The Snowden Affair

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Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Actually, they can...stuff like withdraw HK from its list of no-visa entry scheme, or launch some serious reviews here and there including possible money laundering haven, or trigger a small cyber attack to crash HKEx servers so shut down a whole afternoon of trading....

Yeah, like U.S. is in the business of retailiation... makes her public image of a 'world police man' turn into an image of 'school yard bully' if she slaps HK with retailitory actions such as that.

U.S. wouldn't dare touch HK.
 

MwRYum

Major
Yeah, like U.S. is in the business of retailiation... makes her public image of a 'world police man' turn into an image of 'school yard bully' if she slaps HK with retailitory actions such as that.

U.S. wouldn't dare touch HK.

You sure about that?

What HK did - or perhaps we should say China did - this time round can't be without consequence, but by options of retaliation available to US would be very limited because the US still has a need for China, despite the de facto Cold War status and what some US congressman might demand. So the worst that can happen will be US dragging feet on some negotiations here and there, raise a bit of stink at the WTO, let loose a few of those Chinese dissidents to raise some stink in the airwaves, then throw in a few "plausible deniable" cyber attacks that'd make HSI index lose 2000 points in one afternoon (of course, trading houses like Goldman Sach will be so "timely" hedged the event and reap a truckload of profit).

Look, we can understand a US citizen harbour such benevolent image of Uncle Sam, but the rest of the world is more cynical to US' intent.
 

broadsword

Brigadier
You sure about that?

What HK did - or perhaps we should say China did - this time round can't be without consequence, but by options of retaliation available to US would be very limited because the US still has a need for China, despite the de facto Cold War status and what some US congressman might demand. So the worst that can happen will be US dragging feet on some negotiations here and there, raise a bit of stink at the WTO, let loose a few of those Chinese dissidents to raise some stink in the airwaves, then throw in a few "plausible deniable" cyber attacks that'd make HSI index lose 2000 points in one afternoon (of course, trading houses like Goldman Sach will be so "timely" hedged the event and reap a truckload of profit).

Look, we can understand a US citizen harbour such benevolent image of Uncle Sam, but the rest of the world is more cynical to US' intent.


I doubt the US would do those things. I think they will let it pass than do more damage to themselves too.
 

lostsoul

Junior Member
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Duncan Campbell
New Statesman
Fri, 12 Aug 1988 04:23 CDT


Special teams from GCHQ Cheltenham have been flown in secretly in the last few years to a computer centre in Silicon Valley near San Francisco for training on the special computer systems that carry out both domestic and international interception.

The centre near San Francisco has also been used to train staff from the "Technical Department" of the People's Liberation Army General Staff, which is the Chinese version of GCHQ. The Department operates two ultra-secret joint US-Chinese listening stations in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, close to the Soviet Siberian border. Allegedly, such surveillance systems are only used to target Soviet or Warsaw Pact communications signals, and those suspected of involvement in espionage and terrorism. But those involved in ECHELON have stressed to Congress that there are no formal controls over who may be targeted.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
That article is spin. They've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar and now they're trying to make it that China is conspiring with them? Yeah they're worried on how China would learn the US's spying techniques from Snowden but according to this article China already knows? How easily they forget that just a mere few weeks ago China was the only one cyber spying on anyone. Now that the grand hypocrisy has been exposed by Snowden, they're trying to lessen the blow by making China out to be a co-conspirator. Like the Russians didn't know those listening stations were there in Xinjiang. I remember plenty news about those listening stations setup to spy on the then Soviet Union.

I don't have a problem with the US/West spying by whatever means necessary. What I do have a problem with is when they expect everyone else not to do it. Like I mentioned earlier they vilified China for something they knew they were doing themselves. They lied to the world and China happened to know the truth. So how do countries build trust when each side knows it's a lie? But that's not how Obama worked it. He knew the truth and China knew the truth and Obama wanted China to submit to the lies he was telling the rest of the world. He expected China to help perpetuate the lies about China itself that he was spreading by complying to demands based off of lies. And how does that build trust in this world? The fact is Obama didn't care. He knew he had the power to make the world believe in a lie. Truth be damned! And who's supposedly the good guy? Who ever heard of a good guy who couldn't rely on the truth? What else did he lie about? I know I bring up Copenhagen a lot but Obama vilified China at Copenhagen blaming it for its failure. But we all know that any initiative agreed at Copenhagen wasn't going to get past Congress and therefore the US would be blamed for it failure. So what happened was he sabotaged Copenhagen and made unrealistic demands that any emerging economy wouldn't agree to so it would fail and then he would divert blame onto someone else. The US representative at Copenhagen, Todd Stern, was vilifying China from the start setting up the blame already. Fits the same pattern of vilifying and spin as with cyber espionage charges towards China before Snowden's revelation. The Western media always notes how China shows great disrespect to Obama. Yeah maybe because China knows the truth since China has been the target of these lies many times. It started early because Copenhagen was his first year in office. No wonder they say Sino-US relations has been at its worst in decades. I find that dangerous where one country would lie about another that's nuclear armed and expect the world to help punish it when that country knows they're lies.
 
