White House: "We expect" Hong Kong to comply with Snowden extradition

[alp227]

Last edited Sat Jun 22, 2013, 07:12 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: CBS

White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News Saturday that the U.S. government has asked Hong Kong authorities to extradite Edward Snowden, the man behind the recent leaks of classified government surveillance programs, back to the United States.

On June 14, the government filed a criminal complaint charging Snowden with espionage and theft of government property. The complaint was unsealed Friday at a federal court in Virginia.

Donilon said the White House expects Hong Kong to move forward with the extradition.

"We believe that the charges presented, present a good case for extradition under the treaty, the extradition treaty between the United States and Hong Kong," Donilon told CBS Radio News White House correspondent Mark Knoller. "Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters, and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case."

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57590589/white-house-we-expect-hong-kong-to-comply-with-snowden-extradition/

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See also NY Times article U.S. Asks Hong Kong to Extradite Leaker in N.S.A. Data Case

[SamKnause]

1. Snowden

I hope the White House is wrong !!!!!!

I hope Hong Kong tells the U.S. to shove it.

Free Bradley Manning
Stop persecuting Julian Assange
Stop persecuting Wikileaks
Stop persecuting Whistleblowers
Stop persecuting Occupy Wall Street
Stop persecuting Anti War Protesters
Stop persecuting Anti Keystone Pipeline Protesters
Stop persecuting Environmentalists
Stop torturing Guantanamo prisons
Stop the rampant police brutality
Jail the Wall Street thieves
Stop droning countries the world over

U.S. government stop being a tyrannical dick !!!!!!!!

[cyclezealot]

9. There is a white House on line petition

Please. .Sign it.. at 100,000 the W.H will be required to respond.. PS.. Be proud, they achieved the 100,000 petitioners, Extras can't but help.. We are waiting for the White House's response to this groundswell..
Its few petitions that make this level of support is such a short period of time..
.
.
Pardon Edward Snowden


Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.


https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

[Catherina]

15. It's now at 105,404. I highly encourage people to continue signing it

Thanks for posting the link.

[SamKnause]

17. Snowden

Thank you for posting the link.

I have already signed it, and several others.

I am disappointed that it doesn't have millions of signatures.

What the hell is wrong with the people in this country ?

[warrant46]

35. Caution---You will make their enemies list

[wtmusic]

36. Thanks, done, K&R. nt

[Ash_F]

2. "we expect" <- The kind of language used towards subordinates

Might as well be "WE OWN YOU"

Hope the undertones aren't lost on the people of Hong Kong.

[tblue]

5. Who owns who though?

We tend not to get real tough on the powerful.

[MADem]

14. We both have the other by the fiddly bits, if you want to put a fine point on it.

We've borrowed money from them and we have to pay it back. They need our markets and most favored nation status for trade.

We could do a lot of damage to each other if we so desired.

They've been spying on us for years, too--it's not like THAT's a surprise, either...

[JDPriestly]

18. Hong Kong doesn't need us all that much. There is a whole world

out there, and if they harbor Snowden, they can just wait a few years and the next president is going to have to promise to not prosecute Snowden. Some DUers don't yet realize just how much Americans are going to thank Snowden and condemn the many "leaders" who support the surveillance. The surveillance is wrong not Snowden's letting us know about it. Snowden has not given away any information that we should not have or that that the world should not have. I can't imagine that he has violated the spirit of the law since the program itself violates our Constitution and is, therefore, in my opinion unconstitutional. It chills speech, assembly and makes a "free" press impossible. The program is unlawful, not Snowden.

[MADem]

21. They answer to PRC, though. They are as "independent" as Beijing ALLOWS them to be.

Every actor talking for "Hong Kong," be it the Beijing friendly SCMP or the lawmaker who was opining about how HK might deal with the matter, is on the PRC team. That's not a secret.

I wouldn't be surprised if the SCMP reporter had some sort of affiliation with the government.

I wonder if Snowden thinks he knows more than he actually knows. If I had to bet, I wouldn't say the US is targeting "terrists," or Americans, or anyone of that nature.

I wouldn't be surprised, though, if they were trying to get a handle on hacking of DOD, industrial and commercial applications. And we know where that's coming from.

Snowden had a path to solving this problem that didn't involve "blowing up" USA and UK while leaving the hacking capabilities of PRC intact. He didn't take that path. Instead, he violated the oath he took to not disclose classified material, went off on a tangent suggesting he knew who our operatives were (if that's true, they must be sweating as many are local nationals who might be killed) and, instead of going to his hero's son, Rand, on the Senate Intel Committee, he went to the Chinese--the people who have been stealing military capability from us for fifteen years or more.

