NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers

Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by krapp on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @03:34PM (#5870175)

Even with all of this going on, affront to liberty that it is, I'd be more upset if we weren't trying to hack China. An up and coming communist superpower, and a potential military and technological rival? Of course we're trying to hack the bejesus out of them. Everything we accuse them of doing - penetrating our media, penetrating our infrastructure, whatever, we're trying to do. This is not even controversial, this is the part of their job they're supposed to be doing, 'owning other countries.'

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by brown9-2 on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @03:42PM (#5870241)

This isn't even that much of a reveal by Snowden considering 1) the Chinese would already know about this and 2) a lot of details about NSA's TAO group have already been published (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/10/inside_the_...).

So now he is using the secrets he learned to buy favor from the Chinese government?

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by tdirect on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @07:38PM (#5871436)

If he did indeed reveal this, how is it "buying favor from the Chinese government"? It's hard to imagine the government of China doesn't already know about these attacks.

The beneficiary of this information is the U.S. public, so they can actually have a real discussion about cyber warfare, rather than simply believing the government line of "China hacks us, and we only defend...". How can we have a real discussion about our role in the world if we're told only about foreign aggression and not our own?

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by krapp on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @04:41PM (#5870580)

They don't even have to know it. It's one of those things they would just assume.

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by abraininavat on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @05:01PM (#5870710)

Not controversial? Obama certainly characterizes it as controversial when he talks about China conducting cyber-attacks on the US.

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by krapp on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @05:20PM (#5870818)

Well, yes, he's a politician. But not to expect that China's conducting cyber-attacks on the US anyway would just be stupid. I meant not controversial in that espionage is what governments have been doing since the dawn of civilization, it's expected behavior, even if the methods might be new. Yes, of course China's spying on us. Yes, of course they're trying to hack our systems. It's not a surprise is what I'm saying.

They're a large, modern communist nation, competing with us politically and economically. There's a lot of political capital to be made playing them up as the successor to the Soviet Union in American minds. The next Red Menace.

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by Cadsby on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @06:15PM (#5871084)

I'm genuinely curious why you seem to emphasize "communist" in all your descriptions of China.

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by krapp on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @06:21PM (#5871109)

Because, in terms of the politics, that's the red meat (pun only slightly unintended.) Their being 'communist', and communism being percieved as atheistic, anti-capitalist and militaristic, is what makes them the bogeyman, that's why the media and the government go out of their way to make their efforts seem so dangerous and terrifying because being 'communist' makes them our de facto enemies (because we're the God Fearing Capitalist Shining City on a Hill.)

If China was a predominantly Muslim country, plug 'terrorists' into the same socket, it would amount to the same difference, in terms of the rhetoric. If we found out Britain was spying on us (ECHELON aside), or Germany or Poland, whomever, it wouldn't have nearly the same sort of ominous sense of 'the other' that the spectre of China/Russia/the Middle East do.

I certainly didn't mean to imply anything tacit about China being communist having anything to do with their attempts to expand their influence or anything. It's what they should be doing.

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by tome on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @07:02PM (#5871283)

One could also present them correctly as a very authoritarian state, antithetical to personal freedom and civil liberties. Maybe there's no political benefit to be gained by saying that.

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Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers by krapp on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @08:54PM (#5871701)

True.

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