State Department Makes Statement on Google Operations in China

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135105.htm

by dfield • 17 years ago

181 116 17 years ago

ilamont• 17 years ago

The State Department is being a bit hypocritical here. If China must give an explanation for its alleged cyberattacks/hacking attempts on gmail, then the U.S. government should also give an explanation for its NSA-sponsored eavesdropping/hacking/snooping of other countries' citizens' email, phone conversations, and other communications.

flatline• 17 years ago

Yes but righteous indignation is so much easier to muster. Honestly though, this is more about China's history of human rights violations than the hacking attempts themselves.

jacquesm5• 17 years ago

The time for google to make principled stances on that subject is long past, they already let the $ go before their principles.

You can't turn around a couple of years later and sincerely say that you want to make the principle now your paramount reason for a move.

The time for principled stances is when things happen, or when they come to light.

The whole human rights thing is just so much window dressing and PR spin.

patio11• 17 years ago

I should point out that the State Department does not wiretap Chinese citizens phones so that they know which little old lady to beat to death. That is China's job.

Returning you now to your regularly scheduled moral relativism.

sfk• 17 years ago

And this is the job of the U.S.:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/

stanleydrew• 17 years ago

How do you know that's true?

Quarrelsome• 17 years ago

Or perhaps clear up that whole "Extraordinary rendition" debacle and press charges against those that set it in motion.

mixmax3• 17 years ago

It is very interesting that the State Department is playing second fiddle to Google here. Intuitively I feel this has pretty far reaching consequences.

- Apparently Google has uncovered a chinese attempt to infiltrate a number of American companies[1]. The fact that this is being uncovered by Google and not the government is very interesting. And potentially very embarrasing for the state.

- America hasn't engaged China in relation to human rights, probably due to global politics which tends to tie you up in consensus, conventions and diplomacy. Google has done so in a very clear and public way.

- The state department is taking Googles lead. Hilary Clinton is playing catch-up. She even says so in the statement: "We have been briefed by Google"

This indicates an enormous shift in power.

[1] - The American government might have been aware of this or even uncovered it themselves, which I personally doubt.

maukdaddy• 17 years ago

The State Dept. isn't playing second fiddle. They simply can NOT come out as publicly as Google did, for many reasons. As the "official" foreign voice of the US Govt there are serious repercussions to coming right out and accusing China. Secondly, they would not tip their hand on any intelligence they received, or were actively receiving, on Chinese infiltrations in cyberspace.

While our Gov't isn't very good at some things, I can guarantee that they were aware of what was going on. There have been many well-publicized instances over the past 10 years where the Govt' has uncovered intrusions into commercial companies.

mixmax3• 17 years ago

That's exactly my primary point - Government, as you say, can not come out publicly and have their hands tied in many ways. Google can, and this, combined with their size, konwledge and brand, makes them a strong player in international politics. In this particular instance they are clearly the lead that everyone else, including the state department, follows.

As for your second point, I totally agree. There might be a good chance the government knew, I'm no security expert so I'll refrain from taking a stance. That's why I added the footnote :-)

notaddicted• 17 years ago

copying over from other thread:

"Gossip from within google.cn is Shanghai office used as CN gov attack stage in US source code network." - wikileaks: http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7689041346

(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049154)

i.e. (rumors) Google know who was attacked because it was done out of their own office

roc2• 17 years ago

I was wondering if the real problem wasn't that Google discovered the attack vectors were essentially government-mandated holes.

That is, the required local hires, the mandatory native firm partner, etc, It could be that the rules don't allow enough control over those resources to achieve acceptable risk.

If that's the case, it makes perfect sense that Google would issue a public threat to close the office. Nothing else would carry as much weight and if the current terms are untenable, there's essentially no risk.

crocowhile2• 17 years ago

>The fact that this is being uncovered by Google and not the government is very interesting.

If I understand correctly, google find out because they were companies using the google enterprise framework. Google was their IT dept. It doesn't surprise me they uncovered it first.

jey2• 17 years ago

  [citation needed]

joubert• 17 years ago

How would the Govt. know a company's servers have been hacked into unless the company discloses it?

bilbo0s• 17 years ago

Or unless the Govt discloses that they know.

COINTEL anyone?

Hoff• 17 years ago

With a tap into any of various of the major network pipes, the central difficulty would involve sifting through the vast mounds of data that result.

I can often tell when somebody has had their servers hacked, and I just watch my own servers.

lyudmil• 17 years ago

This is pure speculation, but if the US government is willing to engage China on the back of what Google reported, China must have done something which threatens to weaken the US economy more than worsening their relationship with the Chinese government would.

It is no secret that the US and Chinese economies have a highly symbiotic relationship and are heavily dependent on each other - Americans buy the most Chinese production out of anyone else, while China is the main creditor of the US (just to name two examples).

