Inside the NSA's Ultra-Secret China Hacking Group | Hacker News Reader

Inside the NSA's Ultra-Secret China Hacking Group

foreignpolicy.com

88 pointsbrown9-229 comments

Here's the link without the annoying cover:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/10/inside_the_...

Context for Foreign Policy again: it's the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, summarized by Noam Chomsky as essentially the business input to American foreign policy. Ask yourself: which business interest does the publication of this article serve?

I have no problem with this. China has shown it is willing and able to attack the us and its government is an extant threat to human freedom. The u.s. isn't perfect but China is far more repressive comparably.

repressive in some ways, yes speak out against the gov't and you're screwed, corruption is also significant. On the flip side, China's infrastructure sucks so much that you can get away with a lot that you can't in the U.S. . First thought was illegal parking, open defecation and prostitution. I'm not putting any judgements, I'm just saying in practice it is easier in China to do the aforementioned than I find it is to do the same in the U.S.!

Until you piss off the wrong local constable and he sentences you to 1 year in a "reeducation through labor" camp without the benefit of a trial except for an appeals process deliberately designed to take longer than the 1 year maximum sentence.

That is a loaded comparison and has no place as the top comment here. Having lived in both countries, I can tell you you're less likely to be harassed by a self-important policeman in China than in the US. Likewise, you're less likely to be in debt, in jail, or homeless.

Your anecdotal tenure in both countries has no impact on the facts. If you don't believe me, set up an access point in Beijing that bypasses the great firewall and while you're at it, set up a site criticizing the one-party process and live in china for a year thereafter. While doing so, google the poverty level and homeless statistics for both countries, and how both countries define it. Pay particular attention to the options afforded a Chinese farmer vs. shelter options for a u.s. homeless person in any urban district.

Err, I've spent 8 years living in China, all around the country.

I think you have the incorrect perception that the state is somehow looking after the individual in China - that's not the case. Modern mainland Chinese society concentrates having the family support the individual (though the state nominally assists for aged persons, etc.). In many places, there are also free facilities for old people such as parks, garden-compounds and clubs with boules facilities.

I'm not sure where your view of Chinese farmers comes from. All the ones I've met (probably hundreds now) have no problems eating heartily, usually have a big flat screen TV, often a computer, and always a cell phone. Their houses are often larger than many western apartments, though less luxurious and tend to have a higher density of residents than we're used to. That doesn't mean they're uncomfortable though.

As for personal debt and jail... you go look those up and then come back and tell me I'm wrong.

Again, I invite you to start up the ISP and website, and to remove your anecdotal experience from observational data: http://seeingredinchina.com/2011/04/27/how-poor-are-chinese-.... Debt is a function of belief in economic mobility; if I dont think your situation will be better in terms of income in the future vs today, I am far less likely to extend capital to you for risk. Im more likely to buy bonds. So the debt situation can be viewed as a reflection of capital markets betting against things getting better in China.

Err, I've run numerous websites in China before. The only functional difference with running them in the west is there's a generally unenforced request to register with the government so they know who to call if they have any issues (very civilized!). As for ISP... get out of the 90s! The state took China from zero internet to most of the global internet in ~10 years - of course they own the infrastructure. As for the list of incomes .. those look out of date but I have personally spent much time in rural Yunnan and some in rural Guizhou and Sichuan and can tell you the people are generally fine and have great quality of life with loads of interesting festivals, scads of TV channels, cheap education and such. The biggest issues tend to be if people need rare medical treatments or try to migrate to the cities with minimal education... the first often ends in death, the second in a return to the country with whatever cash they can stash. Sort of like those young Amish that leave their communities to experience the world for a bit then tend to go back home.

Remember, these are people who are not traditionally part of the market economy in any significantly state-backed-currency-involved sense. So what you see as 'zero wealth' through modern economic glasses (described by George Soros, universally acknowledged as an authority on that mire, as "wrong" and "entirely based upon a false analogy with Newtonian physics"), is a lie. The people have food, clothes, housing, community, education, even internet. They don't need to sell much excess crop for fiat money.

