18 replies to this topic

[Shannon Vyff]

Really disturbing piece. For how the U.S. is helping, and how the U.S. is not so dissimilar and finally is this a glimpse of our future? (the dystopic vision just can't win )


http://www.rollingst...eeing_eye/print

[John_Ventureville]

Shannon Vyff wrote:
Really disturbing piece. For how the U.S. is helping, and how the U.S. is not so dissimilar and finally is this a glimpse of our future? (the dystopic vision just can't win )
>>>

Lenin said; "The West is so hungry for profits that they will sell us the rope to hang them with." If we are not careful it will turn out that the Chinese Communists and not the Russian ones of the past, make these words a prophetic statement. It sickens me that we have adopted a classic behavior of Western European nations/corporations by making short term profits the end-all/be-all of existance, by aiding a massive violator of human rights and a major military/political rival that wants to supplant us by any means necessary. When I recently learned German corporations in the late eighties made millions by selling nuclear reactor technology to Iran I thought that was bad! lol

I hate to consider it, but I think there are those in U.S. government and corporate America who see Communist China as a "testing ground" for future technologies that can be used to spy on and control our very own citizenry. It sounds like something out of a bestselling borderline SF techno-thriller, but I bet it is what's actually happening in the real world. We should be doing everything we can to help the cause of democracy and civil rights in China, but instead we are making money to strengthen the totalitarian regime there! What a nightmare we are living in... I find it sickening that apparently many Americans are like bleating sheep who desperately want to be protected by "Big Brother" and do not care what the cost is regarding their personal civil liberties.

I view both Clinton and Bush as among the worst presidents we have ever had, on par or worse than Nixon. Clinton greenlighted (despite the pentagon asking him not to do it) the selling of crucial supercomputers & software to Communist China that allowed their previously inaccurate ICBM's to have deadly pinpoint aim. That was just one of several cases where he sold out the American people by allowing the sale of key military applications technology. Neville Chamberlain, if he were still alive, could have told him that you just can't placate militaristic totalitarian regimes. But Bush, with his out of control "war on terrorism," has threatened/cracked the very civil liberties of the United States. And now totalitarian governments like China can ask to buy very advanced surveillance technologies from us in the name of their own "wars on terrorism," but in actuality these are wars against those very brave Chinese citizens who want to stand up against their government's tyranny and fight for human rights.

I firmly hope our next president will have the moral character and public support to make the right choices and turn "the ship around" before it is simply too late, both here and abroad, such as in Communist China. But I am sadly becoming a pessimist, who I admit would love to be proven wrong. We will see.

Shannon, I fear right along with you that the bright and democratic convergence/Singularity technology future we yearn for, may instead end up being a "happy shiny" Western tyranny where we are "protected" and constantly monitored/recorded for "our own good." "All heil, Big Brother!" And the term "Homeland Security" just strikes my ear as far too reminiscient of "The Fatherland" Adolph Hitler and the Nazi's were so fond of speaking about, or the "Motherland" that got Communist Russia misty eyed by the mere mention.

In ancient times the foundation builders of Western civilization, the Greeks, repeatedly defeated the mighty Persian Empire. And in our day the Allies defeated the Axis powers in WWII, and the U.S. & the West faced down the Soviet Union during the Cold War years. But can this trend of good triumphing over evil continue? Or in our current era are we just too sophisticated to believe in the concepts of *good* and *evil?* I sure hope not.

you wrote:
>the dystopic vision just can't win!

I'm just not so sure, anymore...

What do you and the other members think?

John Grigg : (

Edited by John_Ventureville, 05 June 2008 - 01:57 AM.

[forever freedom]

I didn't read the whole article, but i never saw a problem in a highly surveillanced country. I would trade privacy over security any time.

[niner]

John, you bring up some interesting points. I can't agree more with you about the creepiness of the term "Homeland" that suddenly burst upon the scene. Previously I would have associated the term with apartheid South Africa, or The Fatherland of the Nazis. People just acquiesced to it like sheep, didn't they? Funny how many people will toss their liberty and freedom aside like so much jetsam as soon as they get scared. Looking on the bright side, people are starting to come to their senses. There has been some reduction in the more ridiculous "security" measures that were taken post 9-11, although I am still waiting for a citizen's uprising regarding the useless kabuki that airport "security" has become.

