359 karma · joined April 2, 2015
In fact, the only reason the Section 215 even had a sunset clause was because the legislature was so uncertain about the legislation that they wanted to put in an escape clause.
The charge of entrapment is separate from the severity of the crime someone is entrapped into or whether the entrapment would be considered a sufficient motive, were it not simulated. It is merely enough that the police coerced the defendant.
The blackmail, however, was for a delayed use of force - loss of freedom/liberty - which is tantamount to loss of life, and indeed in this case Ross lost the remainder of his life. It would be uncharitable (again) to suggest that it was merely about property. But (again) all one needs to establish entrapment is threat to property.
> This makes it nearly impossible to entrap someone into hiring a hitman, without even getting into the particulars of this case.
Can you support this argument by citing the law, precedent or a summary? (This claim is not supported by your webcomics.)
> even if someone hold a gun to your head and tells you to kill someone else, it's still criminal if you do that Please stop referring to webcomics as "the" law guide.
Of course its still criminal. Do not confuse this with whether it is entrapment. (If done by the police) It is both entrapment and it is criminal.
Where are you getting the idea that if the police hold a gun to your head to make you shoot someone that isn't entrapment? Can you cite the law or precedent? Again, the webcomic does not cover this: in the webcomic, the police are not holding the gun.
> (B) is necessary, but not sufficient, to support a claim of entrapment
Right, one also needs (A).
> So he needs a quote of him saying "NO" to the idea in the chat logs (or something equivalent to this, in the admitted evidence), then police pressure, then him changing his mind.
This is not the case. If someone never says "NO" because the police never approach a defendant, but the police apply pressure and then make the approach after the pressure is applied, this still counts as entrapment.
> You can see how it played out in the law guide sample: the young lady refuses to commit the crime for money, but relents when a police agent tells her that lives are at stake. That refusal is very important!
Please stop referring to the webcomic as "the" law guide.
The refusal is sufficient, but not necessary to establish in court that there was pressure applied. All the the defense needs to do is show that there was pressure (coercion). One way to do this is to show that the defendant said no, pressure was applied, and then the defendant said yes. But it is not the only way to establish that there was coercion/pressure.
As my source correctly states to qualify the quote you cherrypicked:
"Instead, a defendant will need to prove that the law enforcement officer took additional actions to force a person into an illegal act. The following may be considered sufficient actions to force a person into committing a crime they otherwise wouldn’t:
- Fraudulent claims or promises
- Depending on the specifics, verbal harassment or flattery
- Threats against a person, their property, or their job"
That is, "the defendant has to offer evidence to clear their willing involvement in a crime." In this case, the defendant would offer the fact that they were blackmailed and defrauded.
> If you can find something in the chat log, his legal briefs, or wherever that proves he said "no" before he said "yes", please offer it. Your source correctly confirms that he has the burden of proof to show this and establish entrapment.
It is not my responsibility to establish this. It is intellectually dishonest to presume that it is my responsibility to do this. It is also intellectually dishonest to suggest that the only way to show that there was police coercion is to show a "no" and then a "yes". Coercion can be established many different ways.
> I'm sorry if I come off as harsh, I certainly don't intend that.
Wrt CCE, this is also a rounding down of the argument. DPR will be facing separate charges in a separate case for the hitman, will he not? The hitman bit was brought up as an anecdote to support the CCE charge and not something that the defense could challenge as entrapment at that time. This is why I bring it up.
By uncharitable I merely mean that you aren't willing to take the actual argument. You have not directly addressed the argument. At this point I am convinced that you are not willing to.
You don't come off as harsh. I would use the word dismissive. I've used the word 'uncharitable'. Maybe 'troll'?
Argument from exhaustion against a straw man.
----------------------------------
Let's go forward from this point.
If the police entered a mall, forced someone at gunpoint to kill another person, could that person then be arrested for murder with no possibility of arguing that they were entrapped?
Suppose that before or during being held at gunpoint, at no point did they tell anyone that "no" they wouldn't kill.
Is it (A), (B), or (C) that is incorrect?
