Defecting Chinese Spy Offers Information Trove To Australian Government (theage.com.au) 82
schwit1 shares a report from The Age, a daily newspaper published in Australia: A Chinese spy has risked his life to defect to Australia and is now offering a trove of unprecedented inside intelligence on how China conducts its interference operations abroad. Wang "William" Liqiang is the first Chinese operative to ever blow his cover. He has revealed the identities of China's senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong, as well as providing details of how they fund and conduct political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia.
In interviews with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, he has revealed in granular detail how Beijing covertly controls listed companies to fund intelligence operations, including the surveillance and profiling of dissidents and the co-opting of media organizations. [...] Mr Wang said he was part of an intelligence operation hidden within a Hong Kong-listed company, China Innovation Investment Limited (CIIL), which infiltrated Hong Kong's universities and media with pro-Chinese Communist Party operatives who could be activated to counter the democracy movement. He says he had personal involvement in an October 2015 operation to kidnap and abduct to the Chinese mainland a Hong Kong bookseller, Lee Bo, and played a role in a clandestine organization that also directed bashings or cyber attacks on Hong Kong dissidents. His handlers in China issued him a fake South Korean passport to gain entry to Taiwan and help China's efforts to systematically infiltrate its political system, including directing a "cyber army" and Taiwanese operatives to meddle in the 2018 municipal elections. Plans are underway to influence the 2020 presidential election - plans that partly motivated him to defect to Australia. Mr Wang is currently at an undisclosed location in Sydney pending formal protections from the Australian government. More information is expected to be revealed on Monday.
In interviews with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, he has revealed in granular detail how Beijing covertly controls listed companies to fund intelligence operations, including the surveillance and profiling of dissidents and the co-opting of media organizations. [...] Mr Wang said he was part of an intelligence operation hidden within a Hong Kong-listed company, China Innovation Investment Limited (CIIL), which infiltrated Hong Kong's universities and media with pro-Chinese Communist Party operatives who could be activated to counter the democracy movement. He says he had personal involvement in an October 2015 operation to kidnap and abduct to the Chinese mainland a Hong Kong bookseller, Lee Bo, and played a role in a clandestine organization that also directed bashings or cyber attacks on Hong Kong dissidents. His handlers in China issued him a fake South Korean passport to gain entry to Taiwan and help China's efforts to systematically infiltrate its political system, including directing a "cyber army" and Taiwanese operatives to meddle in the 2018 municipal elections. Plans are underway to influence the 2020 presidential election - plans that partly motivated him to defect to Australia. Mr Wang is currently at an undisclosed location in Sydney pending formal protections from the Australian government. More information is expected to be revealed on Monday.
good old fashon spy defection (Score:2)
Re:good old fashon spy defection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good old fashon spy defection (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually the first rule of intelligence is don't let the other side know what you know.
. . . and the second rule is put out disinformation to confuse the other side as to what you know or don't really know.
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More realistically, they do not know much and mostly it is about Hong Kong, which means those agents talked about are technically counter intelligence operatives, so secret police not spies. As for operations in Australia, yeah well, everyone already knows about them, Chinese companies seeking greater political influence to promote their bottom line, standard modern corporate operating procedures and do not even touch the level of corrupt USA influence which has managed to drag Australians diplomatic reputa
The first rule of intelligence (Score:3)
Is to fight for a higher budget and more unconstrained power.
Releasing the info that China really has "spies" and that ASIO was clever enough to let them defect is very good for the intelligence community.
With the demise of communism, and then ISIS failing to blow up anything decent, the intelligent community has been struggling a bit lately. China is very good for them.
(There is also some question as to whether Wang is a real spy or just a crook, or, more likely, both. So get the headline now before any
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and the second rule is put out disinformation to confuse the other side as to what you know or don't really know.
The second rule is mostly redundant now that we have Twitter and Facebook, the disinformation spreads itself without any need for overt action from whatever government is supposedly involved.
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And rule number zero says something about "News for nerds...". I lost this moment when anything China/Russia became News for nerds...?!
Once upon a time, nerds had this thing called critical thinking and were fast to question anything. Looks like it is not in fashion anymore.
Thus said, this is beyond perfect! To get a Chinese spy with HK/Australia/interference portfolio at this very moment [moonofalabama.org]! Right after this bill [congress.gov]! And at almost same time as this "in other news" [scmp.com]!
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And rule number zero says something about "News for nerds...". I lost this moment when anything China/Russia became News for nerds...?!
