5 more Chinese ‘spies’ nabbed, By: Gillian Villanueva - Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:38 AM January 31, 2025
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"MANILA, Philippines — The National Bureau of Investigation has arrested five more suspected Chinese spies who were allegedly monitoring Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and Philippine Navy activities in Palawan, including the resupply of troops in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).
Based on the NBI’s surveillance and accounts of witnesses, NBI Director Jaime Santiago told a news conference on Thursday that the group had set up high-resolution solar-powered cameras pointed at the waters off Palawan where PCG ships must pass in going to and coming from the WPS.
“That may be why, if you have noticed before our resupply ships can deliver food and supplies in the WPS, there are already [China Coast Guard] ships waiting for them,” Santiago said.
Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. said that based on the NBI’s record of the group’s activities, the rotation and resupply (Rore) missions may have been compromised as early as 2023.
Santiago and Brawner were referring to the Rore missions for troops at Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal west of Palawan, which the China Coast Guard had been blocking, sometimes violently, before Manila and Beijing reached an agreement last year to prevent future confrontations.
Working with Deng
At the press conference, the NBI presented the five suspected spies who were identified as Cai Shaohuang, 52; Wang Yong Yi, 52; Wu Jun Ren, 62; Wu Chengting, 38; and Chen Haitao, 36. They were arrested separately on Jan. 24 and Jan. 25 and are facing charges of violating Commonwealth Act No. 616, the 1941 antiespionage law, in relation to Republic Act No. 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
The NBI said the five men had been working with Deng Yuanqing, 39, the alleged Chinese spy who was arrested on Jan. 17 in Makati City along with two Filipino cohorts.
Deng and the two Filipinos were caught operating a device that allegedly mapped critical infrastructures of the country, including military sites and power installations.
The NBI arrested Chen and Wu Chengting on Jan. 24 at Terminal 3 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport following their morning flight from Palawan.
The NBI said it received an intelligence report in November 2024 that Chen and Wu had been taking drone shots of ports, and PCG and Navy ships in Palawan.
According to Santiago, the two men returned to Manila to meet up with Wang and Wu Jun Ren, who were arrested in Intramuros and Binondo, respectively, later on the same day. They were supposed to receive the surveillance data or intelligence report from Chen and Wu before they were arrested, he said.
The following day, the NBI arrested Cai, who served as the group’s “field commander,” in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental province, the NBI chief said.
Monitored sites
Among the areas in Palawan that were monitored by the suspects were a naval detachment at Oyster Bay in Puerto Princesa, where ships heading to the WPS sailed from, and at Kahumat-an Beach, which faces the waters where these vessels would be passing through.
Santiago said the group also monitored coast guard stations, the Antonio Bautista Air Base, the Del Pilar Class PS 16 naval base, and Navy dockyards.
According to NBI Cybercrime Division chief Jeremy Lotoc, the suspects were able to gather information by posing as “harmless members” of legitimate organizations, such as the Qiaoxing Volunteer Group of the Philippines and the Philippine China Association for the Promotion of Peace and Friendship Inc.
“They would establish contact with individuals who have access to valuable information without revealing their real identity,” Lotoc said, adding that the suspects used multiple identification (ID) cards with different names.
As members of these organizations, the suspects would then conduct activities, such as medical missions, sometimes with local politicians or government officials, that would allow them access to beaches and other strategic areas where they could set up surveillance cameras.
“As early as 2023, this group was monitored in Kahamut-an Beach in Barangay Buenavista,” Lotoc said. “They tried to rent a portion of that beach and tried to install that kind of CCTV on that beach because, as you can see right in front of that area, that is the only place where ships can pass through.”
Later in 2024, the group also tried to lease a portion of Sun Seas Beach Resort at Barangay Buliluyan, in Bataraza, Palawan, to install another CCTV camera without the owner’s consent. Lotoc said Barangay Buliluyan is within the vicinity of a site used under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between the Philippines and the United States, and PCG vessels coming from WPS missions can also be monitored from the area.
