![Federal Security Service, formerly called the State Security Committee [KGB], on Moscow's Lubyanka Square. (File) - Sputnik International](https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/104543/66/1045436653_0:157:3085:1892_600x0_80_0_0_aa4ff07eb6d911ae57a6a495f3208885.jpg "Federal Security Service, formerly called the State Security Committee [KGB], on Moscow's Lubyanka Square. (File)")
MOSCOW, March 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday his time in the KGB had taught him that it was “bad” to listen into other people’s conversations.
“It’s bad to eavesdrop,” a smiling Putin told a meeting of his newly revived All-Russian People’s Front. “I learned this from my time in the KGB. [And] I gave it up.”
Putin spent 16 years in the KGB, serving in Dresden, East Germany – his only foreign posting – from 1985 to 1990. There is no official account of his role in the Soviet-era security service, although Putin described his duties in East Germany as “ordinary intelligence” work in his 2000 autobiography “First Person.”
The rare insight into Putin’s time in the KGB came after a human rights worker told him that she had overheard two children discussing the impending adoption of a law that would allow children to lodge complaints against their parents.
