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China Privacy Technology

Tech Giants Are Giving China a Vital Edge In Espionage. (foreignpolicy.com) 108

Posted by FirehoseFavorites from the sorry-dave-i-can't-do-that dept.
schwit1 shares a report:

The embrace between China's intelligence services and Chinese businesses has gotten tighter, U.S. officials say. In 2017, under Xi's intensifying authoritarianism, Beijing promulgated a new national intelligence law that compels Chinese businesses to work with Chinese intelligence and security agencies whenever they are requested to do so -- a move that codified "what was pretty much what was going on for many years before, though corruption had tempered it" previously, a former senior CIA official said.

In the final years of the Obama administration, national security officials had directed U.S. spy agencies to step up their intelligence collection on the relationship between the Chinese state and China's private industrial behemoths. By the advent of the Trump era, this effort had borne fruit, with the U.S. intelligence community piecing together voluminous evidence on coordination -- including back-and-forth data transfers -- between ostensibly private Chinese companies and that country's intelligence services, according to current and former U.S. officials. There was evidence of close public-private cooperation occurring on "a daily basis," according to a former Trump-era national security official. "Those commercial entities are the commercial wing of the party," the source said. "They of course cooperate with intelligence services to achieve the party's goals."

Beijing's access to, and ability to sift through, troves of pilfered and otherwise obtained data "gives [China] vast opportunities to target people in foreign governments, private industries, and other sectors around the world -- in order to collect additional information they want, such as research, technology, trade secrets, or classified information," said William Evanina, the United States' top counterintelligence official. "Chinese technology companies play a key role in processing this bulk data and making it useful for China's intelligence services," he said.


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Tech Giants Are Giving China a Vital Edge In Espionage. More

Tech Giants Are Giving China a Vital Edge In Espionage.

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  • USA TLAs in unison: We need to close the totalitarianness gap! (Read: More money for us please!)

    I wish it was just a joke. But I learned that I can never be as pessimistic as reality.

    Can we please not become China, for once?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      Surely that's back to front: China's catching up with the NSA and its National Security Letters?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Nahh, this is just public whining. I read it more as "CRAP, CRAP, CRAP, the Government of China crackdown on all of the most corrupt in China, is wiping out all of our assets". This from the corrupt in the USA feeling the heat, as very likely China will seek to eliminate the negative impact of the global elite corrupt because of their extremely dangerous impact on the global economy and human society as a whole, wars for profit being the most extreme of their crimes.

        People need to wake up, corruption at the

      • It is more a matter of 'take whatever we are doing, substitute us by China, then accuse them of that'. Maybe China does some of it, maybe it doesn't, you just draw inspiration from the nearest source.

    • As I've described before...

      2010: "The need for open source sensemaking tools"
      https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

      2011: "Open Letter to the Intelligence Advanced Programs Research Agency (IARPA)"
      https://phibetaiota.net/2011/0... [phibetaiota.net]

      In general: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni... [pdfernhout.net]
      "Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other pla

  • Bad or worse?? I can't quite decide ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Beijing's access to, and ability to sift through, troves of pilfered and otherwise obtained data "gives [China] vast opportunities to target people in foreign governments, private industries, and other sectors around the world -- in order to collect additional information they want, such as research, technology, trade secrets, or classified information," said William Evanina, the United States' top counterintelligence official. "Chinese technology companies play a key role in processing this bulk data and making it useful for China's intelligence services," he said.

    The same can be said for US businesses and the US intelligence community. The are also tightly intermeshed to the point of being inseparable. Any network equipment you buy from US companies comes pre-installed with NSA back doors. "America First!!!" right? That means America will not hesitate to steal any and all trade secrets it can lay its grubby hands on. "America First!!!" For anybody outside this asinine pissing contest between the US and China the only real choice is which camp do you want to be in, w

  • America's dual mandate (Score:4, Insightful)

    by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @07:35PM (#60873868)
    If you read between the lines, these articles are basically pointing out America's dual mandate. The dual mandate is to have the ability to spy on anyone at anytime while chastising China for not letting America have unfettered unilateral access to everything.
    • Or they simply want to make it more difficult for China to spy. You may notice that there are never demands for China to stop spying.

