Intel gathering

LinkedIn is becoming China's go-to platform for recruiting foreign spies

Buried in the 41-page felony complaint charging a former U.S. intelligence operative of spying for the Chinese, FBI investigators declare that the suspect, Ron Rockwell Hansen, had been printing information from his colleagues’ LinkedIn pages.

Hansen, a former Defense Intelligence Agency case officer who pleaded guilty on March 15 to attempted espionage against the U.S., took information from the professional networking site related to several former and current DIA case officers before a 2015 trip to China.

The complaint does not state how that information was used, if at all, but it’s enough to raise the notion Hansen may have been passing LinkedIn data to Chinese handlers in addition to other secret DIA materials files.

“I solicited from an intelligence case officer working for the Defense Intelligence Agency national defense information that I knew Chinese Intelligence services would find valuable, and I agreed to act as a conduit to sell that information to the Chinese” in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Hansen said as part of his plea deal.

The Hansen case provides the latest details into how Chinese intelligence agencies research and recruit Americans who can provide U.S. secrets that could benefit Beijing. It’s a vast, years-long effort that includes everything from cyber-espionage to coercing U.S. companiesinto turning over their intellectual property. But a string of recent cases demonstrate how suspected Chinese spies are exploiting LinkedIn, a networking site inherently meant to facilitate professional communications, to gather information about potential sources.