Now the other two still face these charges so we can't go into too many details for legal reasons but I thought I'd get an expert on to tell us exactly what this case is all about.

Obviously the implication is that the Royal Marine, shall we say, was in a state of some distress but we mustn't go there because we don't know exactly what's happening. But let's talk to Professor of Cyber Security Kevin Curran. Thank you for joining us Kevin.

Good evening Kevin.

Yeah, if you could just, as I say, we can't go into too many details. Very sad death of this guy Matthew Trickett. He was 37, he was a Home Office Immigration Enforcement Officer and alongside two other colleagues, I think they were Border Force officers, Chai Lueng Wai, he was 38 from

Staines in Surrey and Chung Biu Yen from Dawson in East London. All three of them are charged so for their sake we have to be careful. But just tell us what this case is all about if you could Kevin.

Yes, three men have been arrested under the National Security Act with assistance in the

Hong Kong Intelligence Service and foreign interference. And again that they've been accused of espionage really, providing information back to the Hong Kong authorities and have been carried it out since December of 2023 and May the 1st of this year really. So they're due up in court, well they were due up in court for the 24th which is in three days time. And of course the National

Security Act came into play last year in July actually and this is one of the first cases where we're seeing someone in high profile, you know, where they've tightened up the laws in the National

Security Act. You know, we've always had the official Espionage Act as well which generally applies to public officials but now this applies to anyone who can be seen as aiding and abetting a foreign intelligence service. Is this a new offence? I mean, would in the past this have come under the auspices of treason? Exactly, but again what we're seeing here again is with the National Security Act again which is generally brought in for our eastern rivalries, you know, tightens up a lot of things again to do with sabotage and of course accessing sites and brings it out into the public domain more so again because people, especially now in the technological age, you know, people have access to a lot of systems who previously would have been, you know, behind MOD firewalls and whatever else and in place again but only have access to documents and cabinets again. But we're seeing a lot of documents can leak which are very sensitive to governments again and so the government brought in the National Security Act to cover this.

As a professor of cyber security, does Britain have a problem with cyber security?

It's very difficult to protect all our systems, especially with again where we see China and

Russia of course being the two countries which do the most active hacking against us. When you have a country like China with so many people again and that they've dedicated so many people in again to their technical side again because again it's easier now to cause destruction in a foreign country, you know, just through attacking the computer systems as well and the infrastructure and critical infrastructure as well and of course it can be difficult to estimate how many people work for state-sponsored hacking groups because of course with traditional military means we can count the number of feet on the ground and the tanks and the planes and whatever else but when it comes to something technical like hacking again, it's very hard but we have a good idea about it. We know about the main threat groups as we say, these advanced persistent threat groups again like APT1 and APT41 and again so we know for sure that there's probably upwards of about 100,000 Chinese hackers who from morning to night that their mission is to infiltrate western systems. I in no way want to draw these three accused into this discussion because we don't know the details of that. The poor Matthew Trickett who is no longer with us, Cheung Bin Yuen and Chi

Duong Wai are all of course innocent until they may be proved guilty, they may not be so I'm not talking about them but in terms of you talk about hacking cyber security, now in the old days you know spying was done that you know Chinese agents would approach British agents and British officials and try and corrupt them and get information from them. Is that kind of process where China you know wants to find people who might help them, has that been made much easier by the internet, by social media, you know in other words all these men meeting in dark alleys no longer have to do it, they can do it electronically, is that sort of syndrome on the rise? Absolutely, they've got dedicated teams for social media again so there's nationalities I wouldn't touch if they approach me on social media because I'm just too suspicious about it that of course they have, it's an easy way, it's the new honey pots again that so many men especially fall for it again. So of course a lot of social media activity that they concentrate a lot on social media activity to try to fool people to try to you know work for you know anything again because it is so easy again you know men can be very foolish again. Yeah I know that Kevin,

I'm well aware of that. Listen Kevin it's a bit difficult conversation but very good to have it with you, thank you very much for your time. Kevin Curran the excellent professor of cyber security after the sad death of Matthew Trickett who along with two other men was charged with assisting of spying for Hong Kong, in other words China and this is a rising problem.

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