert" on its internal message system in early December and banned Furbys from its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.

"Personally owned photographic, video and audio recording equipment are prohibited items. This includes toys, such as `Furbys,' with built-in recorders that repeat the audio with synthesized sound to mimic the original signal," the Furby Alert warned NSA workers.

"We are prohibited from introducing these items into NSA spaces. Those who have should contact their staff security officer for guidance."

What the punishment for having a Furby on a desk at Fort Meade would be, or how many Furbys actually infest the NSA, could not immediately be determined.

But with all transgressors under orders to turn themselves in, former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker speculated that "getting them (the Furbys) out is going to be almost harder than getting them in."

"You'd have to take them to the basement," Baker deadpanned, "and sweat them a lot."

Equipped with computer chips and the kind of infrared transmitters and receivers found in TV remote controls, these $29.99 wonders (sometimes selling for much more) speak, sleep, make weird noises and supposedly interact with their environment, repeating some of what they hear.

It's hard to imagine them divulging state secrets, but who knows more about pulling in what it hears than the NSA, which intercepts electronic communications using satellites and other highly classified means.

NSA officials were worried, said one Capitol Hill source who is monitoring the intelligence community, "that people would take them home and they'd start talking classified."

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' project on government secrecy, said he wasn't surprised that the NSA, which is nothing if not bureaucratic and secretive, had drawn the line on Furby.

"They can't simply say, `Be smart, don't do anything to compromise security,' " Aftergood said. "There has to be a page in the security manual that says, `No dolls with tape recorders.' "