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US Warns Olympic Visitors of Chinese Cyber-Spying
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Aug 08, 2008 02:30 PM
from the these-concerns-aren't-chinese-specific dept.
from the these-concerns-aren't-chinese-specific dept.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us the US Government has issued a strong warning to travelers headed to the Beijing Olympics (PDF) with respect to electronic data. Part FUD, part awareness, the CBS article reads like 1984, urging travelers to treat all electronic devices (from fax to cellphone and back) as compromised, and proceeds to talk about China's aggressive cyber-espionage programs. "China is one of a number of countries pushing active cyber-espionage programs aimed primarily at cracking U.S. national security computers and stealing corporate trade secrets. Billions have already been lost. In addition, cyber-gangs and criminals, many based in Asia, have stolen bank accounts and credit card numbers from an untold number of Americans."
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Submission: US Warns Olympic Visitors of Chinese Cyber-Spying by Anonymous Coward
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Ah...just like home! (Score:2)
Government spies on the people for governmental reasons. That's all you need to know citizen!
Cyber spying?!? China? (Score:4, Funny)
Anyway, wouldn't spotting these cyborg spies be easy? Do they have any cool gadgets; like a hand that turns into a gun or something?
And I demand to know what the Pentagon is doing to close this gap with cyborg spies!? What's America doing about it? We must have our own cyborg spy program!
Pretty shameless. (Score:5, Insightful)
China is just trying to catch up with the US in business esionage. They have a long way to go yet but thanks to all the greed in the US most of the technology and pretty much all thats worth to know is already outsourced to China.
U.S does it even better (Score:3, Insightful)
And U.S has not stealed national securities from other countries? HAH... Even Sweden has big and great spy-network now coming but it is small when comparing to U.S spy network....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1382116/China-finds-spy-bugs-in-Jiang's-Boeing-jet.html [telegraph.co.uk]
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9807E6DD113BF936A25757C0A9659C8B63 [nytimes.com]
So, this announcement has been brought to you by the words 'pot', 'kettle' and 'black'.
Nothing surprising here.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing surprising here.. (Score:5, Funny)
For decades, the Chinese have been probably the greatest competition the US has had as far as spying goes. Not only for military secrets, but, also commercial secrets.
I hate the "Fixed that for you" meme, but this time I couldn't resist.
Parent
Untill your own computer is seized. (Score:5, Insightful)
Until it's confiscated at the US border.
Re:Untill your own computer is seized. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. After I got pulled aside at the Canadian border and given the third degree and finally let through after four hours, I was told by friends NEVER to tell the Canadian border guards you are a software engineer. That is a sure way to get pulled aside for further questioning. They don't want illegal foreign coders taking Canadian jobs or something.
Parent
CBS (Score:5, Funny)
the CBS article reads like 1984, urging travelers to treat all electronic devices (from fax to cellphone and back) as compromised and then proceeding to talk about China's aggressive cyber-espionage programs.
This from the television network whose logo is a giant eye looking back at you.
Good encryption (Score:2)
This is where having a strong end-to-end encryption would've been really nice... Too bad, the "I have nothing to hide" mentality continues to prevail.
Re:Good encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
They would not do that to visiting foreigners. Not en-masse, and not for the purposes of economic espionage. Thus encryption would've been effective protecting 99% of communications.
Although waterboarding is certainly legal in China, over there they have a number of other methods too — and most of them usually leave long-term (sometimes permanent) disfigurement to the body, unlike waterboarding.
Parent
US Border security (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, lets not mention the confiscating of portable computer at US borders as a possible spying risk.
Pure FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
"All information you send electronically - by fax machine, personal digital assistant (PDA), computer or telephone - can be intercepted."
This should always be assumed, wherever you may be.
Visiting an authoritarian government doesn't change that.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This should always be assumed, wherever you may be. Visiting an authoritarian government doesn't change that.
Ah, so what they say is true, then? This must be some new definition of the term "FUD" of which I was previously unaware.
There's lots of the usual Slashdot bitching, kvetching, and sarcastic remarks, but I can't really see what's wrong with pointing out to tourists that their communications might be at risk when traveling in a foreign country. They advised me to get inoculated against hepatitis A and B before I traveled to Southeast Asia, yet people contract both diseases every day right here in the good ol
Pot, meet Kettle (Score:4, Insightful)
Glad this entire thread seems to realize the delicious irony here.
Oh, and since you're reading this thread, you've been added to the TSA's "random political dissident checklist." Have a nice day.
"Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy. Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy."
We are hypocrites (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, how is that different from here? And why shouldn't we be worried about that happening here? It's not like China has some special properties to make our devices surrender themselves only on their property and only for them. I'm worried because the government knows about this but is not stopping it on our own soil or issuing any such warnings on our own soil. It's very devious.
Remind me again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Very different values... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shortly after the recent earthquake in China my wife told me about an interesting news report. I'd post a link, but the report is in Chinese and I don't have a link to the story anyway.
Apparently there was this girl who was pissed that she couldn't get a stable internet connection so that she could play some online game. And more than that, she was resentful about the attention the earthquake victims were getting. So she posted a Youtube video about it.
So her ranting drew the government's attention and they actually arrested her for illegal speech. I don't know how long she was in jail, but I think she was eventually released.
Here's the interesting thing: many Americans would shit themselves if someone were arrested for exercising their freedom of speech, regardless of what's been said, or at least, as I've been discovering, as long as it conforms to their worldview.
On the other hand, Chinese think very differently. Even my wife, and her friends, who are Taiwanese, not even Chinese, agree with the actions taken by the government. And these are people living in the US. They agree with the right to free speech and to be able to be critical of the government. But they believe that there's a line people shouldn't cross. My wife finds it troubling that a person in the US can say anything and everything even if it's socially disruptive.
I think it comes down to a sense of respect for society and the system and this desire to maintain social order. I'm sure some find this to be a very troubling concept. And it's pervasive to one extent or another throughout east Asia. This is how China can be so open about their activities, because many people support it.
I don't agree with this at all, particularly because of the massive potential for abuse. And attitudes certainly are changing out there. But compared to Americans, Asians are still more respectful and a lot more nationalistic. Case in point is how many Americans seem eager to crap on their own country and despite the freedoms they enjoy seem to enjoy imagining they live in some sort of police state. There's a lot wrong with the US, but come on, give me a break.
Too many people seem to be more upset about how the police handles a suspect than they are about high crime rates. It was great when I was living in Taiwan and could be out at 2am without having to be concerned for my well-being. I can't say the same in many parts of the US. I feel like too many people in this country have their priorities backwards.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Too many people seem to be more upset about how the police handles a suspect than they are about high crime rates. It was great when I was living in Taiwan and could be out at 2am without having to be concerned for my well-being. I can't say the same in many parts of the US.
You've been tricked by the sensationalist Western media. Crime rates are LOWER here than they were in Taiwan (probably, everybody lies about it). Note your terminology: you're "concerned". Nothing has actually happened, but you're concerned anyway because the media has told you to be.
And brutal policing doesn't decrease crime, it INCREASES it. Brutalized offenders have much higher recidivism rates.
In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be fine if it warned US citizens about the US government's invasive Internet and telecomm spying. What we have here is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black.
However, in the case of the US government, said spying is in direct violation of the documents that give the government authority to operate (in particular, the 4th amendment); I'm not at all sure that anything similar can be said of China, which has an entirely different form of government. Consequently, I suspect the US deserves considerably less respect than China does with regard to these activities.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:4, Funny)
Ya. Both at the border to get into the US, and after you get in. At least the former you'll be aware of. The latter doesn't even get secret court oversight anymore.
And no one would use it to spy on Obama or cronie's competitor's secrets or anything. No sir, that'd be wrong. You have to trust us we're just looking for terrists.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:4, Interesting)
The "pot" here is not talking to the "kettle". It is talking to us — don't use fax or blackberry, if you don't want China to intercept the information.
In pot's defense, I may add, the thought of Chinese spying on my communications worries me far more.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe, I'm not worried, because I do not, as a matter of principle, steal other people's intellectual property (I assume, "TPB" means "The Pirate Bay")? Possible, possible... Wake me up, when you have evidence of America's "illegal wiretapping" benefiting the hated *AAs, though.
Call me old-fashioned, but China's getting other people's intellectual property (such as
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know I've thought about it. They really seem to be a more morally upstanding culture, all in all. Our culture, on the other hand, is due for a collapse. Although, I'm kind of looking forward to that... I'm going to hang lawyers and accountants in trees for fun.
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, having lived in Asia for a couple of years rest assured that the same exact thing is happening there although America and Europe maybe be a bit further along.
And don't be deluded by the idea that they're somehow more morally upstanding. They really are no different in that regard.
The difference is that they still by and large have respect for the system. By system I mean the government, society in general, social rules and that sort of thing.
