State-of-the-art journalistic spying used to mean leaving your tape-recorder running (“accidentally,” of course) in your briefcase when the local city council hustles reporters out of the room for a closed “executive” session. That’s changed:

LAS VEGAS–Three journalists for a French security magazine were kicked out of the Black Hat security conference after they allegedly sniffed the press room computer network on Thursday.
… CNET News was listed as one of the alleged victims, but the username and password displayed were inaccurate. A journalist from eWeek, on the other hand, confirmed that the username and password he used had been exposed.
Asked why they allegedly sniffed the press room network and attempted to embarrass other journalists, the French journalists said they wanted to educate the public about the privacy dangers with using public Internet connections, the Black Hat representative said. They cited journalists working in China covering the Olympics, she added.

If I were a reporter working in China, I wouldn’t be too worried about new-fangled technological snooping. I’d be worried about China’s old-school methods of data collection.