Who to blame for the Google China Hack? The US government
There is an interesting piece on CNN.com of all places that postulates the real problem with the Google / China hack wasn’t the Chinese government but the US government and the backdoor computer systems installed to enable monitoring of calls and emails. Bruce Schneir, the author of several books on security, writes that changes in US law required many internet and telecommunications companies to put into place the necessary systems to easily listen in to calls and Internet traffic. It was these very systems that the Chinese hackers exploited to get access to the Gmail accounts of dissidents.
China’s hackers subverted the access system Google put in place to comply with U.S. intercept orders. Why does anyone think criminals won’t be able to use the same system to steal bank account and credit card information, use it to launch other attacks or turn it into a massive spam-sending network? Why does anyone think that only authorized law enforcement can mine collected Internet data or eavesdrop on phone and IM conversations?
These risks are not merely theoretical. After September 11, the NSA built a surveillance infrastructure to eavesdrop on telephone calls and e-mails within the U.S. Although procedural rules stated that only non-Americans and international phone calls were to be listened to, actual practice didn’t match those rules. NSA analysts collected more data than they were authorized to and used the system to spy on wives, girlfriends and notables such as President Clinton.
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