It sounds like you are saying that (C) is incorrect. However you are confusing how this is shown in court - what needs to be established - from the principle and definition of coercion.
Law enforcement did not charge him for the hitman so the defense did not need to put up a case for entrapment, and as far as I can tell the legal defense dropped the ball a number of places. So it is not enough to point at the defense and backwards reason that if there were entrapment that it would have been established. There was no opportunity. There will be a separate hearing on the use of law enforcement coercion and we may see an argument and evidence presented there.
Neither of us would be willing or able to establish a full defense of DPR or a full case for law enforcement - suggesting that this is my responsibility is intellectually dishonest.
Take any number of resources:
http://www.pdxcriminallawyers.com/articles/entrapment-and-po...
"What Is Entrapment?
When it comes to police coercion, a defendant is assumed to have the responsibility to turn down an opportunity to commit a crime when posed by a law enforcement officer. Instead, a defendant will need to prove that the law enforcement officer took additional actions to force a person into an illegal act. The following may be considered sufficient actions to force a person into committing a crime they otherwise wouldn’t:
- Fraudulent claims or promises
- Depending on the specifics, verbal harassment or flattery
- Threats against a person, their property, or their job
If a defendant wants to cite entrapment, they have a duty to present proof of entrapment. As it is what is known as an affirmative defense, the defendant has to offer evidence to clear their willing involvement in a crime."
http://www.grayarea.com/entrap.htm
"So, a defendant cannot be exonerated of a crime on an entrapment claim even if he or she can prove that police had no reason whatsoever to suspect even the slightest of criminal inclinations. What they must prove is that were induced by police to commit the crime. This leads us to the second of the four questions: What constitutes inducement?
An officer merely approaching a defendant and requesting that they commit a crime does not. To claim inducement, a defendant must prove he or she was unduly persuaded, threatened, coerced, harassed or offered pleas based on sympathy or friendship by police. A defendant must demonstrate that the government conduct created a situation in which an otherwise law-abiding citizen would commit an offense."
Yes, what you are arguing against is a straw man. Quite simply you are not charitably interpreting the situation whereby law enforcement created a situation in which DPR had an incentive to hire a hitman as entrapment. It is the simulation of blackmail, fraud and threats to DPR's business that constitute coercion.
Merely suggesting that there be a hitman is not coercion. But simulating blackmail, defrauding him and threatening his business constitute coercion.
This is what we're talking about and you have repeatedly been ignoring.
Because you are arguing merely in the context of "they offered a hitman and he agreed" you are arguing against a weakened form of my argument.
My argument, in full, charitable form, can be seen in the second reference quoted.
"An officer merely approaching a defendant and requesting that they commit a crime does not. To claim inducement, a defendant must prove he or she was unduly persuaded, threatened, coerced, harassed or offered pleas based on sympathy or friendship by police. A defendant must demonstrate that the government conduct created a situation in which an otherwise law-abiding citizen would commit an offense."
An officer did not merely approach DPR and request that he commit a crime.
They simulated blackmail, fraud and threat to property: that is coercive.
Definitions of blackmail includes the word "coercion".
Please, I don't care how long your posts are if you don't bother to address the premises of the argument.
Because you are refusing to address the use of simulated blackmail and fraud to coerce DPR, you are not charitably engaging the argument. You are arguing against a straw man. You are pretending that law enforcement merely chatted with DPR online without setting up coercive pretenses.
Please, for your own sake, be charitable when debating people - either in person or online.
You sound like you're a very insistent and dogged debater.
It would be becoming of you to take your passion for argumentation and apply it to the arguments being made by the opposition. I'm certain that if you did this you would have more success.
I would reply point by point but as they say "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."
Thanks again for the discussion. Hope to see you continue to be verbose (but perhaps more charitable) in other threads around HN.
Similar searches for the legal distinction between extortion and blackmail consider blackmail a form of coercion.
Given (A) that blackmail is coercion (psychological pressure), and (B) coercing someone into committing a crime is entrapment. Would (A) and (B) then not imply that (C) blackmailing should count as entrapment?
