Asia Sentinel - Spy vs. Spy, Internet-style

Home

Politics

Spy vs. Spy, Internet-style

Tag it:

Written by John Berthelsen
Thursday, 04 February 2010
�Mad Magazine The US, pointing fingers at China for spying, owns most of the playing field Earlier this week, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the US's new so-called cyber-czar appointed by President Barack Obama, warned that an "increasingly sophisticated group of enemies has severely threatened the sometimes fragile systems undergirding America's information systems," according to the New York Times. Over recent weeks, partly triggered over a controversial warning by Google that its systems had been hacked and that China was engaging in censorship of the Internet search giant, China in particular has come under fire for what critics say is a fast-growing capability to mine both commercial and military data across the planet. After US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a major speech in late January condemned countries that censor the internet and engage in hacking, China, via a wide-ranging editorial in People's Daily fired back, accusing the United States of "doublespeak" and aiding the opposition through the Internet in Iran in the wake of Iran's contested national elections last June, which were widely believed to be rigged by the mullahs. However, lost in the concern about China is that the Americans invented cyber warfare. They spend more money on it and they are probably by far the most sophisticated operators in the world. If the total United States defense budget is bigger than the combined military budgets of the next seven biggest countries in the world, it is probably a safe bet that its spending on cyber warfare is in equal proportion. By most estimates, US defense spending accounts for 45 percent of the world total, followed in order by the United Kingdom, China, France and Japan – each officially at between 4 and 5 percent. China's defense spending accounts officially for about 5 percent of the world total, although it could be considerably larger due to hidden budgetary allocations. If hidden allocations were to double China's total spending, the US would still be spending four times as much. "The National Security Agency, the world's most powerful signals intelligence organization, is in the business of breaking into and extracting data from offshore enemy computer systems and of engaging in computer attacks that, in the NSA's words, ‘disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy the information,' found in these systems," Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law, wrote recently in the Washington Post. "Simply put, the United States is in a big way doing the very things that Clinton criticized. We are not, like the Chinese, stealing intellectual property from US firms or breaking into the accounts of democracy advocates. But we are aggressively using similar computer techniques for ends we deem worthy. " However, as long ago as 1995, France ordered five Americans, including four diplomats, out of the country "as rapidly as possible" on charges they had engaged in economic and political spying. The US denied the charges. And, in 2000, the European Parliament announced it would investigate allegations the US spymasters had trained their sights on EU companies through its vaunted Echelon system, originally set up during the Cold War of intercept private telephone conversations, faxes and e-mails worldwide. A European Parliament committee alleged that Echelon had been used to help American companies win contracts over their EU rivals. A series of 24 documents under the title "The Secret Sentry" released last year by the National Security Agency, Washington's premier electronic spying agency, gives a startling picture of just how overpowering America's eavesdropping capability is, although it gives no indication whether American defense cyber warriors are hacking into foreign defense departments. It may well be that American technological prowess is such, and other countries' defense means are so primitive, that they are never detected. According to the NSA documents and other information readily available on the Internet – ironically through Google -- the NSA, headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland, employs more than 60,000 people in intelligence, with an annual budget estimated at more than US$10 billion. As early as the 1950s, according to another of the documents -- DDE & NSA: An Introductory Survey, also by David A. Hatch for the cryptographic service, the Army Security Agency and the Air Force Security Service already had as many as 15,000 personnel each involved in electronic surveillance, the Naval Security Group another 3,300. According to a history of the NSA by the National Cryptological School commissioned in 1984 by Lincoln D. Faurer, then the NSA head, titled "On Watch," intelligence efforts were well on their way in 1945 when intercepts indicated that the Japanese were seeking to surrender to the Russians. The intercept, according to the history, "was to have a staggering effect on the speed and direction of the American prosecution of the war in the Pacific and the decision to drop two atomic bombs and the conduct of United States foreign policy towards the Russians for as far into the future as anyone could see." Even before the Japanese had surrendered aboard the battleship USS Missouri in September of 1945, the US had transformed a former girl's college in Arlington, VA into the Signal Intelligence Service, known forever more as SIGINT, the heart of America's electronic spying capability, according to the document. From that point forward, the American electronic spying capability has never stopped growing. SIGINT, in 2001, was producing 60 percent of all of the material to be found in then-President Georg W. Bush's daily intelligence summary, the President's Daily Brief, according to Presidential Transition 2001: NSA Briefs a New President by Hatch, also written for the cryptological service. In addition to the NSA budget, the Federal Bureau of Investigation budgeted US$3.13 for counterterrorism, some US$1.64 billion for "intelligence," according to a press release last year by US Sen. Barbara Mikulski,), Chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the FBI budget. "Most increases in the FBI's budget request are for the FBI's counterterrorism and intelligence activities," according to Mikulski's release. "We all agree this is a top priority." The US capability doesn't mean China isn't working feverishly to develop its cyber warfare capability. It is, and those developments have been given wide publicity, particularly through Clinton's speech and continuing expressions of alarm by Blair and others. But America's complaints resemble those of a madam in a bordello who discovers that other people are having sex. Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Comments (7) Subscribe to this comment's feed Show/Hide comments http:www.mbt-shoe.us written by floria , March 18, 2010 France ordered five Americans, including four diplomats, out of the country "as rapidly as possible" on charges they had engaged in economic and political spying. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0 It pays to be Pro USA written by epsilon , February 07, 2010 sure I won't want to be in N.Korea,Syria etc. But what about Singapore? There I can be jailed for one month for carrying a placard, standing all by myself. Every caucasian knows that "white man is king" in singapore. No white man has been convicted for any serious offence in Singapore for the last 50 years. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2 ... written by Kuchma , February 06, 2010 To those who knocking the 'Satan US' I dare you to go to live in North Korea, Burma, Syria, Iran… even China for that matters and see how far your voices go, unless you sing the same tune as the propaganda dept? It's always easy to criticize when you have the luxury of freedom of expression. Nothing is perfect in this world; but I take a lesser evil anytime. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4 The greatest satan of all written by epsilon , February 05, 2010 Osama called America the greatest satan of all time. Now we know why. They are the worst culprits when it comes to sabotage,spying,cheating, lying etc. And they call China a threat to world security! America is the greatest threat to everyone. They have their lap dogs scattered throughout the world doing it's bidding. They have their bases in countries in Europe and Asia, 60 yrs AFTER the end of the 2nd world war. All these just to maintain their strangle hold on the world. Freedom of speech? Its a storm in a tea cup. You can do anything you like if you are America's lap dog eg Marcos, Mobutu , LKY. If you are not, you get sanctioned like North Korea. It is the most sanctioned country in the world. With that in mind, it is doing what it can to survive. No wonder it wants a nuclear weapon. With it America will now sit up and pay attention. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -5 CNN = Contain No News written by Echelon , February 05, 2010 While is anyone so bothered about Google when there is a decent search engine ixquick which does no record IP address and is not, thankfully, from that self-righteous Yankland? And, puhleez! Are the Chinese so backward that they leave call cards behind if they hack Google or anybody else? If they do hack Google, then please can we see some call cards, finger prints, copies of Koran, passports and so on left behind like in those CIA-inspired fables..? Every third face you see in IT in Yankland is Chinese and yet there is no-one among them smart enough not to leave call cards that tells Yankland, Germany and whoever else that they are happily hacking away at their systems! Even a bankrupt country like the UK accuses China of spying on its presumably to learn how to go bankrupt while still acting like a first-world Yank satellite country! Btw, why are the French unhappy about using Blackberry? Must be something to do with the Chinese too! report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2 They think that what's good for Washington, what's good for Wall Street banksters is good for America written by John Francis Lee , February 04, 2010 Concerning Dennis Blair wikipedia says : ' Amid growing international concern over violence against the independence movement in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, Blair was ordered to meet with General Wiranto, the commander of the Indonesian military, and to tell him to shut down the pro-Indonesia militia. According to Nairn, two days after the Liquiçá Church Massacre, Blair failed to deliver this message; instead he presented Wiranto with an offer of military assistance and a personal invitation to be Blair's guest in Hawaii. ' The American military has since taken over completely the conduct of America's aggressive wars world-wide. ' His membership on the board of directors of EDO Corporation, a subcontractor for the F-22 Raptor fighter program, and ownership of its stock was raised as a potential conflict of interest after the Institute for Defense Analyses issued a study that endorsed a three-year contract for the program... US Department of Defense Inspector General's investigation into the affair found Blair had violated IDA's Conflict of Interest rules' The revolving door in Washington where procurement officers are rewarded when the "retire" with stock and directorships by those they "procured" from is one of the last degenerations of the military-industrial complex, as the United States collapse under the weight of its military and their wars. All of the establishment in Washington have only their own interlocked interests at heart. They think that what's good for Washington, what's good for Wall Street banksters is good for America. Americans and the world suffers because Americans cannot interest themselves in their own "democratic" government long enough to really and truly clean house. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3 US H.R. 2278 : The US is trying to label as terrorist any opposing viewpoint written by John Francis Lee , February 04, 2010 Israel is another monstrous presence in the cyber-warfare regime. Their cell-phone "billing and maintenance" operations in the US and Europe allow them access to any and all cell phone traffic in those countries. The US/Israeli complaints about other countries; cyber-warfare efforts are right out of the Neocon playbook : accuse your opponents of your own worst defects. Their control of the western MSM allows them to propagate such talking points and people come to believe what they hear and read day in and dayout. The "secret" is the pervasiveness of total control : full-spectrum dominance. Pick up and paper, tune in any TV station and you'll get the same trash billed as news. The US now is trying to label as terrorists any opposing media viewpoints : US H.R. 2278. http://www.govtrack.us/congres...=h111-2278 report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3 Show/Hide comment form Write comment Name Website Title Comment smaller \| bigger Subscribe via email (Registered users only) I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage. Write the displayed characters

[ Back ]

India's Thirst for Energy

Siddharth Srivastava

Coal surge is unabated, raising environmental concerns
Full Story

Alice Poon

Anti-Anti-Speculation Action

Tuesday, 24 August 2010 | Alice Poon (潘慧嫻)

It seems that the SAR government finally decided to choose the lesser of two evils: taking decisive, albeit belated, anti-speculation measures in the hope of stabilizing prices, rather than...
Full Story