The Chinese wouldn't do that to me. They don't have a dog in this fight.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#FBI_an...
Also, the US has proven experience in smearing political characters. Heck, even John fucking Lennon had an FBI file full of personal information.
Airbus might disagree with you there, I can't see the NSA ratting Boeing out for supplying bribes.
You can't packet-trace a cloned switch port you don't know about.
Nobody is more distrusting of each other than two communist countries.
I'm sure lots of botnets use China servers as well.
I'm not saying the US doesn't do that, but the evidence is not as clear.
Further, the break-in to Greenwald's residence and theft of his machine.
As well as the visit to the Guardian and destrution of machines....
The evidence is crystal.
And given how the UK government loves nothing more than to be the lapdog of the US, I have no doubts it was done entirely voluntarily.
Eagerly even, as an opportunity to show off just how extra exceedingly loyal minions they are.
Frankly, I have little doubt that the UK government participates so eagerly that just occasionally some of their US counterparts must be a little bit embarrassed on their behalf over seeing their total lack of self respect in trying to impress.
Which you know - is still illegal to have. Though it's funny how the Guardian thoroughly underreported that fact.
It is, however illegal for someone with a clearance to mishandle classified material. "Mishandling" includes "Permitting access to classified material to non-cleared personnel.". If you mishandle classified material you may be reprimanded, have your clearance revoked, be fined, or go to jail for a very long time.
In the case of the Chinese hackers, they were spying on reporters to discover their sources.
What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers...
AFAIK we don't have evidence of similar US spying for the purpose of blackmail, harassment, etc. because my concern is whether the NSA might use its sources for those ends.
Miranda's detainment, confiscation of the memory sticks etc was to be expected - as far as the UK Government is concerned he's carry stolen state secrets.
What I don't really understand is why he flew through London carrying them, I believe Madrid has more routes to South American - I wonder if he was routed so he would be picked up for massive publicity.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-20/world/39385755...
Huh? There's nothing in the Post's information that would preclude both from having happened, so it's would be a stretch to call it a lie even from that article. But in fact, the original blog post[1] talks about multiple goals of the main attack, including listing the targeted attack that the GP is probably referencing as independent from the attack that "resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google". I think it's you that's confusing incidents.
> Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.
edit: ah, and the GP wasn't even talking about the gmail accounts.
[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers...
Also, what kind of spy uses gmail? Sheesh.
The kind that is trying to maintain cover as a non-spy so uses the same email services as everybody else.
Of course, that means the joke's on them, because the NSA was listening to everyone...
On the other hand if you want to read people's mail, then hacking into the provider is certainly an option.
On the other hand, we don't really know what the Chinese knew, or thought they knew, about Google and how it functioned WRT government surveillance. If they had reason to believe that Google would be cooperating with authorities and would have infrastructure in place to monitor email accounts that they could look for and identify if it was monitoring the accounts they were looking for, then this explanation makes a bit more sense.
Of course the Chinese gov is able to do so without any repercussions. The difference should be that in a democracy you can't abuse your power without repercussions.
Do you see the irony? Western governments are abusing their powers.. and they are getting away with it. Democracy means nothing if the government doesn't hold itself accountable.
Relying on the government to hold itself accountable makes democracy no different from monarchy.
I think US journalism is causing us to misprioritize. Everyone is talking about the NSA so everyone assumes it's the biggest problem.
http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/11/01/edward-snowden-escalated-...
At a minimum the U.S. and UK spying needs to be balanced against the fact that U.S. and UK citizens invented the core technologies of the Internet, and gave them to the world for free.
Our biggest trading partner is China, and we have a free-trade agreement with the US.
Who exactly is our ally again?
Sent aircraft carriers, ships and soldiers to help depose a democratically elected president, just because he wanted closer ties with China and wanted to do agrarian reform.
Disappeared lots of people (I don't know any personally, because I am too young, but I DO know personally lots of people that still want disappeared people back)
Spied on us (erm, that part still applies, no?).
Sabotaged our agriculture (ie: some plagues started after US agrarian engineers visited us to "help" with our agricultural technology).
Supported and funded very repressive crazy dictators that killed boatloads of people.
What the USSR did for us during the cold war: Gave us some really cool technical books in spanish (yes, our language is portuguese, but spanish is good enough), I still have a bunch of them, they are really good, somewhere around my house there is calculus books, structural engineering, and lots of other cool stuff, russian books but written in spanish, targeted at Latin America.
USSR borrowed us some scientists (Russia and Ucraine still do, by the way).
Helped our exiles, not only left wing ones, but right wing ones too.
Sold us some very interesting stuff, even if shitty sometimes (example: during the cold war Lada cars were very popular here).
Computers! (for example when some companies here tried to develop a computer compatible with the Macintosh, US government helped Apple in forcing them to stop, while Russians borrowed us some engineers and books)
Now, who were our real enemies in cold war again?
It is just that this is what happened to us in Brazil, and USA never gave any clear indication that it wants to improve its behaviour.
So, why should we trust it now, if we could never trust it in first place?
Stopped us getting nuked or invaded by the USSR
The fact is reality is much more complex than your simple statement which is further skewed by Hollywood.
Stalin was a mad man on a par with Hitler, but even under later leaders it was still a repressive regime with Gulags.
When you say that you doubt it, is that code for having no idea of the impact of Soviet funding in South America, but not being willing to say that you don't know? Or is it just that you know that everything bad that the US did was to counter something even worse that the evil USSR was doing?
Missile gap?
However, Cuba is a repressive dictatorship which will was funded by the USSR for many years.
It hurts a lot more because you are meant to look out for each other, not distrust and stab each others back.
But who is to speak for tomorrow? None of us can tell what the future brings. Not me and not you. So who is to say that in ten years, when that data is still there, that the US is still worthy of your trust?
It is the future we should distrust, even if you trust the past, and the present.