China Installing Spyware in Olympic Hotels

Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 2:02:42 pm PDT

If you plan on visiting Beijing for the Olympics, watch out what you do on the Internet.

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - China has installed Internet-spying equipment in all the major hotel chains serving the 2008 Summer Olympics, a U.S. senator charged on Tuesday. “The Chinese government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying,” said Sen. Sam Brownback.

The conservative Republican from Kansas, citing hotel documents he received, added that journalists, athletes’ families and others attending the Olympics next month “will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering” by China’s Public Security Bureau. He said the agency will be monitoring Internet communications at the hotels.

The U.S. senator made a similar charge a few months ago but said that since then, hotels have come forward with detailed information on the monitoring systems that have been required by Beijing. Brownback refused to identify the hotels, but said “several international hotel chains have confirmed the existence of this order.”

Spokesmen at the Chinese Embassy in Washington were not available for comment.