And while everyone claps themselves on the back and says "Phew--the government isn't aggregating any of that awful metadata...!" the corporations will continue to intrude on your life to a degree the government can't hope ever to do--and you, and everyone else who slaps shit up--pictures, locations, noxious details down to what-I-had-for-dinner-and-here's-a-picture on facebook, hands out their phone number like it is candy, lives their life in excruciating detail on the net, will be complicit in the process.

Who's supporting Young Ed now, I wonder? Who is paying his bills, buying his groceries, "minding" him?

There's more to this than meets the eye. It sounds all neat and Don Quixote-ish right now, but I don't know if it will hold up over the long haul.

Time will tell, as it always does.

[JDPriestly]

31. If they were limiting this to targetting the PRC, it would be much smaller,

more discreet, and no one would be talking about it.

They aren't, and it isn't, and that is why someone is talking about it.

I assure you that the PRC probably already knew about this program. Chinese students are in every graduate department in nearly every university in the country. They train for their work here.

If we want to maintain our sovereignty and secrets, we first have to be more discerning about who we allow to enter our country and for what purposes.

Student exchanges are great, but we should put certain limits on them. And we should not have H1-B visa-holders who have utterly no loyalty to the US doing so much of our computer work.

We should be educating Americans to do that work and to provide the creativity we need.

The internet is a system. If you learn to understand a system, you can analyze it and figure out what it could do. Then you can test it to see if it will do what you think it could do. I believe that the Chinese hack into the internet use of their own citizens. If they do that, what would prevent them from hacking into the rest of the internet, and what would prevent them from identifying people who can break codes, who have the mathematical facility to work on codes. It is naive to think that the Chinese would not have broken into our most classified information. We taught them how to do it.

They have been making our computers for years. We always underestimate the intelligence of others because we think that wealth is proof of intelligence so anyone less wealthy than we must be stupid. That is a huge mistake. It is simply wrong.

[MADem]

45. I agree that we have been pennywise and pound foolish regarding our IT hiring.

And I also agree that one shouldn't assume that the people who make the tools are somehow stupider than the people who use them.

I would support all of the changes you propose, and I also think that we should prioritize and encourage capable citizens to pursue a career in IT, with the assurance that they won't get tossed under the bus halfway through their career track.

I would, however--boy geniuses notwithstanding--require that anyone entering in that line of work demonstrate the stick-to-it-iveness to complete a high school diploma. It is an indicator of workplace success (of the people who drop out of military service and fail to complete a single enlistment, the "non-high-school grads" lead the parade).

I'd also stop outsourcing ENTNACs, NACs, and higher security clearances. It's too easy to fuck up, otherwise.

[JDPriestly]

48. Being bored in high school is no excuse.

Not finishing high school is a sign of poor self-control. Still, I am glad that Snowden let us know about this surveillance program which is way out of control.

The existence of this program suggests to me that a lot of people in our government have poor self-control and cannot resist the urge to snoop into other people's business.

Remember, Snowden was a snoop and he talked out of school about it.

But what he was talking about was a program of massive snooping that made his snooping look insignificant.

Interestingly they outsourced the snooping work to a private company like Booz(e) Allen which may or may not be, itself subject to the limitations of the Bill of Rights.

In any event, I think that might become an issue of importance to Booze Allen but since the US used the information and is definitely bound by the Bill of Rights, I am hoping that a court will have the courage to stand up for the American people and just say no to this kind of massive surveillance. As for terrorism, dictatorships always find an excuse for spying on their own people.

I really feel that Providence is directing our country and that thanks in part to this and other similar leaks, we will be protected from would-be dictators. Dictatorships always have plausible excuses for narrowing the rights of others, for exerting excessive control.

Anything Cheney did while in office should be strictly reviewed for failure to adhere to the spirit and law as written in our Constitution. He was an evil would-be dictator. Obama is a nice guy and has been duped. That is my feeling. Obama is just not strong enough to stand up to the dictatorship mentality. It's a shame but he is not.

[MADem]

49. Who will do the divine intervention on Unit 61398, I wonder?

That's a question that not just us, but every other nation in the world, wants to know.

[JDPriestly]

51. We would be more effective in shutting it down if we were not doing massive

spying ourselves.

To whom, to what country, does the internet belong. Maybe this surveillance news will wake up the many companies that use the internet to transmit their trade secrets. And in that way it may be a good thing.

You can't blame Unit 61398 for watching us if we are watching what goes on in their country.

We should not place Chinese students in our highly technical graduate programs and then be surprised when they go back home and spy on their former classmates and our defense industry. How naive can we really be? We need to rethink our student exchange policies. Chinese graduate students are all over our university programs, especially in technical and scientific majors. Meanwhile we have a lot of good football players studying business. Bully for us.

