The head of Britain’s domestic security service MI5 has revealed that its spies have disrupted a new threat from China in recent days as he expressed frustration at the collapse of a spy case linked to Beijing.
“Just last week we went operational again,” MI5 director general Ken McCallum told reporters on Thursday, declining to elaborate on the nature of the activity. “Do Chinese state actors pose a threat to UK national security? The answer is: Of course they do – every day.”
Chinese espionage in Britain has come under greater scrutiny after prosecutors decided to drop the case against two men accused of trying to obtain information about the country’s policy towards Beijing. The Crown Prosecution Service said it dropped the case because the government did not meet the threshold for designating China a national security threat.
The suspects denied the charges.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer shifted the blame to the prosecutors and the Conservative government that was in power when the allegations were first made. On Wednesday, he released witness statements from Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins showing what he described as an “active espionage threat” in the case.
“Obviously, I’m frustrated when opportunities are not taken to prosecute activities that threaten national security,” McCallum told reporters. “My teams have every right to be proud of the detection and intrusion work they did in this case.”
While McCallum declined to comment on Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson’s handling of the case, he backed Collins. “I regard him as a man of high integrity and a professional of considerable quality,” McCallum said.
Earlier this week, MI5 warned politicians and their staff that they were being targeted by spies from China, Russia and Iran in an attempt to undermine British democracy. The new guidelines sought to help people working in the British government fight “espionage and foreign interference”.
Separately, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Chinese state actors had been accessing secret British computer systems for more than a decade and had obtained low- and medium-level confidential information for the past 10 years, according to people familiar with the matter.
McCallum confirmed that there is a constant and persistent cyber threat to government networks from China and other countries. He backed former National Cyber Security Center head Ciaran Martin’s statement to Bloomberg that “top secret state secrets” were not disclosed by China.
This article was generated from an automated news agency source without text modification.
