Barbarians at the digital gate

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323701904578275920521747756.html?mod=hp_opinion

by anigbrowl • 13 years ago

10 6 13 years ago

online.wsj.com

It's a funny paradox that China, the "regime that feels threatened by the open exchange of information," can only continue surviving by actively gathering more information than any other government. It seems like they get caught more often than any other spy agency, but I feel safer over-estimating them and contributing this frequency to the volume of hacking campaigns they run. They get caught more because they do more. The gov. has probably the best candidates working for them from their enormous population.

pasbesoin• 13 years ago

It's less of a paradox -- or at least, less of an occurrence -- than you might think. For example, in the U.S. we have everyone blatting their "social network" and correspondence all over media not only public but subject to massive government data mining (Facebook, Twitter, et al.).

At the same time, increasingly we cannot even learn what laws and legal interpretations are being used to "govern" (or, "rule") us. Particularly with regard to that same data mining, but far from exclusively that.

Our "regime" is fearful of exposure to public knowledge, but is busy scarfing up as much public and private data as possible.

P.S. Substitute "government" with "commercial", in the above, and you have the other half of the picture, here. Corporations building data towers and relationships that remain largely opaque to those they study.

benparsons• 13 years ago

Comments on that article are impressively xenophobic (above and beyond expected criticism of a rival state I mean.)

restalis• 13 years ago

You're right, and that feels very blatant starting with the paragraph containing «"Grandpa" Wen Jiabao».

Some quotes commented:

"hacking—both for purposes of monitoring and to steal commercial intellectual property or government secrets—has become the Chinese way"

The free nature of Internet allows by default also such "condemnable acts" like monitoring. Everyone can do it and I mean starting from an individual looking who's talking what about him/her up to organizations social/economical/political/etc. in nature, including governments. Why is it suddenly "the Chinese way"? About the "stealing", well - you may redefine the term say, to fit your view/interests in judge court (to imprison folks like Aaron Shwartz), or to bend the game's rules if you are a corporation looking to criple the competition, but the abuse of power can only go so far as a given higher authority is able to go. You therefore may name things as you like inside your courtyard, but don't forget about couryard's limits and do not fall into clownish play.

"alerting incidents" [...] the report noted, though it left the specifics of those incidents to a classified annex.

We hope their denials are better grounded [...] when confronted with evidence of hacking.

Interesting read, isn't it? Double-standards at its best!

"It is much more efficient for the Chinese to steal innovations and intellectual property," they wrote, "than to incur the cost and time of creating their own."

A strong and amusing claim for ownership of information/innovation/intellectual property, popped out of the ilusion that it belonged/belonges to someone in the first place.

That's right as far as it goes, though nobody should get the idea that Beijing's cyberraids are part of some Robin Hood-like quest to spread the technological wealth around.

Smells like brainwashing. This is how _ONE_SHOULD_ think, huh?

It's also a plain-old crime, undertaken by a government that fancies itself the world's next superpower but acts like a giant thievery corporation.

An interesting (and very twisted) view - the assumption and assessment of moral conduit at the level of governments regarding the hacking activities...

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

that feels very blatant starting with the paragraph containing «"Grandpa" Wen Jiabao».

I don't disagree, but would just note in passing that "Grandpa" is is a common Chinese nickname for ex-premier Wen, and one with quite positive connotations in Chinese culture.

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

I quite like the WSJ's reportage, but the forum/comment community there is generally a) execrable in character and b) terminally stupid. One of my resolutions for 2013 is resist the temptation to read the comments on their stories.

Barbarians at the digital gate

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