[MADem]

58. I doubt that. We're pikers compared to them.

China wants the internet to belong to governments. They want governments to be able to do what they do--what Iran does--turn the internet tap on and off, tell you where you are allowed to go, what activities you are allowed to engage in, and what you are allowed to say.

This PLA unit predates the stuff Snowden is griping about by more than a decade, FWIW. And they target military assets, weapons systems, national security assets, things like the US and Canadian electrical grid, water treatment plants, oil and gas pipeline infrastructures... stuff llike that.

Still feeling good? I am not, but that's just me.

[JDPriestly]

59. And they probably target people like Snowden. They no doubt

know precisely who works where when it comes to sensitive work in this country.

The people in Silicon Valley who invented the internet believed that it would make the world more democratic. I think they were optimistic. It clearly has the ability to make the world either more or less democratic. It depends on who runs it, who spies on it, etc.

The answer to the problem with foreign nationals spying on the internet connections and electronic communication connections of our companies and government is not to spy ourselves. Where will that lead? We can confront them about their spying, but that is not going to change their behavior because, as you point out, they think they are rights.

The answer for us is to have communication methods that are so secure that they are impenetrable by foreign governments. And also, we need to make sure that foreign nationals from governments that might be tempted to spy on the data of "our people" never get access to any of it.

Now, that is a very, very difficult task, perhaps an impossible one. But it is the only one that will work. Because as long as our companies use the internet or existing electronic media even satellite communications, their communications will be insecure.

We started on a long and very devious path when we adopted a policy of "free" trade. Now all our technological advantages are for sale. Centuries of hard work, sacrifice and study, the development of the scientific method by all kinds of people from monks to scholars of our time -- sold to the lowest bidder in terms of labor costs with no concern for the values of the people to whom we have sold it. Give a man a fish and he will eat it. Teach a man to fish and he will take your fishing pole and use it to hit you over the head.

We need to learn something from this experience. Be wary of free trade.

[MADem]

60. Church is still out on that theory, but I wouldn't be shocked if that turned out to be the case.

I also wouldn't be shocked if he was simply suffering from We Are The World-itis.

The fact is, the only way one can really determine if someone is spying is to do a little spying oneself. That's a pity, but that's the way it is, I think. If we stop, that won't "make" them stop--that'll just give them a playground without impediments.

I have always operated under the assumption that the "World Wide" web was "World Wide"--not my livingroom, my bedroom, etc. When I buy some dog food online, I know that I risk my credit details with the transaction. I don't regard it as "private" space--never have. I regard it as a giant virtual mall, where people are reading the paper, talking to each other, shopping for shit, and people can and do eavesdrop. I don't regard email the same way that I regard paper and stamp mail...but maybe that's due to my age, I don't know.

I do know that I make an effort to guard my privacy online. I'm sure if people wanted to get information about me, they could, but I make 'em work for it. You won't see pictures of me plastered all over 'the facebook,' and I don't get specific with my personal details--there's just no need, and really, who gives a crap who I am? I'm no one, like a million others who like to shoot the shit.

The only way we can keep people out of our shit that matters, though, isn't to make it more secure--that won't cut it because for every lock, there's a locksmith. I think what we need to learn from all this is to find a better way. We'll just have to create methodologies that don't use "the internet" to transfer data. We need a segregated system, not an information superhighway, but a separate tunnel that only can be accessed by specific individuals, that's compartmentalized, that does not intersect with the internet in any way (data must be manually transferred, after being vetted), and, because it's a closed system, can't be hacked from afar. That probably needs to be the new paradigm, with NO access to "the internet" from classified workstations, and no ability to upload data to a thumb drive from closed systems without vetting at several levels. Sure, people could use their cellphones and take screenshots, but make THEM work for it, if they have nefarious hearts.

[JDPriestly]

61. I agree.

"The only way we can keep people out of our shit that matters, though, isn't to make it more secure--that won't cut it because for every lock, there's a locksmith. I think what we need to learn from all this is to find a better way. We'll just have to create methodologies that don't use "the internet" to transfer data. We need a segregated system, not an information superhighway, but a separate tunnel that only can be accessed by specific individuals, that's compartmentalized, that does not intersect with the internet in any way (data must be manually transferred, after being vetted), and, because it's a closed system, can't be hacked from afar. That probably needs to be the new paradigm, with NO access to "the internet" from classified workstations, and no ability to upload data to a thumb drive from closed systems without vetting at several levels. Sure, people could use their cellphones and take screenshots, but make THEM work for it, if they have nefarious hearts."

Anyone who really wants to know my identity and is savvy about the internet can probably find me, but I don't throw my information and opinions up on Facebook or twitter with my mug shot displayed. That makes it too easy for the kooks.

