China’s Cyberspying Is ‘on a Scale No One
Imagined’–if You Pretend NSA Doesn’t Exist
By Janine Jackson
August 05, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
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"FAIR"
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Stories about cyberespionage–like the data
theft at the US Office of Personal Management believed but not
officially stated to have been carried out by China–are weird. For
one thing, they include quotes about how “we need to be a bit more
public” about our responses to cyberattacks–delivered from White
House officials who speak only on condition of anonymity.
That’s from a
July 31 piece by the New York
Times‘ David Sanger, which, as Marcy Wheeler of the blog
Emptywheel (8/1/15)
pointed out, had a certain amount of fiction mixed in with its
reporting.
Sanger wrote that the administration concluded
that the hacking attack was “so vast in scope and ambition that the
usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases did not
apply.” He called it “espionage, on a scale that no one imagined
before.”
But how can that be? China is accused of obtaining
personal information about 20 million Americans, federal employees
and contractors, and that’s a big deal. But the US’s NSA, according
to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden,
processes 20 billion phone calls and internet messages
every day. The NSA’s unofficial motto for years has been “Collect
It All.”
The article notes that the US has its own
“intelligence operations inside China”—but pretends these are purely
defensive, referring to “the placement of thousands of implants in
Chinese computer networks to warn of impending attacks.”
Sanger was one of the main journalists covering
the joint US/Israeli cyberattack against Iran known as Stuxnet; one
of his
stories went out under the headline, “Obama Ordered Wave of
Cyberattacks Against Iran.” But here, in this context, he writes,
“The United States has been cautious about using cyberweapons or
even discussing it.”
No, no, they discuss them plenty, and use them
too–some media have just decided that the public should only
sometimes hear about it.
Janine Jackson is the program director of FAIR
and the host of CounterSpin.
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