The arrests are the culmination of a multi-year investigation by FBI that used extensive surveillance of communications and wiretaps, including putting listening devices into the homes of the accused individuals. The Justice Department has filed criminal charges against 11 people, of which one is yet to be arrested.

The federal prosecutors said a clandestine network of Russian spies in the US used private Wi-Fi networks, flash memory sticks, and text messages concealed in graphical images to exchange information.

Earlier, China had alleged that the US was using Google to spy on China.

The FBI decrypted a coded message in 2009 sent to two of the individuals accused of being part of the ring. The message instructed them to "search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels" back to Moscow, according to court papers.

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The individuals were accused of collecting information ranging from research programs on small yield, high penetration nuclear warheads and the global gold market to trying to obtain background information about people who applied for jobs at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to court papers.

The court papers include details of 21st century spycraft more high-tech than anything Jason Bourne knew about, said a report. Defendant Anna Chapman allegedly brought her laptop to a coffee shop on 47th Street in Manhattan in January and transferred data with a Russian government official who drove by in a minivan but never entered the store.

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In another information exchange two months later, Chapman allegedly opened her laptop while in a bookstore in lower Manhattan and used a private Wi-Fi network to communicate with the same Russian official who was nearby.

Anna Chapman appeared Monday evening in federal court in Manhattan. A prosecutor claimed Chapman used a "range extender" for her laptop that communicated to an address that matched a Russian government computer; a judge denied bail. And the Washington Post reported that one defendant was a reporter for a Spanish-language newspaper in New York, and another worked for the Conference Board, a private organization that provides economic data.