Brown aide honeytrap victim?

One of Gordon Brown's senior advisors could have been the victim of a Chinese honeytrap plot, according to the Times.

He was picked up by a woman in a disco in Shanghai while visiting on a diplomatic trip. When he woke up at the hotel the next morning, his Blackberry had been nicked.

"Experts say that even if the aide’s device did not contain anything top secret, it might enable a hostile intelligence service to hack into the Downing Street server, potentially gaining access to No 10’s e-mail traffic and text messages," said the Times article.

While intelligence services say this could have been a plot by Chinese intelligence, Times readers are not so convinced.

Many of the comments at the bottom of the story say that this is probably nothing more than opportunism - from both parties.

"Having lived in China for a number of years I can tell you now that this girl was NOT a part of an elaborate government espionage plan," wrote one reader in Beijing. "She had no idea who this guy was, she simply saw a westerner in a suit and took advantage. A blackberry will pay her rent for about 2 months…"