Having lived in both I see it this way:

(1) In China, if you do something the government doesn't like, they'll jail you for that. The reason for jailing is transparent, regardless of whether that reason is just and respects human rights.

(2) In the US, they will more or less follow due process, bending it as far as they can without getting a case thrown out for technical reasons. If they can't charge you with a crime for those actions you performed that they are unhappy about, they will find other charges that are more likely to stick no matter how unrelated. They will then use those charges to coerce you into a plea bargain.

When you have this much information on people, you can be jailed whenever someone doesn't like your actions, because they can find something that will stick or at least ruin your reputation and/or finances.

tl;dr; China has a perverse system. The US has a system that can be perverted.

    “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
    - Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin's secret police

Interesting read, despite the un-neutral tone.

"The word among NSA officials is that if you want to get promoted or recognized, get a transfer to TAO as soon as you can."

This quote (page three) begs one question: If the NSA is being recognized in the american intelligence gathering community as the best place to be, and that TAO is the better place in the NSA, is this not going to attract lesser valuable middle manager with higher social skills to get promoted there, to the detriment of the efficiency of this office?

I mean, as a technical person, I view middle management as a bunch of neds[1] that you have to get along with unless you have suicidal tendencies, I feel naturally concerned for NSA techies in spite of consciously knowing they have highly politicized jobs.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_(Scottish)

Can we please just post the print version. As this site asks for a signup which I am not willing to do.

If using chrome try executing following from Console (Right click > Inspect element)

$("#TB_overlay").remove();$("#TB_window").remove();

Nice. How did you figure that out?

Chrome has a some nice developer tools. OP probably right-clicked the popup and got the element name, and from there knew exactly what to target.

Just to make it known, this particular set of tools isn't chrome exclusive and Firefox also has these features.

In Firefox, right click the element and select "Inspect Element". This will then show you the DOM, with the element higlighted. Then right click the hilighted element and click "Delete Node". Alternately, click "Web Console", and then type in the same command as from the example above.

ESC or cmd period is your friend :)

Sorry, the link I followed did not show this popup, and I'm not sure how to link to a version without it. That is quite annoying.

So is it official? China is the "enemy" now? Otherwise, how are they justifying the attacks?

Are there any grown ups left on HN?

Best go back to email lists and/or nntp.

That is pretty much the agenda. Once the terrorism narrative turns fully into a joke and people don't take it serious anymore the narrative for China as the new enemy must be in place. But so long we play along.

You can hear already hear the sound of "cold war reloaded" in Kissinger's talk at the World Economic Forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZh5cfJxHz4

I am trying to recall who said it - but there were two quotes I heard in the last deacade: "We will be at war with China by 2020" and "We will be at war with China within 20 years."

---

Given the info I had with respect to how China was actively hacking companies like Lockheed, pretty successfully, as early as 2005 - I have never found the above to be too far fetched.

After reading the article "China invades Africa" -- an article talking about the resource land-grab that China was on in that continent, as well as understanding the US' strangle-hold on Oil in the Mid-East as well as Lithium (and Opium) in Afghanistan, and the talk that "China was on a 50-100 year long-game resource capturing plan" -- it would seem to me that the US is playing the more short term plan for Oil/Electronic resources - whereby large scale battles over the other more "mundane" resources will be expected in ~20 years.

/wild-speculation-fun-thought-exercise

I think a lot of this has to do with flexing muscles for the US/China summit over this past weekend.

No .. the US is hacking/spying on every worthwhile entity. And so is everybody else. It doesn't mean a thing about who the "enemy" is. This is the status quo; it's Spy vs. Spy.

Example: http://intelnews.org/2011/02/07/01-652/

Why do they need to justify the attacks to you? You understand that even our closest allies spy on us, right?

The ending is a huge load of bollocks.

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