Comment by genmud | Hacker News Reader

Comment by genmud | Hacker News Reader

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One was followed by police while he was in country, then detained by customs officials (I assume it was MSS) on exit, and was told in no uncertain terms not to come back. This is a regular cybersecurity person who was there to speak at a conference. He was given no records and when his company tried to dig into why he was detained, they unsurprisingly had no records of him being detained or questioned.

I also done incident response for a number of companies targeted by Chinese state sponsored actors going after industrial and financial IP.

You keep calling them spies, but in both cases it's not as clear as you make it out to be and there is no evidence they were spying. The US provides quite a bit of information when they charge someone with espionage. Kicking someone out of your country for taking photos of sensitive sites (US) and keeping quiet about sources/methods is different than arresting someone while refusing to show evidence of their crime(PRC).

You act like someone with a regional interest will always be a spy if they have done intelligence work... there are tens of thousands of people who work for intelligence agencies in Canada and many more former employees.

I'm not even denying they might have been spying or providing trip reports afterwards, but without evidence I have a choice between believing the Canadian government or the Chinese government... I'll choose to believe the Canadian government.

Which comports with my statements of kid glove treatment. PRC did not want your associate in the country, invited them to drink tea and then booted them out of the country aka the opposite of hostage risk. Are some fields subject to increased national security scrutiny? Sure but arbiturary detention risk is rarely on the cards vs getting kicked out. No different from US booting out PRC academics/students for association with defense connected/adjacent institutes. Even IP espionage does not detain people to give up goods since that’s counter productive, i.e. thousand talent program works only if targets come to PRC willingly. And they do, because the risk of detainment is virtually non-existent hence the US gov has to deter via shenanigan like China Initiative to disincentivize people to people exchanges. It's not the prospect of PRC punishment but the reward that fuels their indy espionage efforts and why the west is playing up arbitrary detention risk.

The US also doesn't show evidence for PRC nationals prosecuted for photographing sensitive infra. They're not releasing said photos, only allegations/prosecutions because of course not. And per script PRC MFA will deny and claim they're just tourists with bad english who can't read signage. That's how the game is played. Choosing to not believe PRC is assuming the default position that western spies aren't operating or if they are, are never caught which we already know not to be true per CIA debacle. At the end of the day damning quack like a duck associations are as good as these scenarios will permit. And in Michaels case, involve literal people with acknowledged intelligence backgrounds. which is close to smoking gun threshold. Obviously we'll disagree but I choose to believe a surveillance state with a proven record of counterintelligence is good at surveilling.

> The US also doesn't show evidence for PRC nationals prosecuted for photographing sensitive infra. They're not releasing said photos, only allegations/prosecutions because of course not.

That's provably false.

> And in Michaels case, involve literal people with acknowledged intelligence backgrounds. which is close to smoking gun threshold.

Smoking gun in what way? When you look at the geopolitical issues at the time, it's obvious they were arrested with the intent to put leverage on Canada, whether they are spies or not is irrelevant. In fact them not being spies, but related to connected people is actually even better.

>That's provably false.

Please prove it. You'll find is some redacted district court documents which is as credible as PRC MFA statement with respect to counter intelligence shenanigans.

> In fact them not being spies, but related to connected people is actually even better.

Except it's manifestly not, especially if you look at geopolitcal messaging at the time. PRC's retaliation over Meng was specifically calibrated to message business community was NOT targetted. Apart from Michaels ther was the Canadian drug trafficker with proven traffic activy in Canada. And when media was frenzing over some passengers (I think teacher) having issues transitting via PRC airport, there was rapid messaging from PRC end to assure it was procedural and not part of the Meng drama. PRC messaging could not have been clearer. The Michaels being spies mattered precisely because the point of PRC retaliation was to segregate from commercial activities. This was during time when PRC was fighting hard against decouple efforts from US.

Smoking gun in sense that if an ex MSS member got arrested in US, was returned to PRC during exchange, followed by MSS publically celebrating their return and their associate saying they used to conduct intelligence activities, the parsimonious answer is US security apparatus caught a PRC spy. If that's not enough damning context then there's nothing else to say.

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