But then that means that my freedom of speech and association is jeopardized on the internet. It is shocking that they are keeping metadata form phone calls. No one would care about mine, but if I were a politician, whether at a local or national level, I would be utterly enraged. And I am enraged on behalf of members of the legislative and judicial branches as well as local and state governments. These programs chill speech. There are better ways to keep secrets. There have to be.

No one would be interested in my secrets, but I have known people whose secrets were worth protecting. And when I was responsible for protecting them, I tried to do so and generally succeeded. If we don't have the privacy we need to make mistakes, we cannot grow and learn. That is the irony. This impedes growth and change.

I agree. The solution is to really protect the secrets in the first place, not to construct a huge apparatus that spies on ordinary people and collects a lot of useless but in rare instances potentially embarrassing data.

[MADem]

62. I am not surprised about the metadata, actually.

I'm sure the phone companies keep that shit anyway--how else do they determine customer usage, preferences, network requirements etc. It's not guesswork that tells them that x zillion calls are made on Mother's Day, that last for an average of y minutes, as opposed to b zillion calls on Father's Day, that last c minutes. It's METADATA that tells them that kind of stuff. Same deal with "Oooh, we had x million calls after that earthquake/typhoon/flood/what-have-you." That's METADATA. It's industrial information, and they keep it because they can use it to improve their own systems and for their own marketing purposes.

People who are really worried about privacy, and who are calling places where they don't want to be tracked, would do well to go buy a ten dollar tracfone and a twenty dollar card from the bodega on the corner. Much harder to track, and that number can go dead without a problem. Save the "real" phone for official biz.

I've lived places where you could hear the people listening in breathing and smoking--they weren't even subtle. I would have to yell at them if I had a bad connection to get them to shut up, and mention the names of some bigwigs I would pretend to know to threaten them.

I guess my expectation of privacy is much lower than people who spend most of their time in USA. If it can be hacked, tapped, or cracked, there are people who feel it is their duty to do just that. I figure that they're always going to be trying, and I adjust my conduct accordingly.

[JDPriestly]

23. I understand and appreciate the concern about Chinese hacking of our

company's trade secrets. That is a horrible thing.

But, these surveillance programs pose a greater threat than that hacking.

I answered another post with this rant.

This eavesdropping is the greatest threat to our Constitution that I can imagine.

How can we claim that we have freedom of the press if the government tracks all the phone calls that reporters call as they investigate stories?

Our government is violating the Constitution with this program. I am sorry if you do not understand our Constitution or how it works.

But this program violates most of our rights, our most fundamental rights. We are not free as long as this surveillance continues.

At this moment, our government is not complying with our Constitution. That means it may not be a legitimate government.

The surveillance program has to stop and we have to return to constitutional government.

Sorry. I suggest that DUers who think I am wrong sign up for a course on constitutional law. This program chills speech, eviscerates the freedom of the press, and those are only two of the ways in which it violates our Constitution. There are more. It's a very serious matter. Please try to understand what I am saying. I am not trying to put you down. I am trying to explain to you the reality of the damage these programs do to the delicate balance of power and authority within our government.

We have a tri-partite system of government. That means that we have three branches as you may know -- the executive, the legislative and the judicial. With this program, the executive branch and track all the phone calls of all people working in or with the legislative branch. That means that legislators have not confidentiality, no privacy in their contacts with their constituents or other legislators or anyone, not even their own family members. The same is true of the judicial branch.

Knowledge, it is said, is power. And the executive has a degree of knowledge about the political and personal lives of members of the other two branches of government that gives the executive ultimate power to embarrass or indict or control members of the other two branches. Obama may or may not be using his ability to have that information. There is no way to know. But, just the fact that it exists hampers the ability of members of the other two branches to carry out their constitutional functions of oversight. It isn't a matter of whether there really is a situation in which a legislator fails to call a resource on an issue, say national defense. It is the fact that this program might cause a legislator to think twice before calling a resource that would tell the legislator the truth about a defense program that the administration does not want the legislator to know.

The only reason people are not very, very upset about it is that those people have not read enough history and/or enough about constitutional law, its origins, the concerns of the founders of our country, their historical perspective, etc. to understand that this program is an attack on the very structure and function and purpose of our Constitution and of our system of government.

My post is long and rambling, but if we don't want China stealing our secrets, we need to cut them off of our internet and stop trading with them.

We funded and assisted the Chinese industrial revolution. That was perhaps one of the stupidest things we could have done. Thank you Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

The Chinese were pushed into the industrial age without having the experience in living in an industrial society to understand the values of creativity, questioning authority and many of the other values that are essential to making an industrial society work.

