The government has confirmed that a senior aide to prime minister Gordon Brown lost his BlackBerry while on an official trip to China in January of this year.

But a spokesperson denied reports that the aide’s mobile email device had been stolen by a woman he met in a Shanghai hotel disco.

Yesterday’s Sunday Times quoted sources suggesting that the unnamed aide was specifically targeted by Chinese intelligence agents in what is known as a ‘honeytrap’ operation.

Government BlackBerrys, the paper reported, are password protected but they are not encrypted. According to the Times’ sources, if the BlackBerry were to fall into the wrong hands, the Downing Street email system could be compromised. However, the government denies any security risk.

BlackBerry fears

The BlackBerry is an increasingly crucial part of the communications infrastructure of government and business alike, and the resilience of the BlackBerry network is therefore of critical importance to both national and commercial security.

Speaking to Information Age this month, Scott Totzke, director of the global security group for BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion, insisted that, if encrypted, emails sent over the BlackBerry network are nigh on impossible to crack.

“The encryption key for the emails sent on BlackBerry is created by the user,” he said. “There is no way of RIM or anyone else getting their hands on it.”

This is has been cause for concern for the Indian government, which fears that terrorists could use the BlackBerry service to communicate undetected.

Further reading

RIM touts BlackBerry’s uncrackability
The Indian goverment's loss is businesses' gain