‘Data collection’
“In other words, the group is undoubtedly engaged and continuously engaging in data collection and disclosure of that data to outsiders. Those data affect the national defense, definitely to the injury of the Philippines,” Lotoc said.
Aside from Palawan, Lotoc said the suspects also operated from a high-rise cöndöminium in Metro Manila and had set up cameras powerful enough to monitor PCG ships entering and leaving Manila Bay.
By monitoring these areas in Metro Manila and Palawan, the group can track the routes, even the personnel, in the Rore missions in the WPS, according to Brawner.
“Well of course, they can see when Coast Guard ships leave and come back. So, they can monitor the number of Coast Guard ships that are in the West Philippine Sea at any one time. They can check the pattern,” he said.
“They can see when these ships enter Manila Bay, how many days it will stay. They are able to find out all the details of the resupply missions. And all of these details can be used for their planning purposes for whatever operations that they want to do in the future,” he said.
According to Bureau of Immigration spokesperson Dana Sandoval, the five men have been staying in the Philippines before 2023 and had been traveling to China.
“When we checked their records, we can say that they have embedded themselves in our society,” she said. “Some of them have been working here with a working visa, some of them have wives who are Filipinos. The earliest record we have on them was in 2002.”
Santiago refuted claims by Deng’s Filipino wife, Noemi, that her husband was not a graduate of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) University of Science and Technology (UST) in Nanjing, China, which the NBI earlier disclosed.
She insisted that he was only a road surveyor working for a company, which she was unable to identify, involved in the manufacturing of self-driving cars.
“They say that Deng Yuanqing is just an ordinary surveyor working for a company that manufactures autonomous cars. What company is it? Why can’t they name the company?” Santiago said.
‘Military grade’
He cited an entry in the website ScholarGPS—You do not have permission to view the full content of this post.
Log in or register now. purportedly identifies Deng as a graduate of PLA UST, specializing in “control engineering.”
He also objected to claims by Chinese-Filipino civic leader Teresita Ang See that the equipment seized from Deng was just a commercial device available online.
Santiago said what could be bought from online shops such as Shopee and Lazada were commercial-grade devices. “But what we got from them, specifically the Lidar, what we call Light Detection and Ranging … that was military-grade,” he said.
The Chinese Embassy in Manila had protested against the spy tag on Deng and urged the government not to make “baseless” allegations. It has not yet issued any statement on the latest arrests."
5 more Chinese ‘spies’ nabbed, BY GILLIAN N. VILLANUEVA, JANUARY 31, 2025
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5 more Chinese spies arrested; Suspects used CCTVs, drones, By Pot Chavez, January 31, 2025, 12:25 am
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"Security officials said Thursday they arrested five more Chinese spies, following the detention of another Chinese national and two of his Filipino cohorts for espionage this month.
Two of the suspects were arrested at the NAIA Terminal 3, while the others were nabbed in Pasay City, Dumaguete City, and Intramuros, Manila.
National Bureau of Investigation director Jaime Santiago told a news conference the men used a drone to document goings-on at a naval detachment, coast guard ships, an air base, a naval base, and a dockyard in Palawan province, the closest major landmass to the Spratlys.
The suspects also used advanced technologies such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Real-time Kinematics (RTK).
“This group, based on our surveillance confession of our witnesses, was monitoring Palawan. They placed a high-resolution solar-powered camera focusing on our seas where our ships are travelling to and from the West Philippine Sea,” Santiago said.
Among the areas the group was monitoring were the Naval Detachment Oyster Bay, a Coast Guard Station, the Antonio Bautista Air Base, the Del Pilar Class PS-16 Naval Base, and the backyard of Philippine Navy, Santiago said.
“We consider them very dangerous to national security because of course, if this falls into other hands, this could be very dangerous for our personnel in the base and also those on board our ships,” Armed Forces chief Gen. Romeo Brawner added.