Face it. The reason that we buy so much stuff from China is that the 1% can make a huge profit buying it cheap from China and selling it expensive to Americans. The differential is actually the inflation that would exist in the US if we made our own products here. If we made them here, the workers would have to be better paid and they would cost more. We buy the products for less than we could make them here for, but they are sold here for far more than they would cost if made in our dollar economy. So, the rich profit from that differential when they invest money in companies that produce products in China and elsewhere in what used to be called the third world.

If we didn't import so much from China, they would have less incentive to steal our secrets. The chickens are coming home to roost on the companies that sold our equipment to China and import so much stuff from there to sell to us.

That does not justify this surveillance program which is unconstitutional in every sense of the word. And worst of all, it is unconstitutional in that it gives the gift of nearly omnipotent knowledge to the executive branch. The legislature may be apprised of the program, but they cannot know the details that the surveillance produces on their own lives and work. And if the do, then the program has chilled the exercise of our democratic functions and structure.

There is just no way to justify this attack on our system of government and on our personal rights.

[marions ghost]

32. Agreed

This must not stand.

You are right that some people just do not understand what is at stake here.

good post

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. That is a mighty interesting choice of words.

[azurnoir]

4. I thought this part especially 'good'

Later Saturday, a senior administration official added an additional statement: "If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law."

so IOW our law says it's okay for us to monitor your and any other citizens private communications, so hand him over?

[premium]

6. That's exactly what our govt. is telling Hong Kong.

so IOW our law says it's okay for us to monitor your and any other citizens private communications, so hand him over?

What hypocrisy from our govt.

[truth2power]

7. Rule of law. Rule of law?? This administration talks about the rule of law???...

That is rich. I can't stop laughing.

*snort*

It's a wonder their heads don't explode!

[99th_Monkey]

8. The WH appealing to the "rule of law" at this point is laughable. nt

[JDPriestly]

19. The program itself chills our fundamental rights and is therefore

in violation of our Constitution and unlawful. That's my opinion, and if the current Supreme Court does not agree with me, a future one will. The program is unlawful. Is it unlawful to disclose the details of an unlawful act or program of the government? I don't think so.

This is a political issue for our country. Hong Kong should not intervene by extraditing Snowden. It would be setting him up for political persecution.

[99th_Monkey]

28. That's pretty much my take as well

everybody knows the dice are loaded, the fight was fixed.

It's got to come back around at some point, somehow.

[marions ghost]

33. thanks for that

spooky Leonard Cohen vid.

It's true.

[Swede Atlanta]

10. What else would you expect?

I am not excusing the verbiage but that is common when there is a treaty between counties and one country elects to exercise a commitment under the agreement from the other country.

But it does raise some very interesting questions.....

1. Snowden's choice of Hong Kong (not quite China but still China) where his revelations confirm U.S. surveillance on Hong Kong and China

2. The fact China "owns" the U.S. Do not be deceived, based on the total trade balance and debt financing, China owns the U.S. Now we could always disavow those debts and become a rouge state but if we are true to our legal commitments, they own us.

3. The use of "expect" does suggest a certain degree of subservience which the Chinese can laugh off under point #2

4. If the U.S. government wasn't engaged in what may well be extra-constitutional spying on Americans and unwanted spying on non-Americans, there might not be an issue or it would be limited. If the FISA courts didn't rubber stamp broad requests to vacuum up everything in sight there might not be an issue or it would be limited.

I don't think that Obama, Holder and company devised some evil program. I think they are following in the footsteps of their predecessor as well acting out of fear of any potential attack. If they didn't do "everything" to protect us and there was some kind of attack, the right would be relentless in attacking him for being weak, a Muslim-appeaser, etc.

[dipsydoodle]

24. "following in the footsteps"

doesn't excuse the fact they maintained it.

[PSPS]

11. American values: "We expect" Obama to grant a pardon and curtail spying on citizens.

[Civilization2]

12. Snowden is not the story,. the info. he released is.

hope he disappears to the south pacific an d the corporate-military never finds him,.

but all this story-shift from the real, to the cult-of-personality is rote bullsht.

This is about the info. not the messenger.

[DeSwiss]

13. Sometimes we don't get what we expect.

- Happens all the time......

[Lugal Zaggesi]

16. "Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States

in law enforcement matters, and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case."

Um, historically, Hong Kong was controlled by the British - until 1997.
I bet the "history" has been different since then, now that China resumed sovereignty.

If a Chinese citizen had discovered some massive Chinese Government spying operation on all Internet and cell phone communications in China, and fled to New York City to make his revelation to the world,

the U.S. authorities wouldn't be handing him over to furious Chinese Government officials - they'd be recommending him for a Nobel Peace Prize (like Andrei Sakharov), offering him citizenship, and helping set up a lucrative lecture circuit for the brave Freedom Fighter.

[JDPriestly]

20. +1000,

Ai Wei Wei is a Chinese dissident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei

The Chinese government finally silenced him by accusing him of tax evasion.

