According to US agencies investigating the activities of 40-year-old Singaporean Dickson Yeo, who had been spying for China in the US, he was “not a small player”.
The US Department of Justice accused the Chinese government of using “an array of duplicity to obtain sensitive information from unsuspecting Americans”.
It had mentioned that Yeo was “central to one such scheme” and that he had made use of career networking platforms and a fake consulting firm to “lure Americans who might be of interest to the Chinese government”.
It was found that Yeo had used social media platforms, including LinkedIn, to create profiles of possible informants, pick out their weaknesses and recruit them.
Tens of thousands of users all around the globe were targeted by him.
Yeo had been recruited back in 2015 by Chinese agents claiming to be from think tanks.
He had also approached people in Singapore in an attempt to try and dig up information.
According to the Internal Security Department on 16 June, “He had also tried, but failed, to secure employment in the Singapore Government sector to further his information-gathering activities. Yeo had carried out these activities over a period from 2016 until his arrest in the US in 2019.”
This rampant use of social media for covert activities has resulted in educational campaigns aimed not only at civil servants and individuals working in the defence sectors, but also those in the wider community.
The goal is to spread awareness on the possibility of being lured by false organisations into spying against their own organisation and country.
Other countries are also coming up with similar campaigns to educate their citizens.
For instance, the US, Australia and Lithuania are sharing details of certain cases that occurred recently, as well as implementing safeguarding measures to prevent individuals from being targeted.
Australia’s counter-espionage agency Asio implemented a public campaign in November 2020 to caution citizens against spies who may be attempting to target and recruit Australians for espionage and spywork.
In the UK, British security agencies carried out a campaign warning 450,000 civil servants, industry partners and academics against adversaries who are building false profiles online to target people with access to classified information.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre released a movie in September 2020 to educate people on how fake accounts on social media platforms are used by overseas intelligence agencies to gather intelligence and target recruits.
No, it’s not The Bourne Identity. You can watch the movie here:
Featured Image: Facebook (Dickson Yeo) / Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA)
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