GitHub should get the full support of federal law enforcement, if not the military.
I wouldn't be averse to depth charging a fiber optic cable (more specifically - damaging their ability to operate the great firewall) so long as there are no human casualties. Even better if it could be done without disrupting Chinese Internet.
Unfortunately, most people's response would be "What's a GitHub"?
If China was loading missiles into cargo ships that fire at northern california, we wouldn't continue to let ships enter/leave China. As to the debt that China owns, they're already in a position of playing games with currency and resources to assert a dominant position.
Eventually you have to stand up for yourself. As to the do-dad manufacture costs, well I think we'd be okay if we had to go a couple years without any new do-dads.
Since sport is pretty much a direct offshoot of war, I think the analogy works ok.
(Just as we should have criminal investigations over US surveillance programs...).
Really? The US government does just that, by mass spying of telecommunications.
We've been hearing propaganda for ages about China & Russia doing evil things in the cyberspace and USA promoting freedoms and such but the NSA revelations among other things have shown that USA is just as guilty of all the spying, attacks, weakening of hardware and software even if it hurts american companies, economic espionage (which was also a difference people here used to make with China and was proven false), etc.
And I'm not even touching Stuxnet and Flame.
> The US generally does not engage in destructive actions with the intent of restricting the rights of their own citizens... just other country's citizens. China does both. Both are very bad, but I think the US still has a slight moral highground here.
If it does. It's not much higher. You're completely restricted in your rights to do anything that the government finds a matter of "national security". Even if it's not related to any official entity [1]
It's time we stop thinking about Us vs Them and who is winning or has a moral high-ground and start thinking in terms of citizens of the world united against injustice.
Opposing attacks like the Chinese against GitHub and the surveillance, propaganda and violence of all the other big powers.
Feeling good about "our side" being slightly better (Subjective and irrational) won't change the fact that it's still unacceptable.
[1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/26/new-low-obama-...
>You're completely restricted in your rights to do anything that the government finds a matter of "national security". Even if it's not related to any official entity [1]
There are very few countries where this is not the case, even supposed extremely liberal countries like the Nordic ones. State secrets and national security are always going to be a monolith hanging over us for centuries. What needs to improve is the internal regulations and auditing behind these processes, to ensure strict adhere to public (not classified) laws and regulations.
I am not nationalistic or even patriotic in the least. I don't like a lot of what the US government and intelligence community does. However, I do see it as the lesser evil when you compare other superpowers like Russia and China.
And though it's certainly not a great defense, the router bricking was unintentional.
The US generally does not engage in destructive actions with the intent of restricting the rights of their own citizens... just other country's citizens. China does both. Both are very bad, but I think the US still has a slight moral highground here.
Should the target be a whole nation? Or maybe enough of it to affect their ability to function? How much commerce disruption equates an act of war, even if no shots are fired?
You'd need some pretty good proof and how would you respond? With another cyber attack? Or escalate into a shooting war? Or by disconnecting the attacking country from the internet?
I'm pretty sure blockading ports (as in cities where ships go, not network ports) counts, so that's a starting point. But on the other hand, blockades do tend to be backed up by at least threats of actual physical violence, so.... ?
With a few exceptions, the US military has atrocious "cyber" readiness and capability. This isn't yet in their wheelhouse, and any public assistance they might provide would just be risking embarrassment.
At least I've seen a few "connection refused"/"timeout" error notifications from one of the sites I manage. Don't know the successful login counts, so no idea how high the error rate is.
In this case china is attacking them directly, and removing the repos in question would affect people's ability to use that software, greatly affecting freedom from censorship for many many people.