China has jettisoned Communism, but keeps the Totalitarianism. At least they got rid of one evil. They have a tough road ahead dealing with their internal problems. They have vast numbers of poor people in the interior, and huge numbers of internal migrants living in a netherworld of second class citizenship. Keeping tensions from boiling over is probably their number one concern. I suspect that as they eventually get their problems sorted out, they will back off of the dystopic vision. People just don't like living in dystopias.

I think you are making way too much of Clinton allowing the Chinese to get advanced computers. They were not then, and are not now a serious threat to the Western World, and I doubt that they would have much trouble acquiring or building such hardware today, regardless of our wishes. Why would they be interested in nuking us, when instead we will happily sell them the near entirety of our manufacturing base in exchange for the cheap trinkets lining the shelves of Walmart?

Good will win out over evil. It always does in the end.

[Lazarus Long]

The surveillance is already being turned on us and anyway aside from allowing the Chinese to censor access to global information our government has been feeding them info on their dissidents covertly. Also they have not just allowed the Chinese to use Gitmo to incarcerate and interrogate Chinese citizens, our own intelligence services have been complicit in torturing them.
http://www.cnn.com/2...ref=mpstoryview
http://www.abcnews.g...d...4921&page=1
http://www.abcnews.g...d...3418&page=1

I didn't read the whole article, but i never saw a problem in a highly surveillanced country. I would trade privacy over security any time.

Sam you may have the right to trade your freedom for security but you do not have the right to trade mine.

Eventually our own government will be treating our citizens this way. They have before and they will again when Americans willingly trade freedom and liberty for security.

[Lazarus Long]

Capitalism is not inherently synonymous with democracy or freedom. Markets aren't *free* just because they are capitalist and the defense of liberty is not predicated on security or profit. In fact *Supercapitalism* as Robert Reich calls it can be a threat to freedom and democracy.

China was capitalist before the west had developed currency and there is nothing about large markets they are unfamiliar with in principle. They have jettisoned the loss leaders of Communism and held on to one party rule and tightened much control over other sectors. basically they decided to displace the very same people they had given land to in the Maoist period when the land values under their feet became profitable. But the idea of *Eminent Domain* exists here too.

He says (Robert Reich) that the US tradition of democratic capitalism has gone badly wrong because a generation of free-market adulation has built a kind of capitalism so powerful that it is overwhelming the democracy it is supposed to support.

Reich calls this phenomenon "supercapitalism," a capitalism that brings us dirt cheap blue jeans, and falling wages, no job security, and a government owned by corporate lobbyists. And in such a super-capitalist world, says Reich, it’s our inner consumer versus our inner citizen, and the citizen isn’t doing so well. It's time to choose, says Reich, whether we are consumers first, or citizens first.
http://www.gather.co...281474977106354

[forever freedom]

I didn't read the whole article, but i never saw a problem in a highly surveillanced country. I would trade privacy over security any time.

Sam you may have the right to trade your freedom for security but you do not have the right to trade mine.

Eventually our own government will be treating our citizens this way. They have before and they will again when Americans willingly trade freedom and liberty for security.

Ok let me clarify a bit. First, lack of privacy is not the same as lack of freedom, i don't know where you got that idea from. Second, since i didn't read the whole article i don't know exactly what degree of privacy it is dealing with, but i would be willing to abdicate from a good degree of privacy of mine to have more security. I wouldn't mind if the government monitored as many public places as it wanted to.

[gashinshotan]

I didn't read the whole article, but i never saw a problem in a highly surveillanced country. I would trade privacy over security any time.

Sam you may have the right to trade your freedom for security but you do not have the right to trade mine.

Eventually our own government will be treating our citizens this way. They have before and they will again when Americans willingly trade freedom and liberty for security.

Ok let me clarify a bit. First, lack of privacy is not the same as lack of freedom, i don't know where you got that idea from. Second, since i didn't read the whole article i don't know exactly what degree of privacy it is dealing with, but i would be willing to abdicate from a good degree of privacy of mine to have more security. I wouldn't mind if the government monitored as many public places as it wanted to.