DPR did not come up with a hitman as a solution. Law enforcement made the suggestion. They did not use the words, just had their fake identity offer to take care of the situation.
Unfortunately I can't ask webcomics questions. Looking for answers to questions above.
Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
But let's talk about this alleged hitman situation. Didn't the police come up with the idea and create the situation where a third of a million dollars appeared to have been stolen and a volunteer appeared to defect with information and a threat to bring down the organization?
What exactly does count as coercion? If the police were to make your incentives work out a certain way - let's say they were aware that a non-call-girl was in dire straights was potentially willing to accept money for a personal night, they freeze her bank account and provide a good looking and safe opportunity with a load of cash to do it - would that count as compulsion?
Or is it just by appeal to words that counts as compulsion?
How can a court decide what you would have done otherwise?
It seems like a pretty difficult area of law - and one that the defendant could argue?
For the record I do not support trafficking of drugs and illegal materials, nor calling of hit men: but I do want to make sure that the tools to get a conviction do not further enshrine precedents that have fascistic qualities to them - e.g. parallel construction, entrapment, others.
The Embargo Act was a declaration. TTIP is a negotiation.
But let's collapse this conversation back to the top, shall we? My response (and the arguments contained in the conversation that ensued) was to the claim that the "founding fathers" would have liked for other nations to check-and-balance the US; that they would have liked there to be political interdependence, even veto power from other nations.
That commenter said "On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted"
This is not the case. It is only past century of America has been okay with this. Before the turn, and as argued by the "founding fathers" themselves, America was against political entanglement.
The article on the Embargo Act itself reads: "The Embargo Act of 1807 was a general Embargo that made illegal any and all exports from the United States. It was sponsored by President Thomas Jefferson and enacted by Congress. The goal was to force Britain and France to respect American rights during the Napoleonic Wars. They were engaged in a major war; the U.S. wanted to remain neutral and trade with both sides, but neither side wanted the other to have the American supplies." That's exactly in line with the thesis.
Regarding Samoa and Germany/Phillipines and Spain - this is when these policies began to change. They bubbled from the late 1800s and broke in the early 1900s.
I think there's a narrative difference here: the US broadly did not align themselves with other nations into treaties of peace and of war. The "founding fathers" specifically discussed the danger of political entanglement with other nations - the danger of allowing them to say "yes" and to say "no".
I feel like your interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, of the Embargo Act and of Manifest Destiny are not charitable for these reasons. Of course the US was not 'isolationist'. I termed it 'non-interventionist'. Even that is not a good term, but what was meant I think is clear.
Yes the US engaged in colonialism and in trade. But it did not involve itself in the spirit of the top post: allowing other nations to have a "yes" or "no" say. It made declarations like the Monroe Doctrine. It did not make treaties like NATO or like TTIP. Categorically these are different in kind than what happened before the 1900s.
Part of that is due to a changing world (I say this in my top post). But the US was also under a different international political disposition.
The first of these is that boundaries between nations and regions are in large part based on natural geography - difficult to pass geographical features like large bodies of water or rivers, think forests, faultlines, mountain ranges and deserts form natural buffer zones between populations. As these features change on a global scale: as rivers are redirected, water levels displace populations, as deserts expand and forests move these boundaries are shifted and so conflict can bubble between regions regarding their territory.
On a similar tact changes to the resource supply chain also causes territory disputes. In some places (e.g. Yemen), water shortages fuel conflict that can only get worse as water dries up. Resources move and ecological changes shift country's resource supplies. Large changes and migrations to game or fish populations force regions to renegotiate rights to territory for hunting and fishing.
Furthermore climate change makes some previously unavailable resources accessible. The elephant in the room here is the Arctic, which contains roughly 20% of the world's oil and huge amounts of minerals and other resources - as well as it being a natural and valuable geostrategic location for missile deployment and satellite communication.