Once upon a time, nerds had this thing called critical thinking and were fast to question anything. Looks like it is not in fashion anymore.
Thus said, this is beyond perfect! To get a Chinese spy with HK/Australia/interference portfolio at this very moment [moonofalabama.org]! Right after this bill [congress.gov]! And at almost same time as this "in other news" [scmp.com]!
An espionage drama? ... a defecting Chinese spy that may, or may not, be a Chinese plant tasked with disseminating false information? ... Nerds go to watch movies abut this kind of stuff and read books about it, and here it is unfolding in real life. Seems to me this is news for nerds, particularly any information this guy has about electronic intelligence gathering and whether or not Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo, etc... are conducting a massive spy operation on behalf of the the Chinese government.
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An espionage drama? ... a defecting Chinese spy that may, or may not, be a Chinese plant tasked with disseminating false information? ... Nerds go to watch movies abut this kind of stuff and read books about it, and here it is unfolding in real life. Seems to me this is news for nerds, particularly any information this guy has about electronic intelligence gathering and whether or not Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo, etc... are conducting a massive spy operation on behalf of the the Chinese government.
For me it is just a passing episode in ongoing information war. Just sit and watch and tell me what happened with it in, say, 10 days! (10 days what, you say here :) -- attention span, I know). Experts making this kind of entertainment - they know very well how to push as many buttons as possible, nerd buttons included.
As a parent, and 50+, I do care about possible WWIII and I do watch and read lots (in more than one language), and this is just like your typical Hollywood cliché.
And yes, surely compani
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An espionage drama? ... a defecting Chinese spy that may, or may not, be a Chinese plant tasked with disseminating false information? ... Nerds go to watch movies abut this kind of stuff and read books about it, and here it is unfolding in real life. Seems to me this is news for nerds, particularly any information this guy has about electronic intelligence gathering and whether or not Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo, etc... are conducting a massive spy operation on behalf of the the Chinese government.
For me it is just a passing episode in ongoing information war. Just sit and watch and tell me what happened with it in, say, 10 days! (10 days what, you say here :) -- attention span, I know). Experts making this kind of entertainment - they know very well how to push as many buttons as possible, nerd buttons included.
As a parent, and 50+, I do care about possible WWIII and I do watch and read lots (in more than one language), and this is just like your typical Hollywood cliché.
And yes, surely companies you mentioned are eeeevviiiilllll. All goodness being spent by likes of Microsoft, Yandex, Google. Telegram, Facebook..... :)
As I said - critical thinking first. Always good idea.
Either way, it is an excellent opportunity to find out once and for all whether every single Chinese made electronic devices sends a complete copy of all your personal data to China every day, ... kind of like Google and Facebook apps do.
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An espionage drama? ... a defecting Chinese spy that may, or may not, be a Chinese plant tasked with disseminating false information? ... Nerds go to watch movies abut this kind of stuff and read books about it, and here it is unfolding in real life. Seems to me this is news for nerds, particularly any information this guy has about electronic intelligence gathering and whether or not Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo, etc... are conducting a massive spy operation on behalf of the the Chinese government.
HMM. An interesting exercise for Slashdot conspiracy freaks;
turn on detailed packet logging on the router.
Plug in your old lenovo laptop (mine is a t500) without windows and just about any linux OS. Don't boot into the HDD instead press the now useless blue thinkvantage button and look at the results,
if it pings some mysterious place in China then you know the bios code of the Lenovo thinkpad has spyware installed.
Oh, BTW make sure you have all the WOL features turned on in the bios.
Then disassemble the
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Errr...so a Chinese pose would pose as a defector to tell the Aussies that the CCP had nefarious designs on Hong Kong and Taiwan political systems? That's some fancy reasoning you have there.
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Not to add to conspiracy theories, but sacrificing some information in order to believably insert a double agent who might accomplish a greater mission seems like a rational plan to me.
Re:good old fashon spy defection (Score:4, Interesting)
At Black Hat it is apparently fun to play "Spot the Fed". Perhaps we can play "Spot the Chinese agent" on Slashdot?
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At Black Hat it is apparently fun to play "Spot the Fed". Perhaps we can play "Spot the Chinese agent" on Slashdot?
Too easy. Them being everywhere. Just keep your windows closed [wikipedia.org], for God's sake!
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With "Russian Collusion" blasting out of every piece of electronics, keeping your windows closed is no longer sufficient to keep thems Russians out.
Maybe, you meant application windows?
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While we are at this Russian Collusion thing... I have beautiful bridge in New York to sell you.
To get best price, contact me now!