[MADem]

22. And they're supposed to be the Good Guys in this equation?

They are punishing the guy for saying "Fuck the government" and no one notices that "free speech" isn't much of a thing in the PRC?

And people who were his associates were "disappeared." The tax evasion charge was just the final beat down.

Then, on 8 April, police returned to Ai's workshop to examine his financial affairs.[105] On 9 April, Ai's accountant, as well as studio partner Liu Zhenggang and driver Zhang Jingsong, disappeared,[106] while Ai's assistant Wen Tao has remained missing since Ai's arrest on 3 April.[107]

If they're lucky, they are in a work camp in the middle of hell for four years to a decade or more. If they are unlucky, they were among the thousands of people that PRC puts to death every year.

[mallard]

25. Re: Hong Kong & China want to show ...

... respect for rule of law. That's how they want to be seen. Unfortunately, they'll turn him over in accordance with the law and that way certainly deny appearances of having interest in him as any kind of an 'asset' at the same time, even when it would be swell to honor his good intentions.

It's not like with Russia in the cold war. He's just a US citizen to them.

They'll tell him to go fight the charges in court. A very friendly kind of sorry, there's no choice, we have to send you back.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

26. Little late.

He's not in China anymore.

[mallard]

27. So they did indeed

Well he got a break. Fine by me.

[MADem]

29. Hong Kong and China just shook off that pesky gum stuck to their shoe!

I don't think this is working out the way "Ed" envisioned.

I hope he speaks a little Spanish, and has enough scratch to hire a few bodyguards.

[marions ghost]

34. yawn

Snowden is a spy BS.

Who is doing the spying?

[MADem]

42. Unit 61398, that's who. nt

[marions ghost]

44. Oh gosh

you better run tell the Cyber Command!!!

[MADem]

46. You're not coming from a place of understanding. Have a nice day. nt

[marions ghost]

47. You have not made a good case for your POV

--carry on.

[MADem]

50. That's your view and you're certainly entitled to it.

I'm sure everyone will give it the attention it merits.

[marions ghost]

52. The NSA is watching so I guess you're right, I should shut up

...we wouldn't want too much attention--those of us who have the officially Wrong POV.

But carry on. Til the ship hits the pier...

[MADem]

54. You might do well to not take online discussions so personally.

And unless you're an English language specialist from Unit 61398 I doubt the NSA cares much about your POV. None of us are as important in the big scheme as we might hope, I suspect.

[marions ghost]

55. OK well I guess since You're sure the NSA doesn't care about me

I should get back to my regularly scheduled program:

[MADem]

56. Good move. nt

[MADem]

39. They aided and abetted his escape.

The US had asked for extradition, but the HK authorities conveniently "found something wrong with the paperwork" and didn't accept it. They sent it back with a "resubmit" request.

They then told Fast Eddie to pack his shit up and run, so he "voluntarily and freely" departed for Moscow.

This way, they offer a facade that suggests that they are honoring their agreements, when in actual fact they are circumventing them. They may have played the "letter of the law" game, but they did not act in good faith.

[TheMadMonk]

30. And THIS is EXACTLY where the US is going if these programs...

...are not curtailed.

And it's already well down that road. Suspicious suicides and questionable accidents here and overseas have been going on ever since the PNAC was handed its "Pearl Harbor" incident. Bush and Blair were going to have their fucking war in Iraq, and ANYONE who got in the way of that goal was sidelined, maginalised, discredited, or wound up dead.

[MADem]

41. China has been down this road since the eighties, when they were stealing and copying

videos and DVDs and CDs and tapes and software and other intellectual property. The Chinese actively surveille all net activity that they can get their arms around, but no one seems to want to confront that elephant in the room. They certainly aren't doing any "curtailing" now, are they? Where's the irritation about their activities? They execute thousands every year, they operate re-education and work camps where people who run afoul of their directives disappear, and this isn't about "Bush and Blair." Bush's overreach and Dumb War approach to our place in the world was stupid, but that was then--this is now.

This is about US national security and the security of our allies. Should we fire up a Unit 61398 of our own, and "get professional" about this stuff, because we've seen how well it's worked hiring HS dropouts who lie on their resumes....?

Leave a comment on a web page, and poof--your computer is talking to the Chinese...ain't that special?