      There is no agreement in place that we have to make it easy for others to spy.

      • Re: America's dual mandate (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mattyj ( 18900 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @07:53PM (#60873896)

        ... except that the NSA is constantly badgering US tech companies to put backdoors into all their encryption and security safeguards, which would, in fact, make it easy for others to spy (in addition to the NSA.)

        The NSA is jealous that China has a relationship with their tech industry that the NSA wants with US tech companies, but haven't yet been able to finagle.

        • Get a certain person back into office. Problem solved. The Vaseline industry will love it.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          but haven't yet been able to finagle

          National Security Letter.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The NSA doesn't ask in many cases, they just insert backdoors into standards or keep quiet about severe security flaws they have discovered. That's far worse than asking IMHO.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Spying between countries is good. It prevents nasty surprises like the Cuban missile crises from going very badly.

  • I might get a little more worked up about this if. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jodido ( 1052890 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @07:41PM (#60873882)
    the US weren't doing exactly the same thing. As are Russia and everyone else who can. As a longtime CIA official explained: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/1... [nytimes.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Re: USA does the same

      There is NO evidence the US does it in a highly coordinated way. In China, if the government tells top managers to do something unusual with their data, they do it and don't ask questions. That's how most Chinese have been shaped to think.

      In the US there is more skepticism of the government and willingness to challenge. More managers and ex-managers would have spilled the beans already*. Thus, if the CIA wants private data from a US org, they have to break into a co's systems almost as

    • Apart from the fact that we do it too, what I want to know is why we have a tax system that benefits companies to move manufacturing to China to the tune of 1/2 a trillion dollars of yearly deficit that they use to intimidate their neighbors and fund slow and steady improvement in geopolitical/physical expansionism. Either we are complicitous because we like having a reason to expand our military, or we are duplicitous in that the real deep state of the US (corporate board rooms) really doesn't care which
      • Because the profits of making something outside of the USA allow price-transfer abuse to avoid tax almost altogether. The solution is to cancel tax breaks to USA companies from overseas sales if they EVER subvert USA policy, including facilitating or providing assistance, or exporting select personal/account data from USA. I think a law like that would catch many large tech's currently pandering to China. As they say there is proof, start disqualifying directors etc. A special panel can deal with those cau
    • Would you be more worked up if when you read "China's intelligence services and Chinese businesses" you took a moment to realize those business's include google, microsoft, and on and on. All doing changes that enhance spying on end users and limiting and altering information per the governments request.
      You think what they are doing in china they aren't doing elsewhere?
      You think they aren't doing it in their own selfish interest or that they give a whit about the people and economy where they purport to b

    • You've linked to an article saying that the US spy agencies spy on other countries.

      This article is about the fact that all companies doing business in China are required by law to apt for the Chinese government.

      Do you see the difference between "a spy agency spies (because that's their job)" and "every company is required by law to spy"?

    • The results of the spying are also used vastly differently. Not to excuse domestic spying. I'm a big fan of Snowden, but,

      1.) The CCP has literal concentration camps for undesirables where they harvest organs from the prisoners for rich businessmen. You don't have to look hard to verify this.

      2.) The CCP uses spying to crush any dissent about themselves, including a 'social credit score' that reflects how well you play this Orwellian game. If you're bad at it, go to 1, oh and your family too, they routi

  • 1970-80s Corps outsourced manufacturing to China (Score:3)

    by SysEngineer ( 4726931 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @07:48PM (#60873886)
    1970-80s Corps outsourced manufacturing for greater profits at expense of the American people. Money trumps morality! (no pun intended).

    • Yeah I remember the time. Geeks were complaining about all the cheap tech toys and inexpensive parts. Raise the prices higher and make everything in the US, they said! But did we listen? No, we wanted cheaper stuff, while the geeks calling for ever more expensive stuff with "Made in the US" stamped on them fell on deaf ears.