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Oh, look, it's neo-McCarthyism in America. How unusual.
Trump really has riled up the xenophobes and racists. They take any opportunity to spout their ugly jingoism and patriotism in public, for all the world to see. "Don't trust 'em if they don't look like we do!"
Re: good old fashon spy defection (Score:2, Insightful)
If we dig back in the historical record, we find that almost everybody who Joe McCarthy fingered was indeed a Soviet agent.
It might make liberals clutch at their pearls, but the historical record, some of which was revealed in the early years after the fall of the USSR when Kremlin archives were open, reveals the truth.
McCarthy was a brute politically, but 'Mccarthyism' isn't the oogy-boogy some interests try to make it.
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McCarthy was right. [archive.org]
Trump really has riled up the xenophobes and racists. They take any opportunity to spout their ugly jingoism and patriotism in public, for all the world to see. "Don't trust 'em if they don't look like we do!"
Look, you think that Trump 'riled up the xenophobes and racists' believe whatever you want to believe. However most rational people that understand nationalism know that a person who isn't a citizen of your own country won't play the rules that you have established. And in the best case they'll attempt to subvert your country from within. In the worst case, we see things like what happened up here in Canada. Where a Chinese national working at a level 4 lab was stealing information o
Re:good old fashon spy defection (Score:5, Interesting)
And rule number zero says something about "News for nerds...". I lost this moment when anything China/Russia became News for nerds...?!
There's more nerds than computer nerds.
I'm a military nerd. First and foremost. Love the hardware and process of war. I served 10 years, but always in the rear with the gear. I wanted out in front, but it wasn't to be. Maybe if the Second Civil War starts soon I'll be able to help there. War is a young man's game, and I'm not that young anymore. If it takes too long I won't even be around anymore.
I'm a car nerd, a computer nerd (pays the bills) a plane nerd (oh god and how), a gun nerd (goes with military nerd) an electronics nerd, a steam nerd, and I can go on and on until you soak yourself in gas and drop a lit match on yourself just to stop hearing me talk. Yes, I'm a film nerd too.
And a geopolitical nerd too, ever since I woke up at age 10 and saw the shitshow around me. It's only gotten more interesting since. The first major hubub I remember clearly is the Iranian revolution of '79 and the shitshow that followed. Fascinating stuff, and ultimately sent me in the direction of serving in the USAF 10 years later. See how geopolitics and shenanigans shape a life?
So yes, to me, geopolitical and espionage shenanigans are of great interest to me. Those affect our lives just as deeply as the latest gadgets. Heh.. maybe even more than you can imagine.
Stopping Russia and China from dominating the world? You could say to me that's News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.
Should matter to you, too. Live in a Chinese or Google-like future? Fuck that noise. I'd rather shoulder a rifle and fight to the death to prevent that.
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Live in a Chinese or Google-like future? Fuck that noise. I'd rather shoulder a rifle and fight to the death to prevent that.
What do you mean Google-like future? You mean with a panopticon? The US government wants that exactly as badly as China.
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"Maybe if the Second Civil War starts soon I'll be able to help there. "
Riddle me this: Why do you WANT a second civil war?
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And rule number zero says something about "News for nerds...". I lost this moment when anything China/Russia became News for nerds...?!
More or less the moment the moment that the main method of international spying became cracking. If you aren't thinking about protecting yourself from state level actors then probably your company is penetrated and you are losing business to international competitors who are learning about what you do from their intelligence agencies.
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And other shoe has just fallen: A "spy" being tried for fraud in 2016 [twitter.com].
Interesting how moderators found out my post was Flamebait while being rare balanced one and referencing to really relevant information. Speaks volume about true agendas.
Some may remember what I said about attention span.
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Blatantly obvious propaganda reasons. (Score:1)
Not a fan of China, but it's obvious they are only telling us what they want us to think and act on.
Unless we personally ask the spy in secrecy, we will not know what he actually said ... or if he even exists ... or deliberately feeds them false information with the correct one ... or if the Australian spying agency did ... Not that it matters for our effective reality.
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"Not a fan of China, but it's obvious they are only telling us what they want us to think and act on."
Hmm. Your point is?
The USA has been doing this with its own propaganda for a very long time. It didn't stop when the cold war ended and more recently it's been winding up to fever pitch
It's not just restricted to the USA. The UK's level of propaganda output targetting its own population has gone into a shrill cresendo as those who stand to benefit most from an economic implosion (and who own most of the med
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Because China is currently the greatest threat to freedom. They're having resource problems (mostly food and energy) and they have some 30M excess males for whom there are no women.