And who would be running the huge bureaucracy that such a system would require? People like me, and I would certainly exploit the chance of unlimited information and observation on anyone provides to my own personal benefit. Who is to say that such security measures can't be used for political control through carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns designed around the information provided by the cameras? They would also be ideal tools in a genocide, with the location of any subversive elements conveniently marked with solid video evidence which would conveniently show the normal behaviors of citizens and the best to time to raid their homes.

[forever freedom]

I didn't read the whole article, but i never saw a problem in a highly surveillanced country. I would trade privacy over security any time.

Sam you may have the right to trade your freedom for security but you do not have the right to trade mine.

Eventually our own government will be treating our citizens this way. They have before and they will again when Americans willingly trade freedom and liberty for security.

Ok let me clarify a bit. First, lack of privacy is not the same as lack of freedom, i don't know where you got that idea from. Second, since i didn't read the whole article i don't know exactly what degree of privacy it is dealing with, but i would be willing to abdicate from a good degree of privacy of mine to have more security. I wouldn't mind if the government monitored as many public places as it wanted to.

And who would be running the huge bureaucracy that such a system would require? People like me, and I would certainly exploit the chance of unlimited information and observation on anyone provides to my own personal benefit. Who is to say that such security measures can't be used for political control through carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns designed around the information provided by the cameras? They would also be ideal tools in a genocide, with the location of any subversive elements conveniently marked with solid video evidence which would conveniently show the normal behaviors of citizens and the best to time to raid their homes.

Good point, i guess i haven't given it much of a thought. It's just that criminality and insecurity is so high where i live that giving up some privacy over more security looks like such a no brainer. Maybe in countries where there's more security, mostly developed countries (some terrorist attacks now and then are nothing compared to a city with high leves of criminality), an over monitoring state wouldn't be so attractive since the payoff wouldn't be very significant.

[solbanger]

And who would be running the huge bureaucracy that such a system would require? People like me, and I would certainly exploit the chance of unlimited information and observation on anyone provides to my own personal benefit. Who is to say that such security measures can't be used for political control through carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns designed around the information provided by the cameras? They would also be ideal tools in a genocide, with the location of any subversive elements conveniently marked with solid video evidence which would conveniently show the normal behaviors of citizens and the best to time to raid their homes.

In other words you want to be a ruiling communist, cause what you just described was what the Stasi did in East Germany. For the average citizen, which obviously you don't expect to be, it was extremely easy to be charged with conspiracy for even mentioning someone outside the Berlin wall.

[niner]

Good point, i guess i haven't given it much of a thought. It's just that criminality and insecurity is so high where i live that giving up some privacy over more security looks like such a no brainer. Maybe in countries where there's more security, mostly developed countries (some terrorist attacks now and then are nothing compared to a city with high leves of criminality), an over monitoring state wouldn't be so attractive since the payoff wouldn't be very significant.

sam988, why is the level of criminality so high in Brazil? What do you think it would take to bring it down to acceptable levels?

[gashinshotan]

And who would be running the huge bureaucracy that such a system would require? People like me, and I would certainly exploit the chance of unlimited information and observation on anyone provides to my own personal benefit. Who is to say that such security measures can't be used for political control through carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns designed around the information provided by the cameras? They would also be ideal tools in a genocide, with the location of any subversive elements conveniently marked with solid video evidence which would conveniently show the normal behaviors of citizens and the best to time to raid their homes.

In other words you want to be a ruiling communist, cause what you just described was what the Stasi did in East Germany. For the average citizen, which obviously you don't expect to be, it was extremely easy to be charged with conspiracy for even mentioning someone outside the Berlin wall.

If the choice was between serving any future Stasi empire or being a victim of it....

[forever freedom]

Good point, i guess i haven't given it much of a thought. It's just that criminality and insecurity is so high where i live that giving up some privacy over more security looks like such a no brainer. Maybe in countries where there's more security, mostly developed countries (some terrorist attacks now and then are nothing compared to a city with high leves of criminality), an over monitoring state wouldn't be so attractive since the payoff wouldn't be very significant.

sam988, why is the level of criminality so high in Brazil? What do you think it would take to bring it down to acceptable levels?