The group often compromises internal software "comment" features on legitimate web pages to infiltrate target computers that access the sites.[10][11] The collective has stolen trade secrets and other confidential information from numerous foreign businesses and organizations over the course of seven years such as Lockheed Martin, Telvent, and other companies in the shipping, aeronautics, arms, energy, manufacturing, engineering, electronics, financial, and software sectors.[5]

Dell SecureWorks says it believed the group includes the same group of attackers behind Operation Shady RAT, an extensive computer espionage campaign uncovered in 2011 in which more than 70 organizations over a five-year period, including the United Nations, government agencies in the United States, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam were targeted.[2]

The attacks documented in the summer of 2011 represent a fragment of the Comment group's attacks, which go back at least to 2002, according to incident reports and investigators. FireEye, Inc. alone has tracked hundreds of targets in the last three years and estimates the group has attacked more than 1,000 organizations.[6]

Most activity between malware embedded in a compromised system and the malware's controllers takes place during business hours in Beijing's time zone, suggesting that the group is professionally hired, rather than private hackers inspired by patriotic passions.[9] The Unit is belived to be "staffed by perhaps thousands of people proficient in English as well as computer programming and network operations."[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398


They aren't just after our shit--they're after EVERYONE's shit.

[TheMadMonk]

53. And there's at least some evidence, that "intercepted" trade secrets...

...have been passed on to give US corporations an advantage over foreign competitors.

China is doing nothing that the US ("Fuck Yeah! World Police.&quot doesn't constantly do to EVERYONE else.

I don't know. Where's the world's outrage at what America does to its criminals? It's poor? Its melanin surfeited? The First Nations? Perhaps it's simply that we in the rest of the world don't think it's our place to interfere in the USA's internal affairs. Or perhaps it's because you're so bloody superior and ignorant that little rags like the Guardian, Der Speigel, and even our own humble Sydney Morning Herald, that you fail to notice that you are being criticised up one side and down the other day in and day out.

IP theft, hmm, let me think? Would that be intellectual property which the USA declared to be restricted munitions that could not be legally sold INTO China, the Eastern Bloc or the USSR?

Time and time and time again, I am seeing paraphrases of Tricky Dickie's "it's not illegal if the president (America) does it." With a codicil of "It's ALWAYS illegal, if it's done to America."


Yes they are after your shit, just like YOU are after everyone else's shit. Don't like it. Don't fucking do it.

[MADem]

57. Really?

Why is it, then, that when I go to London or Rome, I can't walk into any shop and find bootleg DVDs like I can in Hong Kong? Or software? Or designer goods? Or even fake prescription medicines filled with highway paint and melamine?

Your last paragraph is instructive of your actual views--if it's a free for all, then people who get caught are not heroes, but instead just minor casualties of the process in this big game of Everybody's Doing It.

In which case, why do you vilify the USA, and not call China out as well?

People who play the game know the risks. A few moments of thrill, a few moments of pleasure, a few moments of fame...and a big risk of jail time, all to be a cartoonish, simplified hero to people hunched over keyboards who don't live in the real world.

Boo hoo for Eddie, then, unless his "team" can save him.

[TheMadMonk]

63. No I DO NOT believe it should be a free for all.

However, given the fact that for my entire life I've been bombarded with the message of how fucking wonderful your nation is, how it is everything that other nations are not, I rather naively expected better.

As for fake prescription medicines filled with paint and Melamine, I shall assume you're taking the mickey and address separately what you conflated.

Ranbaxy to Pay $500 Million in Adulterated Drugs Case

Lead paint - Stories of recalls for lead adulterated products (mostly children's toys and jewellery) are fairly bloody regular here on DU.

Melamine - Now it's an old story, but the products were most definitely available in the USA and one has to wonder what the new test defeating adulterant is?


Now I am fully aware of where those products were sourced, but that is not really the issue when the final players, the ones who puts those products in the hands of Americans are American corporations themselves, who damned well know what sort of players they're dealing with, and if they don't "know" that their product is tainted until told so by a third party, it's only because they very deliberately did not test what they were buying before they resold it to Americans.

[MADem]

64. Well, given that NO one--not them, not us--is going to "stop doing it" this sounds like a free for

all to me:

Yes they are after your shit, just like YOU are after everyone else's shit. Don't like it. Don't fucking do it.


Maybe you believe that "testing every shipment" is the way to go; I don't. I think factory and government standards--to include the exporting government's oversight--matters. If you have a favored nation trading situation with a country, that country should take steps to ensure that their factories aren't sending you shit--particularly when it is a country that is authoritarian and totalitarian in its approach to its citizens and has the depth and reach to do that kind of thing. It's the least they could do. Instead, what China does is adopt an "If we catch 'em, we kill 'em" attitude--and they plainly aren't catching them all.

A large proportion of the world’s counterfeit medicines originate in Asia and end up in the US and EU. In the EU, between 1998 and 2004 there has been a 1000% increase in seizures of counterfeit prescription drugs.

China in particular is a production center. In 2001 it was reported that Chinese authorities closed 1,300 factories while investigating 480,000 cases of counterfeit drugs worth $57 million.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) of China announced that, from January-November 2005, it banned 114,00 unlicensed drug manufactures, destroyed 461 illegal pharmaceutical factories.