If the US is willing to make the tradeoff I mentioned before, it should illustrate the gravity of what the Chinese government has done. That seems like a pretty scary scenario to me.

My guess is that the US government will not do anything big to seriously engage China on civil rights. I'm not even sure if I should hope they do or not. Again, this is only speculation, but fascinating.

jacquesm5• 17 years ago

You can bet that there is a lot going on under water that will never ever reach the press.

I wouldn't be so sure that the roles are as clearly defined as it seems at this moment.

jauer• 17 years ago

I'm curious as to why it took so long for this issue to come out in public, and why it came out in public so strongly as it did in this case.

Targeted attacks on specific diplomatic, economic, and infrastructure targets from China were, I thought, widely known of for the past few years.

China targeting Tibeten diplomatic traffic: www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-746.pdf

Northrop-Grumman report: http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2009/NorthropGrumman_PRC_...

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhostNet MI5 reports China targeting UK government in 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7123970.stm

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

What I've found most interesting in this news article is the oddly strong role that Google is playing in global politics. Corporations taking a strong line negotiating with nation-states.

andrewljohnson• 17 years ago

The thing is, it's not embarrassing for the US government. I would guess they were told about the announcement way before it happened.

The thing is, Google can make this accusation and be above suspicion. If the US government made tis accusation, it would turn into a PR fight and no one would know who to believe.

andreyf• 17 years ago

We have been briefed by Google on these allegations

The pertinent question is "when?". Google reported the attacks began in mid-December. NYT reported at least some against the 34 other companies occurred last week. Drummond said the Chinese government had been briefed before yesterday's statement. I have trouble believing The State Department hasn't been involved until now.

pragmatic• 17 years ago

Chinese attacks in Cyberspace.

Wow, straight out of a William Gibson novel.

JulianMorrison2• 17 years ago

Have you read Halting State?

sophacles• 17 years ago

Ohhh good book. Im a big fan of the notion of MMO as spygame -- it just makes so much sense. True plausible denyability ftw.

brown9-2• 17 years ago

For those of us that have not... I'm guessing this post counts as a recommendation?

knv• 17 years ago

Haven't read it but given the context of your question should be interesting. Thanks for the pointer.

orangecat3• 17 years ago

It hasn't been a huge secret that the Chinese government conducts all sorts of electronic espionage, both for economic and military information and to identify dissidents so they can imprison or shoot them. What's new here is that a powerful entity is finally willing to call them out in public, and it's about time.

yan3• 17 years ago

This whole situation definitely feels like the start of something much larger than just Google pulling out of China.

andrewvc• 17 years ago

Agreed, the amount of tight lipped cautiousness with which all parties are proceeding is mighty fishy.

samdk• 17 years ago

I don't think I'd call Google's announcement either 'tight-lipped' or 'cautious'. It was unprecedented.

Alex3917• 17 years ago

"This whole situation definitely feels like the start of something much larger than just Google pulling out of China."

The assumption in government (and of security researchers) right now is that every time you send an email, it gets read by 25 or so countries. However, they haven't bothered to tell the general public this yet. My guess is that they are going to use this incident to either start to break this news to the general public, or else push through additional computer security measures. Possibly both.

bcl• 17 years ago

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tedunangst• 17 years ago

Considering most of the email I send is from gmail to gmail, if it's getting read by 25 or so countries, Google has much bigger problems than they've been letting on.

Estragon2• 17 years ago

Yeah, might be a good time to get out of US dollars. They're going to be painful to hold, if China decides to make the US uncomfortable.

billswift3• 17 years ago

I voted this up, even though I think it's wrong, because it is a valid point. I don't think it's going to happen though, because it would screw up their own economy as badly as the US. Maybe if things weren't already so tight everywhere right now, but probably not even then.

zmimon2• 17 years ago

You would want to be extremely careful - despite all logic against it, the US Dollar spikes when just about any international crisis takes hold. The dollar's decline might well occur afterwards, but that would be a longer term consequence.

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

If China kills the dollar by dumping their reserves, they're going to hurt themselves just as much if not more than the US. They wouldn't do that over just Google. That's small potatoes compared to that...

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

I'd call it the opening salvo in a trade war, if not a new cold war. Expect to see a lot of political pressure for other companies to 'follow Google' and repatriate manufacturing operations and the like.

aaronblohowiak3• 17 years ago

Our economy cannot function without cheap imports.

tptacek• 17 years ago

Ugh. The State Department uses sIFR.

ZeroGravitas• 17 years ago

Ironic given the attacks were via a 3rd party, proprietary, monopoly-market share, monoculture, bloated, insecure, not-very-good program for reading ISO standard files (Adobe Reader). Though Google said many of the attacks were via standard keyloggers.

