

Barbarians at the digital gate - anigbrowl
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323701904578275920521747756.html?mod=hp_opinion

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

~~~
restalis
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...

~~~
anigbrowl
_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.