Some months ago a new executive order was published for the purposes of developing a steering committee to unify agencies across the United States government to implement goals it describes as:
"... critical long-term strategic, ecological, cultural, and economic value, and it is imperative that we continue to protect our national interests in the region, which include: national defense; sovereign rights and responsibilities; maritime safety; energy and economic benefits; environmental stewardship; promotion of science and research; and preservation of the rights, freedoms, and uses of the sea as reflected in international law. ..."
The steering committee is responsible for a few things, and first:
"Sec. 3. Responsibilities of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee. The Steering Committee, in coordination with the heads of relevant agencies and under the direction of the Chair, shall:
(a) provide guidance and coordinate efforts to implement the priorities, objectives, activities, and responsibilities identified in National Security Presidential Directive 66/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 25, Arctic Region Policy, the National Strategy for the Arctic Region and its Implementation Plan, and related agency plans;
..."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/21/execu...
In NSPD-66 the national security interests are enumerated as:
"The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include such matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight.
The United States also has fundamental homeland security interests in preventing terrorist attacks and mitigating those criminal or hostile acts that could increase the United States vulnerability to terrorism in the Arctic region.
The Arctic region is primarily a maritime domain; as such, existing policies and authorities relating to maritime areas continue to apply, including those relating to law enforcement.[1] Human activity in the Arctic region is increasing and is projected to increase further in coming years. This requires the United States to assert a more active and influential national presence to protect its Arctic interests and to project sea power throughout the region.
The United States exercises authority in accordance with lawful claims of United States sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction in the Arctic region, including sovereignty within the territorial sea, sovereign rights and jurisdiction within the United States exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf, and appropriate control in the United States contiguous zone.
Freedom of the seas is a top national priority. The Northwest Passage is a strait used for international navigation, and the Northern Sea Route includes straits used for international navigation; the regime of transit passage applies to passage through those straits. Preserving the rights and duties relating to navigation and overflight in the Arctic region supports our ability to exercise these rights throughout the world, including through strategic straits."
http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-66.htm
This multinational bid, consisting of over 20 nations claiming parts of the arctic (Russia claiming about half of it) and 170 members on the international Arctic Council is bolstered by espionage, claim staking missions and cutthroat diplomacy:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/11/frozen-assets-arctic-esp...
The US and Canada have been increasing defense cooperation in the Arctic in anticipation of claims and challenges:
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=118768
But there have also been disputes with Canada about sovereignty:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/13/canada-uses-fra...
The US just held an emergancy artic council, under the guise of preserving the Artic for the sake of nature, and have been meeting bi- and multi-laterally with other artic nations to create as many national stakes to artic territory as they can (so that there can be political stalemate over the area).
Russia is now claiming approximately half of the arctic and has mobilized troops, drones and ballistic missile systems:
http://www.newsweek.com/.../what-russia-arctic-308941.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/21/russia-arctic-m...
http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-is-militarizing-the-ar...
http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-arctic-pivot-is-a-mas...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-26/russia-deploys-tact...
The United State's world order is one where boundaries are not allowed to be changed. It has kept the Middle East, despite its high volatility, mostly static for the majority of a century. The current resource and land distribution of the world benefits the United States - in the sense that it is uniquely able to feel secure from the imperial ambitions of its neighbors (like the Britannica that bore it it is surrounded by weak neighbors and by geographical features that protect it). It is in the US national security interests that boundaries do not shift - both because it is a garunteur of static boundaries so that shifting boundaries undermine its legitimacy, and because it opens the opportunity for nations to become regional hegemons that can 'grow up' to play global power games against the US (I'm channeling the leaked DoD Wolfowitz Doctrine here).
The US does not want power projected or ballistic missile systems on its northern flank. In turn it enumerates 'strategic deterrence' as a national security issue in the Arctic: the US feels the need to deploy its own missile systems aimed at other nations as a retaliatory measure to deter possible future hostility.
Finally, the global ranging security pacts of the US will force it to intervene if conflict arises nearly anywhere over this changing world. If the world erupts into territory dispute caused by geographical changes and resource contention the US is obligated to be a part of that conflict.
