In an hilarious statement on their website, Mi5 has warns us high-tech workers about getting caught up in foreign espionage whilst on business trips abroad.
By introducing espionage as “the second oldest profession”, Mi5 are already setting the unintentional comic-tone at the very beginning of the document. Not to mention that for many businessman, their business trips abroad tend to involve “the first oldest profession” anyway, so why not go for the second too?
However, their advice to travellers includes:
- [look out for] unexpected emails from the contacts in the foreign country, or their ‘colleagues/friends’ seeking to establish contact (business trips are never about establishing business contacts, are they?)
- …Report intimate relationships with the nationals of certain countries to your Security Co-ordinator, [and] make sure you do so promptly and honestly. (“yeah, for this trip it was two hookers and a drunk chick I met in a bar.”)
Perhaps amazingly, the official Mi5 advice for what to do when you’re back in the UK includes “avoidance of official premises such as an embassy”. So, I shouldn’t go to a UK-based conference or meeting that happens to be using the facilities of an embassy. It’s all pretty funny really.