I could write pages on it.. but summarizing, this is such a complex problem and it's so rooted in our society i don't really have any definite answer with a "smart way" as to how to solve it. Slower and more expensive ways are the classicals: more education, raise the amount of policemen (the number is stagnated for decades, just recently a research was made and the result is that there are more employed people in the private security sector than there are in the police), create many more social programs, and on...

These are all expensive and slow alternatives but i think that it is the only way. Still, i don't see any hope in this area in any near foreseeable future.

[John_Ventureville]

I excerpted some key points from the excellent Rolling Stone article on the massive build-up of a computerized surveillance society in totalitarian police state mainland China. As some posters stated, a "transparent/thoroughly monitored" society might be a very good thing (criminals caught in the act, who might otherwise get away with it, as they break the laws of a just society by committing various crimes) if the civil liberties/human rights of the citizenry were respected. This is absolutely not the case in China (who use this technology to bully and control political dissidents and the general population) and why people must take a stand against what is happening (both in China and the United States). We all need to know about China's "Golden Shield" and its horrible implications.

If you read nothing else, please go over this extremely disturbing and very short two paragraph article excerpt:
With its militant protests and mobile population, China confronts a fundamental challenge. How can it maintain a system based on two dramatically unequal categories of people: the winners, who get the condos and cars, and the losers, who do the heavy labor and are denied those benefits? More urgently, how can it do this when information technology threatens to link the losers together into a movement so large it could easily overwhelm the country's elites?

The answer is Golden Shield. When Tibet erupted in protests recently, the surveillance system was thrown into its first live test, with every supposedly liberating tool of the Information Age — cellphones, satellite television, the Internet — transformed into a method of repression and control. As soon as the protests gathered steam, China reinforced its Great Firewall, blocking its citizens from accessing dozens of foreign news outlets. In some parts of Tibet, Internet access was shut down altogether. Many people trying to phone friends and family found that their calls were blocked, and cellphones in Lhasa were blitzed with text messages from the police: "We severely battle any creation or any spreading of rumors that would upset or frighten people or cause social disorder or illegal criminal behavior that could damage social stability."
>>>

Do you get the big picture now? : (

"China's All-Seeing Eye" main article excerpts:
But the cameras that Zhang manufactures are only part of the massive experiment in population control that is under way here. "The big picture," Zhang tells me in his office at the factory, "is integration." That means linking cameras with other forms of surveillance: the Internet, phones, facial-recognition software and GPS monitoring.

This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.

Shenzhen is the place where the shield has received its most extensive fortifications — the place where all the spy toys are being hooked together and tested to see what they can do. "The central government eventually wants to have city-by-city surveillance, so they could just sit and monitor one city and its surveillance system as a whole," Zhang says. "It's all part of that bigger project. Once the tests are done and it's proven, they will be spreading from the big province to the cities, even to the rural farmland."

In fact, the rollout of the high-tech shield is already well under way.

When the Tibetan capital of Lhasa was set alight in March, the world caught a glimpse of the rage that lies just under the surface in many parts of China. And though the Lhasa riots stood out for their ethnic focus and their intensity, protests across China are often shockingly militant. In July 2006, workers at a factory near Shenzhen expressed their displeasure over paltry pay by overturning cars, smashing computers and opening fire hydrants. In March of last year, when bus fares went up in the rural town of Zhushan, 20,000 people took to the streets and five police vehicles were torched. Indeed, China has seen levels of political unrest in recent years unknown since 1989, the year student protests were crushed with tanks in Tiananmen Square. In 2005, by the government's own measure, there were at least 87,000 "mass incidents" — governmentspeak for large-scale protests or riots.

This increased unrest — a process aided by access to cellphones and the Internet — represents more than a security problem for the leaders in Beijing. It threatens their whole model of command-and-control capitalism. China's rapid economic growth has relied on the ability of its rulers to raze villages and move mountains to make way for the latest factory towns and shopping malls. If the people living on those mountains use blogs and text messaging to launch a mountain-people's-rights uprising with each new project, and if they link up with similar uprisings in other parts of the country, China's dizzying expansion could grind to a halt.