Basic history of the United States is that it was, broadly, a non-interventionist nation that refused to get involved in other nations wars. You are the one who has mischaracterized basic history.
"She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example."
Up until very early 1900 it was the US's lifeblood to not involve itself politically with Europe (or the rest of the world) at all.
It's probably the case that the founding fathers would have different opinions were they born today. Today you can travel around the world several times than you could travel across the (extremely small) country then. Things are different.
This is contextualized by a number of current events including the rise of China and revisionism of Russia, the fight over the Arctic, America's huge losses in cyberwarfare, the US's push for an Asian NATO, and Japan's reinterpretation of their Constitution to allow for anticipatory military strikes (even on behalf of allies) - basically the US's Pivot to Asia.
Policy and strategy thinktanks are discussing with NGOs and CSOs how to develop insurgencies in NK and how to inform and convince the youth and unengaged in SK to care about reunification. The US and international allies plan to target specific people (guards, officials) on human rights violations, rather than engaging the country diplomatically, in the hopes that an international criminal court approach can get officials and government employees to resist or be reluctant to take orders from higher up the chain. The US will be discussing the evolution of NK with Russia, who they believe will now be assisting NK at a faster clip with missile development.
An interesting note here is that every year has seen increasing activities from the US inside of NK. This past year CIA and State Department involvement in the development of The Interview (as leaked by the SONY emails, both by the SONY hackers #GOP and by Wikileaks) reveal how tensions are building between the countries, and how cyberwarfare is a highly asymmetric type of warfare.
We can expect to see a great deal more about North Korea, and need to hope that, as larger powers attempt to conquer NK and strip its government, that this can be done as peacefully as possible and without triggering all of the Cold War tripwires breeding in the world today.
I will say broadly that their coverage of information sharing, surveillance law, and intellectual property is rounded down to their specific issues and narrow perspective - and these issues aren't necessarily one-for-one mappings to "what's best for the internet/civility".
One example that comes to mind was their coverage of the recent Obama Administration Executive Order 13694 [1][2] where they dropped the international purpose and nature of the order entirely, as if the sanctions weren't directed towards, and enforced by law, at actors in China and Russia (and Iran and smaller players) overseas.
Following Snowden - who truly did show that the NSA was surveiling hundreds of millions of Americans - the EFF's speculatory, alarmist and misleading coverage of national cybersecurity and civil rights confused and angered a confused and angry group of people we would rather have engaged in deliberate and reasonable debate. Namely, despite how different in kind, scope, purpose and method EO 13694 is, the EFF reported on it with the tone of the Snowden disclosures and its audience associated the two.
I have spoken, too, with the EFF - and was disappointed both by their their inability to use PGP (even after suggesting it to others) and the way they engaged with the material I provided them. [I sent them evidence of a backdoor in popular software and an analysis of a possible convenient backdoor location for a popular hardware brand; they quietly acknowledged these reports but AFAICT did nothing with them - as a comparison when I sent similar material, using PGP, to cryptome they were immediately published.]
I should not have been so disappointed by what they did with the materials I sent to them: I did not understand at the time the scope of the EFF - that even their published matrix of trustworthy communication software was a stretch of their operating scope.
So this isn't to rag so very much on the EFF. I think they have a role in advocacy and journalism and the legal landscape. I'm just not willing to invest my full and unquestioning faith in the reports of any interest group - for even those with good intentions are not infallible.
[Anecdotes only today, I'm afraid. :)]
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/whitehouses-new-execut...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/execu...
Does anyone know where he stands on public policy with regard to IP law, civil law, domestic surveillance and domestic propaganda?
[1] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall13/cos597G/
It is likely that with a change in leadership these policies will also change and Twitter will become another Facebook/Reddit.
The idea, and this can be seen on DARPA's slides (http://www.darpa.mil/workarea/downloadasset.aspx?id=21474857...), is to get computation that is several orders of magnitude higher for their specialized sets of problems than what can theoretically be reached by traditional computing models even if Moore's law continues.
