I don’t know very much about the world of espionage, be it ‘Bond, James Bond’ style or plain old boring commercial skullduggery. I do know that all sides went to extraordinary lengths re technology in order to gain an edge. In the days of paper and filing cabinets, if a spy wanted to get copies, he/she would have to use a small camera like a Minox. Cute, and with excellent resolution, these little cameras could provide a useful working copy of any document.

The problem in using one of these is that you had to be on the premises, and this could involve a lot of travelling. The Minox has been replaced by the hacker, which is a nice sit down job, working from home.

I know less about sabotage but, if movies are anything to go by, huge explosions, large construction machinery and fires have all played a part. As with espionage, there is the problem of having to be on site which again involves travelling maybe, and one has to plan a quick exit in order to evade the three constituents of all good sabotage attempts. It requires a less technical approach, but one has to know something about explosives and/or portable nuclear devices.

OK, so you are not a hacker or an explosives expert or bull dozer driver, but you want to cause a bit of a stir and inconvenience a great many people, while bringing down a few commercial enterprises without having to run from flying glass. All you need is knowledge of underground cabling and a hacksaw (pictured left) available from all good hardware stores. Some bods recently cut through underground fiber optic cabling in San Francisco. It caused havoc and took a few hours to repair.

Get a mix of hackers and hacksawers together and you could reduce major national or world centers to sprawling wastelands without having to set a single fuse. If you want to know where anything is that would make a good target, all you need is a netbook, GPS and Google maps. Kind of scary, isn’t it. No Vodka Martini drinking suave operatives required. No training re how to kill a person with a Rolex watch. No training re how to use a Minox light meter. Just a handyman hacksaw and a couple of spare blades.