Spooks

Spooks | Daily Tribune

Mocking recent serious spying incidents in the country is another troubling espionage operation.

Strange? Not exactly. Twenty-first century spying goes beyond Hollywoodish “cloak and dagger” operations to now include the handiwork of shadowy foreign agents influencing local prominent personalities and groups.

A recent example was the ridiculing of security officials by shameless pro-China Filipino influencers and groups who claimed the spying equipment seized from an arrested Chinese national whom the authorities said was a “spy” was crude.

But the seized equipment was far from crude. Intelligence officials said the devices were capable of intercepting sensitive information from secure military and civilian facilities — information that would be useful for military operations in the event of a conflict.

Undoubtedly, the intent of the mockery was to imply that China was far more sophisticated in its espionage activities than our supposedly “clueless” national security officials are capable of surveilling or catching.

Other influence operations to mold public perception and opinion, of course, have been carried out and some are still ongoing, which is hardly surprising considering the heightened tension with China.

But at the moment these operations are largely of no consequence to the general public. Otherwise, public support for the government’s stand against Chinese maritime abuses in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) wouldn’t be as overwhelming as shown by surveys.

Strange too is that these pro-China influencers ignore the age-old political dictum that for a country to unite, all it needs is a foreign enemy.

Still, while such blatant influence operations are still largely unsuccessful and readily apparent, national security officials are nevertheless wary and alarmed.

So much so that worried security officials are urgently calling for the quick passage of a bill titled conspicuously as Countering Foreign Interference and Malign Influence.

The bill is aside from calls to amend the antiquated anti-espionage law, which Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro characterized recently as “only effective in times of war,” not during “peacetime.”

Strangely, Congress has yet to decisively act on these concerns of national security officials.

But Congress has to act sooner than later in the face of the undeniably ramped-up Chinese intelligence-gathering activities.

This is more than evident with the recent apprehensions of foreign agents, the presence of underwater drones in the country’s internal waters, the rampant issuance of fake identification cards to foreign nationals, and the incessant cyberattacks on government offices.

The arrest last week of a suspected Chinese spy, for instance, is the second time a Chinese man was arrested using the same technology as the first one. The authorities, however, kept that earlier arrest under wraps.

Earlier too, military officials said they had detected and seized several suspicious drones flying over vital military facilities.

With the authorities now being forthcoming about these land-based intelligence gathering operations, it is obvious that the authorities are not only preempting such operations but are putting pro-China groups on the defensive.

But suspected intelligence-gathering operations are also in our seas, with the underwater drone sporting Chinese markings that was recently fished out by Filipino fishermen the tell-tale evidence.

Defense analysts say the discovery of the submersible points to China’s intention to deploy submarines in Philippine waters in the event of war.

The submarine drone, as one expert said, is “useful for collecting oceanographic data… that are essential for hiding submarines from acoustic detection…(and) can also be used to covertly carry out hydrographic surveys or to listen for the movements of other submarines.”

Meanwhile, on the matter of fake identities, the case of detained former Bamban, Tarlac mayor Alice L. Go is an instance of such a scheme.

Defense and military officials agree that all these troubling espionage activities are interconnected and that they present enormous challenges not only to them but also to our peace of mind.