At the same time, the success of China's ravenous development creates its own challenges. Every rural village that is successfully razed to make way for a new project creates more displaced people who join the ranks of the roughly 130 million migrants roaming the country looking for work. By 2025, it is projected that this "floating" population will swell to more than 350 million. Many will end up in cities like Shenzhen, which is already home to 7 million migrant laborers.

But while China's cities need these displaced laborers to work in factories and on construction sites, they are unwilling to offer them the same benefits as permanent residents: highly subsidized education and health care, as well as other public services. While migrants can live for decades in big cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou, their residency remains fixed to the rural community where they were born, a fact encoded on their national ID cards. As one young migrant in Guangzhou put it to me, "The local people want to make money from migrant workers, but they don't want to give them rights. But why are the local people so rich? Because of the migrant workers!"

With its militant protests and mobile population, China confronts a fundamental challenge. How can it maintain a system based on two dramatically unequal categories of people: the winners, who get the condos and cars, and the losers, who do the heavy labor and are denied those benefits? More urgently, how can it do this when information technology threatens to link the losers together into a movement so large it could easily overwhelm the country's elites?

The answer is Golden Shield. When Tibet erupted in protests recently, the surveillance system was thrown into its first live test, with every supposedly liberating tool of the Information Age — cellphones, satellite television, the Internet — transformed into a method of repression and control. As soon as the protests gathered steam, China reinforced its Great Firewall, blocking its citizens from accessing dozens of foreign news outlets. In some parts of Tibet, Internet access was shut down altogether. Many people trying to phone friends and family found that their calls were blocked, and cellphones in Lhasa were blitzed with text messages from the police: "Severely battle any creation or any spreading of rumors that would upset or frighten people or cause social disorder or illegal criminal behavior that could damage social stability."

During the first week of protests, foreign journalists who tried to get into Tibet were systematically turned back. But that didn't mean that there were no cameras inside the besieged areas. Since early last year, activists in Lhasa have been reporting on the proliferation of black-domed cameras that look like streetlights — just like the ones I saw coming off the assembly line in Shenzhen. Tibetan monks complain that cameras — activated by motion sensors — have invaded their monasteries and prayer rooms.

During the Lhasa riots, police on the scene augmented the footage from the CCTVs with their own video cameras, choosing to film — rather than stop — the violence, which left 19 dead. The police then quickly cut together the surveillance shots that made the Tibetans look most vicious — beating Chinese bystanders, torching shops, ripping metal sheeting off banks — and created a kind of copumentary: Tibetans Gone Wild. These weren't the celestial beings in flowing robes the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere had told us about. They were angry young men, wielding sticks and long knives. They looked ugly, brutal, tribal. On Chinese state TV, this footage played around the clock.
>>>

Further into the article...:
One of the first people to sound the alarm on China's upgraded police state was a British researcher named Greg Walton. In 2000, Walton was commissioned by the respected human-rights organization Rights & Democracy to investigate the ways in which Chinese security forces were harnessing the tools of the Information Age to curtail free speech and monitor political activists. The paper he produced was called "China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China." It exposed how big-name tech companies like Nortel and Cisco were helping the Chinese government to construct "a gigantic online database with an all-encompassing surveillance network — incorporating speech and face recognition, closed-circuit television, smart cards, credit records and Internet surveillance technologies."

When the paper was complete, Walton met with the institute's staff to strategize about how to release his explosive findings. "We thought this information was going to shock the world," he recalls. In the midst of their discussions, a colleague barged in and announced that a plane had hit the Twin Towers. The meeting continued, but they knew the context of their work had changed forever.