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Actually there are TWO ways and war is regarded as the less desireable one.
Polyandry was the more traditional solution and was the norm for thousands of years when population imbalances developed (as was polygamy when things went the other way)
Monogamy is a relatively recent and fairly destructive religious construct, mostly pushed because deviating from it (which is human nature - we're simply not wired for monogamy) allows the religious/societal leaders to single out such deviants where it's useful to do
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Sometimes information can make students who spy do unexpected things.
vs spies using education as a cover.
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That the PLA has spies amongst students is not surprising.
I work in a UK university. It's usually blindingly obvious who the PLA spies are - and also blindingly obvious that they're not there to spy on our research as much as they are there to watch over Chinese citizens.
In general we take the non-PLA chinese students aside and warn them that "The Party" has stooges operating under cover of being students and they should be circumspect with their political views if they plan to return home.
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If the students spies suddenly make very unexpected calls, that's fun for the NSA, GCHQ.
They all look at the same "educational" website in 24hours? That was never used before?
Smartphone use change? A lot of people use the same site, number, call "home" after the news?
Speak longer, shorter? All have a few seconds on a web site? Look at a web page for longer than average?
Habits and patterns change when average students who spy face an unexpected change in everyda
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The well disciplined spies stay for decades and dont seem to risk the NSA tracked "internet"...
Lets hope a lot of student spies went looking for support from Communist China after the news...
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Have no seen one of these in a while, will be interesting to see the fallout (if any).
I'm a bit surprise we are 'seeing' this one. You would think this would be kept under cover for some time. I hope this guy doesn't have any extended family in China they can use as leverage against him.
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"Have no seen one of these in a while"
Funny, as you will never see this guy anymore after a while.
So what did he *really* say? (Score:1)
And what was added, for propaganda reasons?
Cause I don't exactly see a the Australian spying agency go to the press with its hottest information, if it wasn't with a certain agenda. Let alone an exact copy of that information.
Not saying their agenda can't be mine too ... But take all this with a grain of salt. A mountain-sized one.
Cold War 2.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
I;m not sure why they'd be broadcasting what this spy told them, unless it was multiple levels of disinformation. During the Cold War the US tried to keep Russian defectors out of the public eye as much as possible, presumably after they obtained whatever information was useful enough to offer asylum for.
I wonder how spies and intelligence agencies keep all the disinformation compaigns organized. A second Cold War would be really awkward considering how interconnected our economies are now. Replacing all the manufacturing capacity would be similar to a war production effort considering how many goods are manufactured in China.
Re:Cold War 2.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
"Replacing all the manufacturing capacity would be similar to a war production effort considering how many goods are manufactured in China."
And yet, that is pretty much what every American says needs to happen.
But, ironically, that isn't really what they want to happen.
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But they don't want to be paid like Chinese, or have Chinese working conditions and safety regulations.
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Manufacturing might go back. Jobs won't.
I've had this argument with politicians, they really don't get it. Each generation of new tech means fewer people are needed and the more they resist change the more likely they are to destroy what they're trying to save.
That 10,000 job factory upped stakes and moved to a 1,500 job installation in Mexico, if forced back to the USA it'll be even more automated and become a 400-job heavily robotised installation somewhere logistically sensible.
If it was forced to remain
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I think you found all the pieces without connecting the dots, they probably think that in the grander scheme of things our friendly relations with China is a greater intelligence threat than their spying. So they want to make this loud, clear and embarrassing to anyone dealing with China economically, politically or flirting with them ideologically. That they're an untrustworthy snake trying to undermine democracy and should not be given any trust or influence nor should we make us economically or technolog
Re: Cold War 2.0 (Score:1)
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I;m not sure why they'd be broadcasting what this spy told them, unless it was multiple levels of disinformation. During the Cold War the US tried to keep Russian defectors out of the public eye as much as possible, presumably after they obtained whatever information was useful enough to offer asylum for.
Part of the problem is that too many Millennials have the belief that the public has "the right to know" everything, regardless of how much damage it can do to their country, and internet access to spread that information easily. Leaking secure information used to be very hard, but now it's so easy a 12 year-old could do it.
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Making it public is a way of keeping him *alive*. If they hushed it up, then China could send someone to assassinate the guy and people would just be confused because they haven't been told anything about it. By *loudly* defecting, this guy has ensured he has a longer lifetime, since they won't want the media mess of the fall-out of outright assassinating him.
