The Free Speech Union’s top lawyer has claimed he was targeted by Chinese spies pretending to be researchers.
Bryn Harris, the chief legal counsel at the FSU, suspects he was the target of a ‘China capture’ campaign after he began receiving emails from supposed computer and artificial intelligence researchers.
Speaking to The Times, Mr Harris said he knew something wasn’t right when the researchers, who all had Chinese names, claimed to work in complicated areas of technology, made several basic mistakes.
‘They claimed to be working for IBM and Google, but they wrote to me from Gmail addresses. The language was flawless, but felt like it was AI-generated’, said Mr Harris.
‘They were extremely obsequious in the way that they talked to me, perhaps trying to get to me in some way. It just didn’t feel right’.
Mr Harris said he was suspicious that he was being targeted because of the FSU’s work to promote free speech on university campuses.
Free speech in China is extremely limited due to the communist government’s efforts to maintain political stability and social order.
Mr Harris says his name was associated with the FSU’s submissions to the government on higher education legislation to strengthen legal protections for free speech across universities.
Bryn Harris, the chief legal counsel at the FSU, suspects he was the target of a ‘ Chinacapture’ campaign
He said he was first contacted by a researcher called Lala Chen in June, another in July who called herself Ailin, and then a third woman called Emily in October.
A UK-China transparency charity, known as UKCT, who Harris had contacted for help, concluded that the trio, who claimed to be working from the US, were in fact in Asia.
It also found that one of the supposed researchers had used a photograph of a well-known Korean actress, while another had used an avatar from a Facebook dating service.
While Mr Harris said he was suspicious immediately, he said he wanted to raise further awareness so that other professionals would be wary of similar approaches and job offers.
Daily Mail has approached the FSU for comment.
It comes after MI5 warned that Chinese spies are creating fake job adverts to trick civil servants, military staff and academics into handing over State secrets.
In a new escalation in Beijing espionage targeting Britain, hundreds of thousands of suspicious job ads are appearing on online platforms offering bumper salaries and tempting fees in exchange for ‘unique insight’ reports.
MI5 fears scores of Britons may have been lured in by fake recruitment consultancies set up by China.
The National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), a branch of MI5, has issued an alert warning that foreign intelligence services are daily posing bogus job adverts to target government staff, academics, think-tank employees, private defence contractors and others.
In October 2023, MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum warned that Chinese spies had targeted 20,000 officials on LinkedIn.
But since then, tactics have evolved with false employment sites, bogus recruitment firms or spoof legitimate companies being set up. In some cases, people are being offered £2,000 for a single report on matters such as foreign policy, defence and government insight.
Sir Ken hinted at the issue in a wide-ranging speech in October, warning Britons to be wary of a ‘tempting job advert in your sector [that] is just too good to be true’.
The NPSA alert warns professionals: ‘Your insights and network of contacts can form valuable ‘pieces of the jigsaw’ when brought together with other information.’ Anyone with access to sensitive information are told to be wary of generic job titles such as ‘geopolitics’, ‘international affairs’ and ‘political risk’, or buzz words such as ‘unique insights’ and ‘hot topics’.
The practice often involves payment through unconventional means such as cryptocurrency. Once hooked, victims can be enticed into flying to a non-Western country where they are directly pressed into spying for China.
