So many things can be done online these days.
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You can even dob in a spy by filling out a form on the website of your favourite national security service.
China's ominously named Ministry of State Security has been a bit late in offering this convenience, but it's now doing so as part of an attempt to marshal the whole Chinese population in counter-espionage.
That's sure to consume a lot of bureaucratic time and effort.
The US Central Intelligence Agency, meanwhile, is saying it has lifted its game in China - something it has no reason to mention unless it just wants to goad the MSS.
China is already what spooks call a hard target, one that's difficult to penetrate, at least with spies.
Its government is good at limiting the number of people who know secrets and at monitoring what they and others are up to.
Foreign countries collect information on China also by listening to radio signals and burrowing into communications and computer networks, but those of us outside the black world don't know how successful such efforts are.
As China's domestic behaviour becomes more and more like kooky North Korea's, it is taking increasingly extreme steps to maintain secrecy.
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A new law that took effect on July 1 makes it a crime to divulge even information that's merely relevant to national security.
Since so many things can be "relevant", no one quite knows what can be discussed.
Then this month the usually low-profile MSS set up an account on the WeChat social-media service to reach out to the people.
It called for everyone to get involved in catching spies.
Finding foreign agents "not only requires the efforts of national security organisations," it said.
"It also requires the extensive participation of the masses."
So 1.4 billion people are now supposed to be keeping an eye out for shifty behaviour.
If they spot it, they can use that MSS online form.
Amusingly, the ministry has followed a common Chinese government habit by offering an English-language version of the form for the benefit of foreigners.
That may not be completely pointless, because there are indeed a few Westerners in China who are always on the Chinese Communist Party's side, defending all it does.
They're invariably focused on making money there and, in conversation, always seem to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Especially if they're in Shanghai - rather than Beijing or elsewhere - they may have weak Mandarin skills and would appreciate the chance to use English for dobbing in someone (maybe a business competitor).
As for Chinese dobbers-in, my guess is that they'll almost all be busybodies who don't have enough to do.
The MSS will have to wade through an ocean of rubbish reports as it looks for genuine clues to the dirty doings of the CIA and others.
China's nationalist culture, and a feeling that the rest of the world is out to get it, will encourage reporting.
Early in my time in China, when I worked for Reuters, a friend's father, a CCP member since before the Communist takeover in 1949, said to him: "All Reuters journalists are spies."
Later, another friend said to me directly: "You must be a spy."
"Then I can't be a very good one," I said. "Here I am spending Saturday afternoon with you, and you don't know anything."
Actually, even other foreign journalists sometimes expressed the same suspicion to me.
This was because, unusually, I was a specialist defence and aerospace reporter with a US publication, spending a lot of time talking to experts and industry people about aircraft designs, rocket engines and so on.
I suppose it's just as well that I'm not there now.
If I were, my name would probably be offered as an autofill on that form.
While a lot of the MSS's resources will be consumed in sorting through nutty reports by Nosey Parkers, it also wants the rest of the government and indeed private enterprise to spend time on spy catching.
It reminds everyone that, under the new law, "protecting national security is the responsibility of every government organisation, the armed forces, all [Communist] party and civil groups, enterprises and institutions and other groups in society".
Presumably, they're now all expected to hold meetings and draw up action plans to look for secret agents in their midst.
And all levels of government (national, provincial, city, etcetera, all the way down to villages) must run propaganda campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of undercover operatives.
Remarks by CIA director William Burns last month would have been noted.
Six years ago it was reported that from 2010 to 2012 China nabbed at least 18 people who were working for the US agency, killing most of them.
Now Burns says in relation to the CIA's Chinese efforts: "We've made progress and we're working very hard over recent years to ensure that we have strong human intelligence capability to complement what we can acquire through other methods."
Saying so looks unwise. China gets plenty of bad press for its massive intelligence-gathering efforts while rarely revealing its discoveries of other countries'.
Burns shouldn't want to rectify the resulting unbalanced media coverage.
Second, by saying the CIA is making progress, he can only induce the MSS to make even greater counter-espionage efforts.
Or was that his intention? Was Burns hoping to get the Chinese government to spend even more resources in chasing its own tail?
Yes, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. But we really are talking about conspiracists, here.
- Bradley Perrett was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.