CHINA WATCHChina’s “Super Embassy” Proposal in London Sparks Spying Fears
Fiber optic cables running near the proposed Chinese embassy’s Royal Mint Court site could make it “very easy” for hostile actors to intercept communications, says an expert. “This is what makes the proposed embassy site’s proximity to telecoms infrastructure significant from a security perspective.”
The “Say no to the embassy” stickers are easy to spot on street lampposts all over the Tower Hill area of London.
The embassy in question is a proposal the Chinese government has submitted to build what is being dubbed a “super” embassy on the site of the Royal Mint Court, which was built 200 years ago to produce new British coins. If approved, the embassy’s 20,000 square meters would reportedly make it the largest national diplomatic headquarters in Europe.
Residents are concerned that the area, next to the Tower of London and overlooking Tower Bridge, will become a focal point for protests. Hawkish politicians and Western allies, including the United States, have voiced espionage concerns.
In a tunnel running under the former Royal Mint building are fiber optic cables carrying sensitive data to London’s two financial centers, the City of London and Canary Wharf. The process for minting coins was moved from the Royal Mint building in the 1980s.
Sophia Economides, an associate professor in engineering on Northeastern’s London campus, says interfering with fiber optic cables can be “very simple.”
“From a technical point, fiber optic cable tapping is feasible but requires physical access to the cables,” says Economides, who has a background in telecommunications and microwave optoelectronics.
“This is what makes the proposed embassy site’s proximity to telecoms infrastructure significant from a security perspective.”
There are ways to detect interference, and safety measures would likely be in place but, she says, “physical access to the fiber optics, which is what is the fear in this case, means that it will be very easy to intercept communications.”
Physical inspections — something potentially made more difficult due to embassy land having diplomatic immunity — and monitoring programs can alert providers to cable hacking but there is still a risk from the most sophisticated hostile actors, says Economides. “Most modern systems have built-in intrusion detection, but advanced tapping methods may bypass it.”
The information traveling through the cables will be encrypted, Economides explains, giving that data an extra level of security. But she says that even strong encryption techniques may not always be totally resilient against spying activity.
“Even very strong encryption doesn’t eliminate all vulnerabilities of the system,” she continues. “Right now, encryption is the only defense against data interception we have, but there is constant advancement of the topic through research — some of it from China.