DARPA would like to first apply this technology to ARGUS drone systems (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA) and related technology because streaming video can't be done to the ground, tracking and decision making must be done on board - yet traditional processing platforms can only track a few orders of magnitude fewer targets that what the military would like.
In a more advanced phase, if memristor or coupled oscillator (etc) approaches to building inference models become possible, then programs written in DARPA's other initiative (Probablistic Programming) could be programmed into these exotic solid state devices to compute in a way more analogous to today's generic computation. And indeed, eventually the adoption of Probablistic Programming will train programmers to write code for quantum computers - while more complicated, replacing Probablistic Programming's PDFs with probability amplitudes almost get one there.
I hope to see more journalistic coverage of some of the other exotic devices.
It's true that the Chinese presence in the islands is disputed. US military presence on Japan is disputed. Disputed != Illegality; they should not conflated or confused.
All of the policymakers I follow complain about how difficult the situation is because technically it IS legal. It's unfortunate. But it is legal.
(In addition, they are building new islands from nothing, and then inhabiting them. This is mostly without precident, but the precedents that are there have it legal.)
> > to project power lawfully in the Asia Pacific.
> This is pro-China bullshit right here. Lawfully by whose standards?
International standards. There is nothing wrong with sending your naval forces into international waters so long as proper notifications are made. China is doing this. Is is lawful. It is aggressive. The Japanese and Philippines don't like it. But it is lawful.
> There's a big difference in intercepting packages and installing backdoors in a targeted and legal way, at least acording to SCOTUS who have ZERO problems with our status quo - and massive cyberwar attacks from China and cooked in state mandated malware.
Yes there is. Actually, both the US and China (and France and Israel and Germany and the UK and Russia, etc, etc) perform massive cyberwar attacks. They all also backdoor their hardware and software en masse (not just targeted interception).
> the US's method are a million times more ethical than autocratic states in regards to SIGINT. Heck, Putin had Kaspersky give him information on journalists he didn't like.
I don't think you want an apple to apple comparison with the US... The US just turned their intelligence agencies on the Associated Press to ruin their relationships with informants and to track their sources... The US does have more covert ways of doing things - their censorship and propaganda efforts are more covert and rely more on bribery and deception than force. But is that something we want to cheer on?
The US is much better than Russia on journalistic rights. The US isn't fighting huge swaths of KGB installed media in the US, whereas Russia has to deal with Western NGOs and CIA intermediaries. So what? And why do you want to bring it up?
> We power their economy via our manufacturing and via the sales of our products. If anything they are close economic partners. Are we moving all of our manufacturing to Mexico or something? Seems to me the US is very much tied to the success of China.
We are tied to the success of China. But not its success of becoming a superpower. This is the distinction you are asking for.
> > and to increase the risk of its using its military
> This is asinine. China is unilaterally taking over disputed islands with zero attempts to use diplomacy, the UN, etc. The Japanese and others have claims on those islands. Why are you dismissing their rights? Because they are "evil US" partners as well?
Erg, well the situation is a whole lot more complicated than you made it? Technically nothing they are doing is illegal. I'm not going to say its right?
All I'm getting at is that no state is right. The US isn't a hero. Neither is China.
They are merely in conflict. We are stuck in the middle.
I didn't buy good versus evil. You did. For you the US is good and China is evil.
You are accusing HN (and me) of thinking China is good and the US is evil.
Neither is true. There is no good or evil. There are states in conflict. And there are ideals they both break.
The point of my post is to bring up the point that it is not China breaking with ideals. It is every nation breaking with ideals.
It is well known (via Snowden) that the US installs backdoors into US hardware and software for export to China, and it has for at least 15 years warned about the same from imports.
So none of this is particularly new. What is new is that the US is now moving against China on all fronts to prevent it from acquiring superpower status - to isolate it economically and politically, to block its trade and international investment programs, and to increase the risk of its using its military (with the second largest funding of any nation) to project power lawfully in the Asia Pacific.
So these articles come at a good time for the US.
You should not trust pretty much any hardware - recent revelations have shown that products come with backdoors; that is the article does not establish the absence of 'security flaws' by other manufacturers.