Similar to the recent, "don't internet bank via Windows" warnings, it appears that anyone involved with human rights should shift follow the same advice for all their online correspondence. But that tech/security element seems to be lost because of the geopolitical drama.

sethg• 17 years ago

Interesting. I would have expected the government to respond with something completely bland along the lines of “Google is a private company that makes its own decisions about international operations... Our law-enforcement authorities, including FBI Counterintelligence, are always vigilant against computer crime, but we cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”

ISTM that nationalist elements within China would love to paint Western businesses that they disapprove of as arms of the CIA, and that if the US is too vocal in support of Google, then they give fodder to those nationalists (and risk damaging US commercial interests in China). I assume that the State Department considered this factor and decided that nevertheless, they had to speak up for an open international Internet.

amix• 17 years ago

You are working for Google and you have evil motives. You have access to Gmail's data, search logs and Google Documents (among other things). With this information it's pretty damn easy to hack anyone that uses Google products - - as users and companies hold a lot of sensitive data in emails and Google documents - - especially on Google Apps.

This could have been done from Google offices in China, but why not in other countries?

grellas3• 17 years ago

The thing that will ultimately undermine the chokehold put by repressive regimes on their oppressed citizens will not be Google as a company nor the U.S. government as a countervailing political force nor the U.N. as a supervening agency nor human rights advocates as a principled opposition - though all these forces are helpful and necessary, they are not in themselves sufficient.

It will instead be the sheer wearing force of progressive technological advances that make it harder and harder with each passing day for such regimes ultimately to suppress the free flow of information and the spur toward freedom promoted thereby.

With its dramatic action, Google has demonstrated that any given company wielding sufficient power relating to the free flow of information has the capacity to make a big difference in moving to help liberate countries such as China. That company has to show some guts, which Google has done. And it needs to have some core principles, which is really at the heart of being able to act with courage and conviction as Google has done. But none of this would be enough, even if it is backed vocally or sub silentio by the force of the U.S. government, the U.N., and rights advocates. Repressive regimes like China's have gone for decades on their oppressive path in spite of vigorous opposition from the west (remember the long stretch when the U.S. would not even recognize the existence of the Chinese government) and have scarcely changed their worst policies over that time.

The change, then, ultimately has to come from within and it is there that the free flow of information makes all the difference. Knowledge is power, and that is precisely why oppressive regimes always seek to suppress free speech and to control thought through massive propaganda mechanisms.

It is the technological juggernaut that is progressively, albeit slowly, undermining the thought-control historically imposed by the Chinese government upon its citizens, and that government will be fighting a losing battle on this front as it becomes virtually impossible, in an exploding information age, ultimately to choke off the free flow of information so desperately needed by oppressed peoples.

In this sense, Google's action serves as a proxy for the technology forces that are having this salutary effect. But none of this happens in a vacuum. It takes real people to make real and difficult decisions to bring about the change. And it takes courage to stand up to authoritarian forces. Bravo to Google for taking a tremendous step in the right direction. I hope they stick with it to its logical outcome. It will not be easy.

jules• 17 years ago

The technology also makes it easier to monitor citizens.

grellas3• 17 years ago

Yes, it works both ways but the change today is huge compared to, say, the days of the "Iron Curtain" (where virtually no meaningful information could get across borders without exorbitant risk, with no form of widespread dissemination even if it could get across, and with only paltry means to bring such information to the attention of the broader world).

Tichy3• 17 years ago

"Google has demonstrated that any given company wielding sufficient power relating to the free flow of information has the capacity to make a big difference in moving to help liberate countries such as China"

How so? Has China moved yet, in reaction? It seems very unlikely to me that they would, and Google is not even the most popular search engine in China.

As for unstoppable technological progress, there are lots of examples of political regimes keeping their countries in the dark ages.

grellas3• 17 years ago

I think my statement focuses on broader, long-term trends, at least as I see them. I wouldn't disagree at all with your characterization about widespread repression in the world today, and I failed to clarify that the impact of Google's action short-term will be more psychological than anything else (still important, though, when contrasted with the kiss-up attitude shown by many companies - including Google itself - toward such regimes over the past few years).

billswift3• 17 years ago

I'm curious about your "lots of examples of political regimes keeping their countries in the dark ages."

The only one I can think of that actually worked was Japan's repudiation of the gun, and that was broken open from the outside eventually. The Soviets tried to control communications technology, even requiring copy machines to be licensed, but it didn't work very well.

lifeisstillgood• 17 years ago

http://www.csoonline.com/article/print/329164

This is an old article but compares the actions against the Barbary Pirates (US Navy used force to ensure Free Trade) with what US could do with Internet 'piracy' - and no thats not copying CDs.

barmstrong• 17 years ago

This feels like a dumb question, but my first reaction to this was wondering how the Secretary of State could be relevant to this or why she is going to make a statement? I don't see what role her words have here or how they could change anything. Can someone enlighten me?

State Department Makes Statement on Google Operations in China

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