China’s digital renminbi, which is being heavily promoted ahead of the Beijing winter Olympics, risks becoming a tool to surveil users and exert control over global currency transactions, the director of UK signals intelligence agency GCHQ has warned.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Sir Jeremy Fleming said that while digital currencies present a “great opportunity” to democratise payment systems, the development of this new technology also poses a threat.
“If wrongly implemented, it gives a hostile state the ability to surveil transactions,” he said. “It gives them the ability . . . to be able to exercise control over what is conducted on those digital currencies.”
The spy chief spoke to the FT earlier this week from the London headquarters of the National Cyber Security Centre, GCHQ’s defensive arm, ahead of the publication of a new cyber strategy.
This document, which is expected later this month, will act as a blueprint for countering digital threats at a time when warfare is moving increasingly into cyber space. Fleming said GCHQ was “a…