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Since he defected, it means he probably wasn't checking in with his handlers meaning they probably suspected he had been picked up already... maybe they didn't know it was a defection and not an arrest.. but now they do.
His relations still in China will suffer ... (Score:2)
the Chinese government will want to convince others to not follow Mr Liqiang's lead.
Not the way you think... (Score:4, Insightful)
His handlers in China issued him a fake South Korean passport to gain entry to Taiwan and help China’s efforts to systematically infiltrate its political system, including directing a “cyber army” and Taiwanese operatives to meddle in the 2018 municipal elections. Plans are underway to influence the 2020 presidential election - plans that partly motivated him to defect to Australia.
He is talking about Taiwan. Not the US.
ORLY? (Score:2)
Maybe this guy was working on the Taiwan elections.
But do you really expect us to believe China isn't also trying to influence the 2029 presidential election in the US? (With close to 1.5 billion people and over $12 trillion in GDP, China CAN walk and chew gum at the same time.)
Or that, as they suffer from hundreds of billions of dollars per year of
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(2020 US elections, of course. I HATE this keyboard.)
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Maybe this guy was working on the Taiwan elections.
If only you had bothered to read the the summary...
His handlers in China issued him a fake South Korean passport to gain entry to Taiwan and help China's efforts to systematically infiltrate its political system, including directing a "cyber army" and Taiwanese operatives to meddle in the 2018 municipal elections.
You would know that he was.
And who is suffering from hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs per year? You are hardly worth taking seriously.
You aren't even considering all the good things Trump has done for China. Fucking up long standing alliances. Destabilising entire regions of the world. Turning America isolationist. Handing North Korea PR wins. Abandoning trade alliances. That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are countless others. L
They tell us in the article... (Score:2)
Mr Wang said his operation successfully meddled in the “nine-in-one” elections in Taiwan in 2018, leading to victories for pro-Beijing candidates. In May, he was given a fake South Korean passport and ordered to commence an operation on the ground in Taipei to influence the 2020 presidential elections with the aim of bringing down President Tsai Ing-wen.
It's hardly a surprise once you take off your US blinders.
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Not quite. Trump is the best thing China ever hoped for. He's an idiot who is trashing the alliances with Japan and S. Korea. He pulled the U.S. out of the only counterweight to Chinese economic pressure in the Pacific canceling U.S. involvement in the Trans Pacific Partnership all because it was started under Obama. When the U.S. just this week confabbed with Asian allies over Chinese and how the U.S. want them to get close to Washington, they balked. Why would they want to get closer to an unstable genius
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given that Trump has been un-relenting on using tariffs against China, you can be pretty sure that China desperately wants a more China-Friendly Democrat in office again.
You're assuming that China's leaders have the best interests of the Chinese people in mind. Why? I see little evidence to support that.
Chinese secret (Score:2)
Re: Chinese secret (Score:1)
New Chinese Australian Visa (Score:1)
Timing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Today, in a few hours, Hong Kong will hold a key election, the first since the 6 month long riots and the support for the protest is dwindling as citizens are fed up with the violence. so it is more like the Australia/western politicians are trying to meddle the election in Hong Kong.
By the way, the Shanghai police already issued a statement [dwnews.com]. No English translation on the web yet. Here is the summarization/translation:
Wang Liqiang claimed to hold, under the name of Wang Qiang, PRC passport EA6210226, Hong Kong permanent resident ID Z780239 and a South Korea passport M35772699... In October 2016, Wang was sentenced to 1 year and 3 months, suspended for 1 year and 6 months, over frauds by the People's Court of Guangzhe County in Fujian Province. In February 2019, Wang fabricated an automobile import investment project and scammed 4.6 million Yuan (~US$650K.) On April 19, 2019, Shanghai police opened an investigation of Wang Liqiang over fraud.
On April 10, 2019, Wang entered Hong Kong. Upon verification, his PRC passport and Hong Kong resident ID are fake.
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By the way, the Shanghai police already issued a statement.
And it says exactly the kind of thing you'd expect if he were a spy.
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Yup, stating the (what should be) obvious... (Score:2)
Though this article doesn't specifically state it, I feel like this confirms Huawei and ZTE's complicity in Chinese intelligence operations from those who use their devices.
I feel like this should also quiet any supporters of Huawei and ZTE's "innocence" on having data stored in China. Also makes plausible that their devices have an (as of the time of this post) undiscovered data siphon or keylogger sending data to PRC servers for "quality assurance" or "verification".
Doesn't help their case that Huawei and
China's Snowden (Score:2)
Oblig. (Score:1)