Mind the spooks lurking online

On Nov 20, 2017, Dickson Yeo, who was studying for a PhD at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, posted on his Facebook page: "Spooky people are trying to add me on LinkedIn."

Elaborating, the Singaporean wrote that a "satanic archaeologist who curates 13th century artefacts from cult groups" was trying to add him as a contact.

"I know I'm alternative in views. But I'm not exactly casting spells or drinking blood now, am I?" he wrote.

Yeo wasn't.

But the spy, who was arrested in America two years ago and admitted that he had been recruited by China's intelligence services in 2015, had in fact been lurking on LinkedIn every day, trying to add targets.

He trawled the professional networking site for contacts whom he - at the behest of his handlers from the People's Liberation Army and Ministry of State Security - could mine for classified information. And it felt almost like an addiction, he told United States law enforcement officers of the site and its relentless algorithm.

No casting of spells - at least not in the mediaeval sense - or drinking of blood appears to have been involved in how Yeo got recruited, and how he sought to recruit other individuals.

Yeo was arrested in New York in November 2019, sentenced to a 14-month jail term last October, and deported to Singapore on Dec 30.

Last Tuesday's announcement by the Internal Security Department that Yeo had been issued a detention order under the Internal Security Act with effect from Jan 29, for acting as a paid agent of a foreign state, is a reminder of how espionage today has evolved.

Academics, researchers, civil servants and others who work closely with them continue to be targeted by foreign countries for the information and insights they have.

But social media and technology have made it much easier for their career history and even contacts to be accessed, and for them to be approached.

As Professor Joseph Liow, dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), told this newspaper last week: "Academics and researchers should certainly be aware that these sorts of things happen in real life, and are not merely the stuff of spy novels or Hollywood movies."

As geopolitical competition intensifies, more such cases can be expected to surface.

How can people - and others around them - guard against such attempts?

One way is greater awareness of how foreign intelligence agencies and their proxies have tapped social and professional networking platforms to lure individuals.

Concerns over sites like LinkedIn being used by intelligence agencies for espionage have surfaced in the past few years.

In one of the highest profile cases, former Central Intelligence Agency employee Kevin Patrick Mallory was arrested in June 2017, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to transmit national defence information.

He had been first approached by Chinese intelligence via a fake profile on LinkedIn.

In April, Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5 warned that at least 10,000 Britons had been approached by fake profiles linked to hostile states on LinkedIn over the past five years.

French and German domestic intelligence agencies have also warned of attempts by agents, using the networking site, to contact several thousands of their nationals.

Lithuania, which has identified Russian intelligence activity as its main security threat, said in its latest national threat assessment report: "Hostile foreign intelligence services increasingly use online social networks to find and recruit sources abroad."

It went on to add that thousands of LinkedIn users around the world have received offers from fictitious Chinese companies to become their consultants or employees, and that such activities had also been identified in Lithuania.

The report also lists some recruitment signs to watch out for, a reminder that if an approach is too good to be true, it probably is.

Among them: a request for an analytical assessment of trends in a given country, a summary of public and non-public political or military information, payment in advance, a request for confidentiality, and further contacts via mobile apps such as WeChat or e-mail.

Yeo appears to have been targeted through some of these methods, based on the court documents.

He also reached out to several of his targets using these methods - from the time he was recruited, while he was operating a front consulting company in Singapore in 2018, and during his six-month stint as a visiting scholar at a university in Washington.

They include a person with security clearance working with the US air force on the F-35B military aircraft programme, and a State Department employee who confided to Yeo that he was dissatisfied at work and was having financial troubles, and later wrote a report about a then serving US Cabinet member.

It is also important for colleagues and friends to be mindful of the possible factors that could lead to someone in their circle being recruited, look out for them, and raise the alert should anything seem amiss or suspicious.

Yeo's case is instructive as some factors that made him vulnerable also influenced his targets.

In a memo for his sentencing hearing last year, his defence lawyers noted that he "was cash-strapped and floundering in his academic pursuits" when he was recruited.

"He deeply regrets having gotten caught up in the swirl of satisfying Chinese intelligence requirements and compromising his own integrity. During his PhD years, he was lonely, broke and suffering from disappointment in his academic endeavours," they said.

"The Chinese gave him more respect and dignity for the work he was doing than he was able to obtain from his efforts at academia. He has acknowledged that he was vulnerable and allowed the Chinese intelligence operatives to use his skill sets to extract insights on Washington."

Yeo had also approached various individuals in Singapore in a bid to get information for his reports, and in January 2018, set up a front company with a similar name to a known US firm, Resolute Consulting, for information gathering and recruitment purposes.

On Jan 31, 2018, he wrote in a Facebook post: "Oh my god, setting up a company is so much work".

But the company details - a casually named website called reso.rocks, a Gmail address rather than a formal e-mail account, a mobile phone number and no office address - did not seem to raise any suspicions either.

A fake job listing he posted received over 400 resumes, 90 per cent of them from US military and government personnel with security clearances.

US prosecutors said: "Yeo learnt to focus on the targets' vulnerabilities, including whether the targets were dissatisfied with work, were having financial troubles, or had children to support. Yeo also focused on building rapport and trust with his targets. Yeo successfully recruited multiple US citizens to provide him with information."

Just as early intervention from those around them is seen as a way to restrain extremists who might otherwise go about their activities undetected, a similar approach could help prevent those vulnerable to recruitment for espionage from being targeted.

Ultimately, the best defence against attempts by foreign actors seeking to tap people in Singapore to carry out clandestine activities, whether directed at Singapore or elsewhere, is probably a discerning populace.

Singapore is an open society connected to the region and the world, and with a trusted reputation. Foreign clandestine agencies, whose nationals might find it difficult to operate elsewhere in the world or to be trusted, would want to try and recruit Singaporeans - be they academics, activists or officials - to do their work.

The same pattern has been observed with transnational criminal masterminds, who have sought to use Singaporeans to transport illicit goods because the red passport is trusted, or to arrange for illicit shipments to pass through the port here as it adds a layer of legitimacy.

As NTU's Prof Liow notes: "Singapore is of course a very open country, and by virtue of that, I suppose you can say that we are vulnerable to such activities.

"It's not happening on a daily basis, and of course our security agencies spend a lot of time making sure such activities don't take place, but nevertheless as academics, researchers, or just regular citizens, we need to exercise some common sense and be vigilant."

When news of Yeo's arrest in the US broke last July, some observers wondered whether Singapore's reputation might take a hit.

Hopefully the spotlight on his case makes more people think twice about accepting that LinkedIn request from a dubious or unknown profile.