Israel's Mossad sets up fund for new spy technologies, including robotics, miniaturization

JERUSALEM – Israel's Mossad intelligence agency has set up an investment fund to help development of new espionage techniques, and is offering grants of up to 2 million shekels (about $570,000) per project to bring in new ideas. A government statement on Tuesday said Mossad was seeking technologies in various fields, including robotics, miniaturization and encryption as well as new automated methods of gleaning information from documents and new ways of carrying out operations more stealthily. A statement by the new fund, called Libertad, said it would be willing to give grants of up to 2 million shekels per project in exchange for non-exclusive rights to the technology. Developers would retain the rights to their products and would be able to sell them on, it said. "The Mossad wants to encourage innovation and creation of groundbreaking technology … the technology developed will be implemented by us, in cooperation between the parties," Libertad explained in a document.