Yesterdays Mail on Sunday ran with an article on the front page detailing a honeytrap suspected to have been carried out by Chinese spy’s.
According to the report a top aide of the current British prime minister Gordon Brown had has Blackberry stolen whilst on an official tour of china earlier this year.
The unnamed aide was ‘picked up’ by a Chinese woman in a shanghai hotel and returned to his room with her, only to awake the next morning and seemingly without his trusty mobile device.
Had it been a regular mobile device this story wouldn’t be nearly as interesting but the blackberry is often touted for its office features such as document viewing and email access. Such a device would make an interesting target for any foreign intelligence agency. An article here goes on further to state that the Blackberry was password protected though not encrypted. I would take this to mean that in the hands of the Chinese government a mere password protection is essentially no protection.
China has since denied the allegation stating “The related report is a sheer fabrication. We hope that in the future, there will be no more such irresponsible reports”.
Personally I hold little doubt that it was Chinese intelligence gathering. No doubt this certainly will not be the last Chinese spy story any time soon as the Olympic games offers a veritable feast of spying opportunity’s for the red army.