For example, if a sign is posted on the subway that reads "no food allowed" almost everyone follows it without question, hence clean trains.
In the US, on the other hand, people ignore the sign, at best, and at worst are indignant about not being able to do as they please.
Americans are more obsessed about doing what they want, when they want and expecting everyone else to accept that. Whereas in Asia there's more of a tendency to want to maintain social order. There certainly is far more respect for authority in Asia. And they're far less indignant and bitter about their work, even though they probably work harder and longer than many Americans. And they're certainly a lot more nationalistic.
Many of the foreigners I knew out there admired that. But there were many others who just couldn't deal with it.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Americans are more obsessed about doing what they want, when they want and expecting everyone else to accept that. Whereas in Asia there's more of a tendency to want to maintain social order./quote> To me, that's pretty promising on the U.S. side. As long as we continue to question and push the rules imposed on us, we can't be completely dominated.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as we continue to question and push the rules imposed on us, we can't be completely dominated
lol! You don't need to be in America long to see the fallacy in that statement. You only question the the little rules: "Don't eat on the subway", not the big ones: "You may only vote Democrat or Republican", "You must pledge allegiance to this cloth", "Capitalism is good for you; don't ask why"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Those boring things like 'privacy', 'due process', 'habeas corpus', 'Separation of powers' etc. exist to make sure nobody can grab the power and install a dictatorship
s/exist/used to exist/ :-(
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, China could do anything they want to you if you're in China.
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
In pot's defense, I may add, the thought of Chinese spying on my communications worries me far more.
Then you're not paying attention.
China has never kidnapped someone from another country, IN another country, and then sent them off to be tortured in a THIRD country in a secret CIA prison.
All because they heard some chatter that they decided was "terrorist" talk.
The US, on the other hand, has an official policy that if someone can not legally be extradited so the US can torture them, the US will send in the "extraordinary rendition" teams and take them off to secret torture prison on their own.
At least China sticks within their own borders.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
China has never kidnapped someone from another country, IN another country, and then sent them off to be tortured in a THIRD country in a secret CIA prison
Correct - China routinely kidnapps people from other countries and tortures them in Chinese prisons. This more direct approach saves the skulking about with intelligence agencies.
At least China sticks within their own borders.
No, not really, they just turotue or kill any citizen who complains about it, so you don't see much dissent online. I'm sure Tibet, for example, has an opinion about China remaining within its own borders, but you won't hear that opinion expressed within China very often, thanks to the whole prison and torture thing.
But go ahead an continue to equate the US and China, as it will warn others of the value of your opinions.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:4, Funny)
The US, on the other hand, has an official policy that if someone can not legally be extradited so the US can torture them, the US will send in the "extraordinary rendition" teams and take them off to secret torture prison on their own.
At least China sticks within their own borders.
that may be so, but: an hour later, you need to be tortured again..
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? China only cares if you're trying to free tibet or mongolia, or possibly have discovered a super giant oilfield under beijing.
The feds however will be very interested in why you were in China and the reasons you are now returning to the US, where you're staying, how much tax you pay, how you voted last time, how much weed you smoked at high school and who you bought it off.
Ch-Ch-Check your priorities...
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, it is insignificant even compared to the economic losses, which my country may sustain, if China's industrial espionage is successful
What commercial knowledge do you imagine the Chinese would want to steal from the US? 98% of everything you consume is made in China or its close neighbours. The US (and in fact the whole of the "west") trumps China only in the service sector, where China doesn't want to, and geographically can't, compete. The US long ago shipped all it's industrial secrets willingly to China, relinquishing them eagerly in the pursuit of Mammon.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html [cia.gov]
Compare the first and last on that list and bear in mind that they are each other's largest trading partners... (coincidence it maybe, but if you add together 1,2 and 4 (I'm guessing germany is not a huge trading partner) it almost balances out the US's deficit: perhaps a good indication of where the money went)
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't get is why everyone is so afraid of this globalization. The global economy has benefitted from the US-China economic trade. And god forbid if anyone knew our "secrets!" Come on. The fact is if these things are widely known, then the knowledge is less likely to be lost forever if one country falls.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What about between their server and the device (in China)? Is that leg just as encrypted — is the communication end-to-end, or is it sent clear-text over GSM, for the purposes of expediency?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I get this deja-vu feeling... Pure FUD. Just like they warned us about Iraq's WMDs and now China is supposed to be a huge cyberspy. Honeslty, I can't see why China would even care about the U.S. ecomony. I think they're doing quite well on their own xie-xie. If I was Chinese, I would probably be very affraid of those supposed-to-be athletes who might be in fact CIA spies.
