Some employees at Israel’s covert security agency are blogging about their work lives in an attempt to attract more high-tech workers to the Shin Bet’s ranks.

The highly secretive organization runs informants and agents, carries out surveillance and interrogations and serves as a key component of Israel’s battle against Palestinian militants.

But so far patriotism and adventure are barely mentioned in the bloggers’ entries. The employees, who work on the technological side of the Shin Bet’s operations rather than in the field, seem more preoccupied with their salaries and spending time with their kids.

One 34-year-old blogger, identified as “Y,” reassured readers that he’s usually home by 6:30 p.m. and that his salary is “no worse than at any other high-tech company on the market.”‘ The bloggers are identified only by the first letter of their names and appear in black silhouette on the site.

In 2006, facing competition from Israel’s thriving and lucrative high-tech industry, the Shin Bet partially shed its secretive image and launched a campaign to attract new workers, taking out ads in newspapers and unveiling a slick Web site that lists available jobs and solicits resumes.

The blog project launched Sunday is the newest part of the campaign, in which Israel’s feared security agency comes across as just another high-tech company vying for technology talent in a competitive job market.

“There are things that I can’t even tell my husband in detail,” writes “H,” a quality assurance engineer, “but in any case, we don’t like to discuss work at home.” Only members of her immediate family know she works for the Shin Bet.

The agency’s offices “aren’t gleaming and fashionably designed like I was used to in the world of high-tech,” but they aren’t bad, “H” writes.

It might not have been quite what blog surfers were expecting. In one reader response, a surfer calling herself Brandy said she was disappointed: “Maybe I’ve watched too many James Bond movies, but you make it sound gray and charmless,” she complained.

“A,” a programming engineer, writes that he heard the Shin Bet was looking for high-tech workers and imagined the fictional Counter-Terrorism Unit from the hit show “24.”

“Who wouldn’t want to imagine themselves working in the command-and-control center of the CTU?” he writes.

But his blog entry indicates real life might be somewhat less exciting: “Though it’s really unfair, I didn’t get a siren to put on my car, and I too have to sit in traffic jams.”

“This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds,” he writes.

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On the Net:

http://www.shin-tech.org.il