Walton's paper did have an impact, but not the one he had hoped. The revelation that China was constructing a gigantic digital database capable of watching its citizens on the streets and online, listening to their phone calls and tracking their consumer purchases sparked neither shock nor outrage. Instead, Walton says, the paper was "mined for ideas" by the U.S. government, as well as by private companies hoping to grab a piece of the suddenly booming market in spy tools. For Walton, the most chilling moment came when the Defense Department tried to launch a system called Total Information Awareness to build what it called a "virtual, centralized grand database" that would create constantly updated electronic dossiers on every citizen, drawing on banking, credit-card, library and phone records, as well as footage from surveillance cameras. "It was clearly similar to what we were condemning China for," Walton says. Among those aggressively vying to be part of this new security boom was Joseph Atick, now an executive at L-1. The name he chose for his plan to integrate facial-recognition software into a vast security network was uncomfortably close to the surveillance system being constructed in China: "Operation Noble Shield."

Empowered by the Patriot Act, many of the big dreams hatched by men like Atick have already been put into practice at home. New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are all experimenting with linking surveillance cameras into a single citywide network. Police use of surveillance cameras at peaceful demonstrations is now routine, and the images collected can be mined for "face prints," then cross-checked with ever-expanding photo databases. Although Total Information Awareness was scrapped after the plans became public, large pieces of the project continue, with private data-mining companies collecting unprecedented amounts of information about everything from Web browsing to car rentals, and selling it to the government.

Such efforts have provided China's rulers with something even more valuable than surveillance technology from Western democracies: the ability to claim that they are just like us. Liu Zhengrong, a senior official dealing with China's Internet policy, has defended Golden Shield and other repressive measures by invoking the Patriot Act and the FBI's massive e-mail-mining operations. "It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front." Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China Information Security Technology, credits America for giving him the idea to sell biometric IDs and other surveillance tools to the Chinese police. "Bush helped me get my vision," he has said. Similarly, when challenged on the fact that dome cameras are appearing three to a block in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Chinese companies respond that their model is not the East German Stasi but modern-day London.

Human-rights activists are quick to point out that while the tools are the same, the political contexts are radically different. China has a government that uses its high-tech web to imprison and torture peaceful protesters, Tibetan monks and independent-minded journalists. Yet even here, the lines are getting awfully blurry. The U.S. currently has more people behind bars than China, despite a population less than a quarter of its size. And Sharon Hom, executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights in China, says that when she talks about China's horrific human-rights record at international gatherings, "There are two words that I hear in response again and again: Guantánamo Bay."

The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.
>>>

Is there hope for us?

The concluding paragraph:
When I leave China, I feel a powerful relief: I have escaped. I am home safe. But the feeling starts to fade as soon as I get to the customs line at JFK, watching hundreds of visitors line up to have their pictures taken and fingers scanned. In the terminal, someone hands me a brochure for "Fly Clear." All I need to do is have my fingerprints and irises scanned, and I can get a Clear card with a biometric chip that will let me sail through security. Later, I look it up: The company providing the technology is L-1.
>>>

[niner]

In America, instead of "Golden Shield" we call it "Total Information Awareness".

There was some pushback on this very creepy "dataveillance" program. It didn't go away, though. Its components were moved about into different agencies. When the Bush Administration was found to be tapping the phones of US citizens without court authority, I thought people would push back. Not really. They were too scared. Make us safe, they bleated. Many years ago, people on the Right were opposed to anything remotely resembling a National ID card. In 2005, a Republican initiative known as the REAL ID Act was added as a rider to a defense appropriations bill. It creates a de facto national ID card. Though it was opposed by 54 Democrats and 3 Republicans, it passed the Republican Congress easily and was signed by Bush. Recently, Republicans began pushing for a government ID requirement for anyone wishing to vote, despite a complete lack of evidence of voter fraud of the type that such an ID would prevent. Democrats oppose this requirement.

[Lazarus Long]

In one of those types of "I can't believe the coincidence" stories here is one fresh off the presses. What was it Frank Zappa used to say?

"It can't happen here..."

http://news.yahoo.co...o/china_hacking

2 lawmakers say computers hacked by Chinese

By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers 38 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Two House members said Wednesday their Capitol Hill computers, containing information about political dissidents from around the world, have been hacked by sources apparently working out of China. Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf says four of his computers were hacked. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith says two of his computers were compromised in December 2006 and March 2007.

The two lawmakers are longtime critics of China's record on human rights.

