SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Maurice Winn who wrote (105205)3/22/2014 9:15:31 PM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 219567
 
another timely edward event

reuters.com

NSA infiltrates servers of China telecom giant Huawei: report

Credit: Reuters/Jim Urquhart
A National Security Agency (NSA) data gathering facility is seen in Bluffdale, about 25 miles (40 kms) south of Salt Lake City, Utah, December 17, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jim Urquhart

(Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency has infiltrated servers in the headquarters of Chinese telecommunications and internet giant Huawei Technologies Co, obtaining sensitive information and monitoring the communications of top executives, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The newspaper said its report on the operation, code-named "Shotgiant," was based on NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden, the former agency contractor who since last year has leaked data revealing sweeping U.S. surveillance activities. The German magazine Der Spiegel also reported on the documents.

One of the goals of the operation was to find any connections between Huawei and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, according to a 2010 document cited by the Times.

But the newspaper said the operation also sought to exploit Huawei's technology. It reported that the NSA aimed to conduct surveillance through computer and telephone networks Huawei sold to other nations. If ordered by the U.S. president, the NSA also planned to unleash offensive cyber operations, it said.

The newspaper said the NSA secured access to the servers in Huawei's sealed headquarters in the city of Shenzhen and got information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches the company says connect a third of the world's people. The NSA also tracked communications of Huawei's top executives, the Times reported.

Der Spiegel reported that the NSA breached Huawei's computer network and copied a list of more than 1,400 clients and internal training documents for engineers. "We have access to so much data that we don't know what to do with it," the magazine cited an NSA document as saying.

The magazine said the NSA also is pursuing a digital offensive against the Chinese political leadership. It named the government targets as former Chinese prime minister Hu Jintao and the Chinese trade and foreign ministries.

'PLANS AND INTENTIONS'

"Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products. We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products," the Times quoted an NSA document as saying, to "gain access to networks of interest" around the world.

"If we can determine the company's plans and intentions," an analyst wrote in the 2010 document, "we hope that this will lead us back to the plans and intentions" of the Chinese government.

The Times also reported that as Huawei invested in new technology and laid undersea cables to connect its $40 billion-a-year networking operation, the NSA was interested in getting information on into key Chinese customers including "high priority targets - Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Cuba."

The Times quoted William Plummer, a senior Huawei executive in the United States, as saying that the company did not know it was a target of the NSA.

"The irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us," the Times quoted Plummer as saying.

"If such espionage has been truly conducted then it is known that the company is independent and has no unusual ties to any government, and that knowledge should be relayed publicly to put an end to an era of mis- and disinformation," the Times quoted Plummer as saying.


The Times noted that U.S. officials see Huawei as a security threat and have blocked the company from making business deals in the United States, worried that it would furnish its equipment with "back doors" that could enable China's military or Chinese-backed hackers to swipe corporate and government secrets.

Snowden last year fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia, where he has asylum. The United States wants him returned to face criminal prosecution.

U.S. officials have denied the United States and NSA have spied on foreign companies to help American companies gain a competitive edge. A U.S. intelligence official said the NSA and other agencies do not provide secretly collected intelligence information that could be commercially sensitive or give a competitive advantage to U.S. firms.

U.S. officials acknowledge that in the course of assessing the economic prospects or stability of foreign countries American agencies might collect data on individual companies.

They also said the United States might collect data on foreign companies in preparation for imposing economic sanctions or taking other foreign policy-related actions against a country and its leadership, but not to aid American companies.

The Times and Der Spiegel articles were published just days before Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Europe and will hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a target of electronic surveillance by the NSA.

They also were published during U.S. first lady Michelle Obama's visit to China. In Beijing on Saturday, she told an audience of college students that open access to information - especially online - is a universal right.

(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington and Stephen Brown in Berlin; Editing by David Gregorio)



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (105205)3/23/2014 3:19:26 AM
From: average joe1 Recommendation

Recommended By
Maurice Winn

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 219567
 
Are you suggesting the USA is not the bestest country in the world?

Six Plainclothes Cops Attack and Arrest University of Virginia Sorority Woman After She Buys Water From Grocery Store Brian Doherty|

Jun. 28, 2013 11:52 am

Modern policing! Public safety! No amount of snarky irony can prepare you for this tale of police idiocy
in the name of the most minor and absurd of laws, reported in Daily Progress out of Virginia:
When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.



Photo credit: Fergal Mac Eoinin / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.

A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot.

"They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform," she recalled Thursday in a written account of the April 11 incident.

"I couldn't put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were ... terrified," Daly stated.

The authorities agree with her tale, but, you know, she had pissed the cops off by then.

Charlottesville Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman read Daly's account and said it was factually consistent.

Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the agents were. But that wasn't good enough for ABC agents, who charged her with three felonies. Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can't understand why she sat in jail....

Agents charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer and one count of eluding police, all Class 6 felonies carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $2,500 in fines per offense....

Daly incurred the assault charges when she "grazed" two agents with her SUV, according to court records. She drove the SUV past the agents after her front-seat passenger, in a panic, yelled at Daly to "go, go, go" and climbed into the rear of the vehicle to gain space from the men on her side of the car, the records state...

Oh, the irony!

The women dialed 911 as they pulled out of the parking lot to report what was happening and ask whether the agents were police officers. Daly said she was planning to drive to a police station. She stopped the SUV nearby for an agent driving a vehicle with lights and sirens, Chapman said.