ASPI Director of Defence and National Security Michael Shoebridge says many more Australians may be added to a list of people targeted by Chinese surveillance after a fragment of leaked reports were deciphered. Leaked files revealed 2.4 million Australians and 650,000 organisations were the targets of open-source surveillance by a Chinese company linked to Chinese intelligence. “Apparently [about] 2.5 million records were leaked and only about 10 per cent of them have been understood so far, and that a 2.5 million person database is probably a subset of bigger data holdings that Chinese companies have,” Mr Shoebridge told Sky News. “So we’re seeing this elephant through a straw but the bit of an elephant we can see says 35,000 Australians are being spied on at a scale and a depth that people just find hard to understand." The leaks indicated intelligence assessments were carried out on senior Australian politicians - including Scott Morrison, Joe Hockey and Andrew Hastie - and their families. "The fact that it’s about children as well, it’s like a longitudinal database of people that might be influential in the future and it also about being able to blackmail people because of things that their family, children and contacts have done," Mr Shoebridge said. “It’s got a very sinister aspect to it. “Everybody leaves a digital snail trail behind them as we go about our daily life now … it’s about picking up all those trails and then looking at the pattern about individuals and relationships. “So it’s really seeing a woven rug about lots of fragments that have been put together.” Image: AP