    • There is a big difference between outsourcing, and loosing your entire vertical supply chain, then closing in on Horizontal supply contracts. Now that China plays games with supply ( Take PPE, or rare earths, cheaper steel or Mobile/telco equipment) ie High value added goods, protectionism is back on the menu. Tax breaks need to be made like Germany - those that employ and make locally, are rewarded for the risk. Use Apple as an example for whats wrong.

  • Wolf Warrior (Score:2, Troll)

    by labnet ( 457441 )

    The world is awake to the CCPs global ambitions and the west is slowly galvanising on actively limiting Chinas power. Even Merkel, who wanted to be xi’s best buddy is coming around.

    If China wanted to displace the USA, they went way too early on wolf warrior and should have stayed sheep wolf for another 10 years. I know the USA is far from perfect, but I’d rather their imperfection as global police than storm trooper China who could make WWII Germany look like pussy cats.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Evtim ( 1022085 )

        No. You are not curious. If you were, you would know.

        There is no left or tight here. There is liberty and then the two forms of totalitarianism. The fascist and the communists. The F offer economic plurality and ideological monopoly. The C offer ideological and economic monopoly. The C is the highest form of totalitarianism, the F are just gifted amateurs. It does not matter what particular ideology the F countries adopt. One might be religious, the other atheist. They might have different names for their p

    • Great point. Pax Americana vs. Pax Sinoca (or whatnot) - which would you prefer?

  • After reading the first paragraph ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @08:04PM (#60873914)

    Me: "You mean like National Security Letters? Esp. after the PATRIOT act?"

    Yes, such things an authoritarian regime make. And yes, all such states must indeed be stopped!

  • supporters we have here. All putting out the same State CCP message.
    China and the CCP are just benevolent spirits. Nothing related to China to see here move on!

    Maybe in the US the Deep State and Intelligence Community((oxymoron) along with Big Tech and in China the CCP should all back off their spying on their own citizens, customers and the world.
  • I use to think America was the alpha, lately they just play the victim card over and over again. If a US corporation operating in China is forced to co-operate with local officials and doesnâ(TM)t they loose market share, this is not okay with share holders.. heâ(TM)ll half the shares probably belong to Beijing. Even if the CEO/Leader of the company disagrees on moral ground he may be powerless to do anything. What does the US government do when their companies have to bow down to the Chinese?

    • It's because victimhood is just another profit model. For a long time, feeling insulted was largely a personal matter; whether you felt it didn't matter at all to the world at large. Lately this has changed, and being insulted has been elevated to a crime with a status that's up there with murder, and consequences such as losing your family, your job, your social circle, and all your future prospects. Note that this can happen over a single misplaced 's': referring to someone as "she" instead of "he". Given

  • The US must keep up! (Score:3)

    by BobC ( 101861 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @10:28PM (#60874150)

    Uncle Sam, take my Amazon purchase history NOW!

  • the US and the EU must work more closely. Hopefully the new administration will be keen to comprehend that.

  • ROTFL: Look who's complaining (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mseeger ( 40923 ) on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @02:39AM (#60874612)

    It was the United States who was the front-runner in this development and who used their own dominant position in the global technology market to spy on everyone else with a complete disregard for moral or international relationships.

    If it is OK for the NSA to spy on everyone, why don't you expect others to do the same? The amount of hypocrisy involved is astonishing.

    I don't think this to be OK, neither for the U.S. nor for the Chinese. While the excesses of the NSA still disappointed me, I cannot even muster a small amount of surprise for the Chinese actions.

  • communism all the way usa
  • Tech is the last powerhouse US industry in terms of profitability. Biopharm is a high risk high overhead. These firms know the Chinese will soon crush them out of existence, so they are jockeying over who will get the crumbs by being the biggest suck up to the communist party. Make no mistake it wonâ€(TM)t help them.

  • Any fault lies with generations of wealthy but degenerate kleptocratic Americans who sold out US manufacturing to China, not Chinese for doing their national duty.

    Espionage of all types is wise if you can get away with it. Knowledge is useful and any patriotic citizen should gladly help spy on enemy governments and businesses, It's the duty of the target to protect itself in the way it's the duty of a zebra to run from lion. The lion has no duty not to eat zebra.

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