In an interview Wednesday, Wolf said the hacking of computers in his Capitol Hill office began in August 2006. He says a computer at a House committee office also was hacked, and he suggested others in the House and possibly the Senate could be involved.

The FBI declined to comment.

Wolf said that in his office, the hackers "got everything," including all the casework regarding political dissidents around the world.

In comments to The Associated Press earlier in the day, Wolf suggested the problem probably goes further. "If it's been done in the House, don't you think that they're doing the same thing in the Senate?"

"I think this is very bad because you have the Chinese compromising and gaining access to computers of any number of members of the House and a major committee of the House," Wolf said. "We don't know how many others."

In calling for hearings in both the House and Senate, Wolf said there "probably are members serving in Congress whose computers have been compromised and they may not even know it."

Separately, U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce Department computers.

The FBI declined to comment. In Beijing, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no immediate comment. Last week, China denied the accusations regarding Gutierrez's laptop and the alleged effort to hack Commerce Department computers.

Wolf said he has known about the hacking for a long time but was discouraged from discussing it publicly by people inside U.S. government, whom he refused to identify.

"The problem has been that no one wants to talk about this issue," said Wolf. "Every time I've started to do something I've been told 'You can't do this.' A lot of people have made it very, very difficult."

Wolf plans to introduce a resolution that he says will help ensure protection for all House computers and information systems. In a draft of prepared remarks he planned to deliver on the House floor Wednesday afternoon, Wolf says he is "deeply concerned that Congress is not adequately aware of or protected" from cyber attacks.

"My own suspicion is I was targeted by China because of my long history of speaking out about China's abysmal human rights record," Wolf says in his remarks. He said Congress should hold hearings, specifically the House Intelligence Committee, Armed Services Committee and Government Operations Committee.

Wolf's resolution calls for the chief administrative officer and sergeant at arms of the House, in consultation with the FBI, to alert House members and their staffs to the danger of electronic attacks. He also wants lawmakers to be fully briefed on ways to safeguard official records from electronic security breaches.

Speaking generally in May 2006, Wolf called Chinese spying efforts "frightening" and said it was no secret that the United States is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services.

[John_Ventureville]

Still more to think about...

http://www.google.co...provoke unease

China's acquisitions provoke unease
By Joe McDonald, AP Business Writer | February 22, 2008

BEIJING --Flush with hundreds of billions of dollars, China Inc. is still having trouble investing abroad, running into foreign security worries as it tries to acquire companies and resources.

The latest casualty: A deal by a Chinese maker of telecom gear and an American private equity firm to buy U.S. tech company 3Com.

The bidders say they just want to make money. But acquisitions are a political minefield because many Chinese buyers are owned by or close to the communist government, feeding fears that Beijing might gain access to military technology or control of strategic resources.

"Where it looks purely commercial, everyone finds that acceptable, but where it touches on resources or security concerns, it just falls into a different basket," said William Hess, China analyst for the consulting firm Global Insight. "As soon as politics enters into the equation, it raises the risks for all parties. It's not just a business case."

The arrest this month of a Pentagon employee charged with selling military secrets to a man accused of being a Chinese spy "certainly doesn't help the political climate in Washington," he said.

On Wednesday, Huawei Technologies Co. and its American partner, Bain Capital, withdrew a request for U.S. government approval of their US$2.2 billion (euro1.5 billion) bid to buy 3Com. The companies said they failed to satisfy national security concerns.

American lawmakers and officials had expressed concern that sensitive technology could be transferred to China through Huawei's 16.5 percent 3Com stake. A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that Bain offered to sell its Tipping Point subsidiary, which makes network-security software.

China's government said Thursday the Huawei bid was commercial and appealed to Washington to handle it fairly.

"We hope the relevant U.S. authorities can deal with the case in accordance with law so as to create a fair and favorable environment for Chinese enterprises in the United States," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.

American opposition to such purchases is prompted by unease about China as a strategic rival, rather than details of individual deals, said Joseph Cheng, chairman of the Contemporary China Research Center at the City University of Hong Kong.

"There is this perception that China is the most serious threat that the United States will face in coming decades, and this perception has colored the opposition to these mergers and acquisitions," he said.

