Ontario student accused in U.S. of taking airport photos for Chinese official

Ontario university student Weiheng Zeng has been arrested in the United States after allegedly taking unauthorized photographs at two airports at the request of someone he believed to be a Chinese government official. According to an FBI affidavit, Zeng, a Chinese citizen studying at the University of Waterloo, was initially flagged by authorities during an incident at Chicago's O'Hare airport on April 21.

The affidavit states that Zeng was seen taking photos, climbing a forklift, and attempting to open locked trailers at a FedEx facility at the airport, about 10 days after he arrived in the U.S. through the Ambassador Bridge.

Zeng was subsequently linked to a dark blue minivan with Ontario licence plates that was at the FedEx facility during the incident. When he tried to re-enter the U.S. with the same minivan on August 23, he was pulled aside for a series of interviews by border agents and the FBI as part of a counter-intelligence investigation. During these interviews, Zeng provided conflicting accounts of his activities, initially claiming he had taken photos of planes for a flight radar website and denied having any military training.

As his story evolved, Zeng admitted that the Chinese contact he had been working with was interested in transportation logistics rather than specific aircraft. He also stated that the photos he took were for the Chinese contact, who paid him $20 to $30 per photo, and that he destroyed the SIM cards and deleted the conversations and photos after the assignments. The FBI found that the online forum Zeng claimed to have met the Chinese contact on did not exist.

While the allegations have not yet been tested in court, former RCMP officer Chris Mathers noted that Chinese state security often recruits individuals online, and the nature of the assignments described could serve as a preliminary test to assess someone's potential as a source. The information allegedly collected might be valuable for monitoring transportation logistics and detecting unusual movements of equipment, particularly given the current tensions between China and the U.S. over Taiwan.