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Informative)
Because the US is one of the largest economies in the world? And... you do realize they also do this to Germany, France, Brazil, the UK, and everyone else, too, right?
Pure FUD
Wrong. In the past three months I've encountered some increasingly sophisticated attacks on web servers, all in the name of getting specific scripts in front of very specific visiting users, all so that their browsers will run off to a laundry list of Chinese IP addresses and slurp up Trojan-installing malware that in turn sniffs keystrokes and piles up local files system objects into ZIP files that are then sent to OTHER Chinese IP addresses. This is not script kiddies screwing around, and the very deliberate targeting of people in the defense, engineering, and law enforcement areas is not blind luck.
Parent
Most of the attack I see comes from the US I.P. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually... no. Never been there! Never even seen someone playing the game, come to think of it. Too many other time-using things in life, it seems.
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:4, Insightful)
reads like 1984
In what way? Nothing mentioned in the article is beyond modern technology to do.
Consequently, I suspect the US deserves considerably less respect than China does with regard to these activities.
Wait a second... we should give china respect for invading people's privacy and for all the other things they do in violation of human rights, simply because we "expect" it from them?
Talk about your bigotry of low expectations, yeesh.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much about spying as what you do with the information. I can promote Islam or Communism right here on slashdot and, although NSA can probably hack into my account and get the contact info, I am not likely to be tortured and imprisoned. Neither are my comments blocked from the general public. On the other hand, discussing Falun Gong or Tibet independence from an olympic Internet cafe is likely to cause unpleasant consequences.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Since i can't mod you as 'overrated' or 'pandering for karma', i'll post.
The pot and kettle are both black. So what of it? Does that make the pot's claim of the kettle's blackness any less true? You give the US less respect because the *current* gov't has been spying illegally than the Chinese who do so as matter of POLICY? At least in the US, if the gov't gets caught doing that there's SOME kind of recourse. We spy on them to find out what the threats might be. They do the same but also spy just to steal technology. They're notorious for reverse engineering (see Chinese MiGs).
Gov'ts spy on each other, that's a given. We spy on everyone and everyone spies on us, even our allies. The intel community has a saying, "there are friendly gov'ts, but there are no friendly intelligence agencies".
When Obama takes office, much of W's shenanigans will end, but you can't say that of China. Setting aside the Chinese gov't, the amount cyber crime originating in of China is staggering. Even if you only count copyright violation, it's a big deal. Here's a test for you: go do a few google searches on Tibet, Tienanmen Square, Hong Kong and Taiwan from your computer in any western nation. Then try the same thing in China. IF you manage to find anything, chances are it will be monitored and under control of the gov't. Then do searches on the net here for anything seditious you can think of. You'll find gigs and gigs of material criticizing the our gov't and no one will give a shit that you looked at it.
Then there's the matter of egomania that people think our gov't is spying on THEM personally. Who are you and what are you up to that you think the elephant gives a shit about the ant you are? Do you really think there's a GS-10 employee who cares that you rented Fahrenheit 9/11? Chances are he watched it too. And while we're at it... it rains because of condensation, not because God is crying because you touched yourself.
Parent
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean sue the US gov't?
That might work, unless someone calls in the State Secrets Privilege [wikipedia.org], and then your case just disappears.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"When Obama takes office, much of W's shenanigans will end,"
I may be cynical, but I find that statement INCREDIBLY naive.
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:4, Interesting)
Trouble is the list of suspected terrorists is quite large [aclu.org], and includes such deadly threats as Nelson Mandela, Cat Stevens, and Ted Kennedy.
The point of the 4th amendent is not at all debatable. We know exactly why it is there: because the British authorities had had the right to search any property in search of smuggled goods, and the good citizens of America decided they didn't want their new masters to have the same rights.
What is debatable is it's relevance to electronic communications. The answer is of course none, because the internet was unimaginable when it was written, even by such a prolific thinker as Benjamin Franklin. What actually needs to happen is for America to realise that semantic obessioning over the constitution is a diversionary tactic by the backers of these types of bills, and that the real laws are passed long before the press have stopped bitching about what "Unreasonable" means.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really very simple. Currently the US is Top Nation. China is bigger and has more resources, and will inevitably overtake the US and demote it to Second Nation. The US doesn't like that.
It's nothing to do with China as such -- Americans would react the same way if it was Canada that was threatening to become the new superpower, or if the Europeans got their act together and started competing with the world instead of each other.