Unease about China's acquisitions extends to Europe, Australia and elsewhere.

It has been fueled by questions about how China's US$200 billion (euro136 billion) sovereign wealth fund, launched last year, will invest and whether its financial muscle will be used to push official policy.

European Union Economy Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in September the EU might restrict investments by such funds if they fail to disclose more about what they invest in and why.

On Sunday, Australia issued new foreign investment rules, saying it would look more favorably on proposals by state-controlled entities that operate on a transparent and commercial basis.

Such investors might "pursue broader political or strategic objectives that could be contrary to Australia's national interest," the guidelines said.

China burst onto the acquisitions scene when computer maker Lenovo Group agreed in December 2004 to buy IBM Corp.'s personal computer unit in a US$1.75 billion deal. Some critics cited possible security risks, but the sale went through after U.S. regulators apparently decided PCs were too generic to pose a threat.

The following year, state-owned oil company CNOOC Ltd. ran into a firestorm when it tried to buy Unocal Corp. CNOOC dropped its bid for the U.S. oil and gas producer after opponents said it might endanger energy security.

Since then, China has refined its strategy, trying to shield itself from criticism by forging partnerships with U.S. and other companies to make sensitive investments. Last year, state-owned China Development Bank invested in Barclays PLC and committed financing to the British bank's takeover bid, ultimately unsuccessful, for Dutch rival ABN Amro.

In January, state-owned Aluminum Corp. of China teamed up with U.S.-based Alcoa Inc. to buy 12 percent of Rio Tinto PLC, complicating a bid for the mining giant by Australia's BHP Billiton Ltd.

Huawei, the 3Com bidder, exemplifies the ambiguous status of Chinese companies.

The company says it is private, but its founder and chairman is a former soldier and early customers included China's military and state-run phone companies. Huawei adds to the mystery by declining requests for interviews and information.

"Even when Huawei and other companies say they're not connected to the government, no one really believes them, in Huawei's case with good reason, because it has deep ties to the military," Hess said.

China's purchases of overseas assets have soared over the past two years as Beijing encouraged companies to go abroad in hopes of reducing reliance on export-driven manufacturing.

Chinese acquisitions in the United States rose to US$226.6 million (euro155 million) last year, more than 16 times the 2006 level of US$13 million, according to research company Dealogic PLC. So far this year, another US$162.7 million (euro111 million) in deals have been announced.

Most passed without comment, such as Wuxi Pharma Tech Inc.'s US$163 million (euro111.22 million) purchase of AppTec Laboratory Services Inc., a supplier of medical tests in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In December, Wall Street welcomed a US$5 billion (euro3.4 billion) investment by China's sovereign wealth fund in Morgan Stanley that helped replenish the bank's assets after heavy subprime mortgage losses.

In Europe, Chinese acquisitions last year totaled US$563.2 million (euro384.28 million), according to Dealogic.

European and U.S. state governments states eagerly try to woo Chinese money. Last year, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley brought a 50-member delegation of businesspeople to China to meet potential investors.

Despite such lobbying, China's elite will take the failure of a 3Com bid as proof the United States wants to slow their country's economic and technological rise, Cheng said.

"It will certainly reinforce the image that the United States doesn't want to see a strong China," he said.

[mentatpsi]

sigh... this is making the Singularity is Near book more difficult to enjoy ...

Do any of you also think that in a decade or so, China will be more powerful than America? I sure hope Kurzweil is right and the singularity alters everything we're capable of, but with these actions as John keeps mentioning, you have to wonder how these technologies will evolve. Damn, negative information always presents itself when i'm feeling optimistic lol. Excellent find Shannon .

[niner]

Wolf said he has known about the hacking for a long time but was discouraged from discussing it publicly by people inside U.S. government, whom he refused to identify.

This is the really scary part. Wouldn't want to embarrass anyone while they're selling out our country. I wonder who these people are that he's refusing to identify? Wolf's a Republican... So they probably aren't Democrats, because Republicans usually like to make Democrats look bad. Who could they be? Who would want to cover up spying by the Chinese Communists, and be someone that a Republican would want to protect? Must be the Green Party. Yeah, that's probably it.