It is estimated that in China between 200,000 to 300,000 people die each year due to counterfeit or substandard medicine. And these are reported cases: the true number of cases is likely to be far higher.

Unfortunately, their problem is fast becoming our problem.

This past December US customs agents intercepted more than 50 shipments of counterfeit Tamiflu, the antiviral drug being stockpiled in anticipation of a bird flu pandemic. The fake drugs had none of Tamiflu’s active ingredients. Information on the packages was written in Chinese.

http://www.cmpi.org/in-the-news/testimony/counterfeit-drugs-and-china-new

[TheMadMonk]

65. You're probably right that it is, was and always will be a free for all.

Which makes the bitching of so many DUers just that little bit more hypocritical when they refuse to acknowledge (or worse accept) that which is being done in their name, but are ever ready to condemn exactly the same when the positions are reversed.

Testing every shipment? No not at all. But how about testing AT LEAST SOME of what you buy, beyond the initial pre-contract product sample, BEFORE dropping it into the retail chain, instead of waiting for a problem to manifest in the form of dead pets and kids, or for a consumer watchdog to find tainted products already on the shelves.

Right now, these people play the plausible deniability game, claim they never knew, and place all blame on the supplier. BULLSHIT! They didn't know, because they damned well (and very deliberately) NEVER LOOKED.

This problem is becoming YOUR problem, because YOUR corporations consistently place the bottom line ahead of actual service provision, and YOUR government actively colludes with them to do so.

Makes a total mockery of the industry/government argument against people sourcing cheaper drugs from Canada doancha think?

[MADem]

66. Well, it's not our problem, really--it's our educational opportunity.

I know a lot of people who didn't look at "Country of Origin" before China started killing our pets with their shitty pet food. I was one of them. China's greed benefits US and Canadian companies that make high end organic shit. I am not rich, but I am a sucker for a sob story and I recently acquired a dog that was going to get the needle because her owner died, the survivors didn't want the pooch, and she had health issues requiring a special diet. I figured, Awww Fuck It and I now buy nothing but the good stuff for both my dogs. Fuck up, lose customers. One thing Americans do well is "consume." They may take shit, but not for long.

Canada--and Puerto Rico--make cheaper drugs because their distribution systems make more sense and they don't go for the greedy profit margins. A lot of that "high end drug" whine is going away too--not all, but some--because mega companies like Costco, Royal Asshole (the Giant stores and some others), and even Evil Walmart are offering the most common prescriptions at a very cheap price. It's almost a loss leader to get people in the store. Also, as part of "Obamacare," drug costs will come down but that's on a five year glide path to get Big Pharma used to the idea that they can't rip people off quite so easily.

As for me, I get my drugs at a military pharmacy at a cost of zero dollars per prescription. I'm not on any drugs, though, so there's no "savings" for me at this point in time.

I think it's kind of funny how you position your argument like this is strictly an American problem--it's not. Every country has issues with food at times--and it's not always imported food, sometimes it's home grown crap. Bad food gets out there, someone gets sick, and the recall process begins. Examples:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21335872

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/madcow96.php

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306469/Horse-painkiller-bute-Asda-Smart-Price-corned-beef-tins-recalled-shelves.html

[JDPriestly]

37. There aren't any good guys.

And as far as surveillance is concerned, only the British are outdoing us. Shame on the whole lot.

[MADem]

38. Really?

You do realize that what people are accusing the USA of doing (recording everyone's phone calls, copying everyone's emails, even storing their text messages forever and ever, and their skypes, etc) is what China actually DOES do--routinely? With no apologies? They block access to internet sites, too. China's goal is a world wide web that is controlled by governments, and they have said so.

Further, China has one of the largest "theft operations" going in the history of the world. The reason their drones look like ours is because they stole the plans. If we are building it, they are stealing it.

The reason you can buy discount Microsuck and other proprietary software in Beijing and Hong Kong is because they stole it and copied it. The reason they know what Australia's "NSA" building is going to look like is because they stole the blueprints. They have an entire military unit that has been up and running for years, whose business it is to hack, disable and steal shit--and not just from USA, not just from UK, not just from Australia, Israel, etc....from EVERYONE.

Two wrongs may not make a right, but there are no winners here, no heroes here, and no noble causes. The Chinese have been stealing for decades now; their theft of intellectual property is a big piece of their economic advancement.

I still think Snowden made a critical judgment error and he made it that much harder for the next clever non-high school grad to ever break into the national security game. I also would not be surprised if his hands are not as clean as people want to imagine.

[morningfog]

40. White House just got burned!

[Comrade Grumpy]

43. That's funny.