Some of the arrested Chinese nationals posed as Taiwan tourists in Palawan, provincial board member Ryan Maminta told TeleRadyo Serbisyo.
“That’s the information we got – they took videos and set up CCTV cameras in the area. They posed as Taiwanese tourists in our province,” Maminta said.
The NBI said the suspected spies posed as buyers of marine products in Barangay Buenavista in Puerto Princesa City.
The arrest came after authorities nabbed Chinese software engineer Deng Yuanqing and his Filipino associates Ronel Jojo Balundo Besa and Jayson Amado Fernandez for reportedly spying on military and police camps—allegations that were dismissed by the Chinese embassy in Manila.
NBI cybercrime unit chief Jeremy Lotoc said Thursday an unnamed “foreign national” was giving orders to Deng.
Some of the suspects have been living in the Philippines since 2002 and did not have any criminal records, Immigration bureau spokeswoman Dana Sandoval said.
Beijing claims most of the strategic South China Sea despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
The Chinese embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the fresh arrests. With AFP"
Actual surveillance of subjects monitoring RORE Mission Ships
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Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) on top of the car
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Report: Chinese lidar technology poses national security threat, Suzanne Smalley, December 3rd, 2024
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"A new report from a prominent think tank rings alarm bells over China’s plans to use advanced remote sensing technology as a means of breaching networks and infiltrating critical infrastructure to spy on Americans and the U.S. military.
Known as light detection and ranging (lidar), the technology harnesses laser pulses to build precise, three-dimensional maps of environments it is deployed in.
By measuring how long it takes the pulses to travel back to sensors, the technology can create exceptionally detailed and accurate spatial data which outstrips what has historically been available, according to a report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit research organization.
Lidar, now used globally in a wide variety of civilian and military use cases, “stands at the center of Beijing’s bid for technological superiority,” the report says, warning that Chinese companies are taking control of the global lidar market, with Chinese-made sensors now used widely in the U.S. as “essential nodes” within public safety, transportation and utility systems.
China-produced lidar’s presence in the U.S. production chain creates a clear opportunity for espionage and sabotage by “potentially enabling Beijing to access sensitive U.S. data or disrupt critical operations,” according to the report, which likens the potential for lidar abuse to the ways in which China has exploited Huawei’s communications technology.
Congress has been paying attention.
In May, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) introduced legislation which would bar the Department of Defense from buying Chinese-made lidar.
In September, the chairman of the House China Select Committee announced proposed legislation banning the Department of Transportation from buying equipment that contains China-made lidar technology.
The U.S. must increase lidar production domestically and nurture efforts to do so in allied countries, according to the report. It also should enforce tough cybersecurity standards for lidar technology to ensure its use in civilian and military networks is secure, the report said.
Calling lidar a “critical” technology, the report offers a silver lining. Many American and other Western firms are capable of manufacturing the technology, allowing the U.S. to walk away from China-produced options.
But the U.S. must act now, the report authors contend.
“LiDAR’s role in tomorrow’s autonomous systems makes it a strategic vulnerability today,” the report says.
“LiDAR isn’t just about mapping roads — it’s about mapping vulnerabilities… Combined with China’s playbook from Volt Typhoon, the risks of sabotage and operational control are chillingly clear,” the report adds, referring to a Beijing-linked häçking operation into critical U.S. systems.
The threat is especially serious for the automotive sector, the report says, citing a recent Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service bulletin asserting that a Chinese lidar manufacturer planned to transmit data culled from Estonian cars back to China.
An unnamed Chinese company was reportedly developing lidar systems for self-driving cars in Estonia that would “scan the local environment and transmit this information to Beijing,” the report says.
“Although data collected for autonomous driving is typically deleted if non-essential, this Chinese firm intended to transfer all environmental data to a China-based database, raising concerns about the potential exploitation of this technology for Chinese intelligence purposes, such as mapping foreign infrastructure, identifying sensitive locations, or tracking patterns of movement.”"