Instead of being in the possession of a spy itself, it could be a trojan horse for spyware. You give the iPod (or several iPods) to important people around the

Instead of being in the possession of a spy itself, it could be a trojan horse for spyware. You give the iPod (or several iPods) to important people around the world, and when they plug it in to a computer it executes some sort of Zero-day exploit, potentially even a backdoor embedded into iTunes developed simultaneously with this project. Or maybe these iPods were used for multiple purposes at the same time. Anywhere where you needed a non-suspicious device to do something extra, you could get one of these custom iPods.