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advill

Junior Member
......and the Russians, the former Eastern Europeans, French, Dutch etc. etc. and maybe the Taliban too. Factually, this snooping has happened from time immemorial (old testament of the bible reveals some happenings). The moral of the story: keep secrets' tightly secret.......slip-up and the country pays a heavy price...... no country is immune, whether democratic or autocratic. However, a few are countries are much better than others . Regardless what Susan Rice, the newly appointed National Security Advisor to Obama has commented i.e. the Security of the Nation was not seriously harmed by the Snowden affair, this incident is a SERIOUS WAKE UP CALL. It needs to be addressed expediently, less allies lose faith in the System further! What better strategy than the old Chinese saying "sowing discord/distrust in the enemy's camp".



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mr.bean

Junior Member
That article is spin. They've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar and now they're trying to make it that China is conspiring with them? Yeah they're worried on how China would learn the US's spying techniques from Snowden but according to this article China already knows? How easily they forget that just a mere few weeks ago China was the only one cyber spying on anyone. Now that the grand hypocrisy has been exposed by Snowden, they're trying to lessen the blow by making China out to be a co-conspirator. Like the Russians didn't know those listening stations were there in Xinjiang. I remember plenty news about those listening stations setup to spy on the then Soviet Union.

I don't have a problem with the US/West spying by whatever means necessary. What I do have a problem with is when they expect everyone else not to do it. Like I mentioned earlier they vilified China for something they knew they were doing themselves. They lied to the world and China happened to know the truth. So how do countries build trust when each side knows it's a lie? But that's not how Obama worked it. He knew the truth and China knew the truth and Obama wanted China to submit to the lies he was telling the rest of the world. He expected China to help perpetuate the lies about China itself that he was spreading by complying to demands based off of lies. And how does that build trust in this world? The fact is Obama didn't care. He knew he had the power to make the world believe in a lie. Truth be damned! And who's supposedly the good guy? Who ever heard of a good guy who couldn't rely on the truth? What else did he lie about? I know I bring up Copenhagen a lot but Obama vilified China at Copenhagen blaming it for its failure. But we all know that any initiative agreed at Copenhagen wasn't going to get past Congress and therefore the US would be blamed for it failure. So what happened was he sabotaged Copenhagen and made unrealistic demands that any emerging economy wouldn't agree to so it would fail and then he would divert blame onto someone else. The US representative at Copenhagen, Todd Stern, was vilifying China from the start setting up the blame already. Fits the same pattern of vilifying and spin as with cyber espionage charges towards China before Snowden's revelation. The Western media always notes how China shows great disrespect to Obama. Yeah maybe because China knows the truth since China has been the target of these lies many times. It started early because Copenhagen was his first year in office. No wonder they say Sino-US relations has been at its worst in decades. I find that dangerous where one country would lie about another that's nuclear armed and expect the world to help punish it when that country knows they're lies.

spying on one another is a given fact but what really disgusts a lot of us is the cheap anti china campaign by some Obama's guys with the consent of the western press led by the NY Times. it was a really cheap shot against china and is showed how petty and low the united states govt could get. it was pathetic and the good thing about snowden was he basically threw that stinking crap right back at the face of Washington and the western press who was so giddy in demonizing china for cyber hacking and espionage. it showed American hypocrisy at its finest. that's why a lot of Chinese would wish snowden not to be arrested and taken back to gitmo. the US accusing china of cyber hacking and espionage is like a serial child rapist lecturing a teenage boy for buying a girlie magazine at the corner store. talk about cheap politics from Washington this is the lowest of the low.
 
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AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
I'd like to know where's the class A journalism? China should be having journalists hounding Sergei Brin and Google right now about the hypocrisy of his silence after he's been attacking China for what Obama has been doing all along. What ever happened to, "Do no wrong?" The one internet company that made the biggest stink as if they were a lone champion that did something turns out to be the biggest hypocrite.
 
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mr.bean

Junior Member
I'd like to know where's the class A journalism? China should be having journalists hounding Sergei Brin and Google right now about the hypocrisy of his silence after he's been attacking China for what Obama has been doing all along. What ever happened to, "Do no wrong?" The one internet company that made the biggest stink as if they were a lone champion that did something turns out to be the biggest hypocrite.

this maybe a shock to some of our western friends but Chinese just won't scoop that low. we saw Obama did not hesitate in bashing china on this matter and even had the gall to bring it up at the Obama-Xi meeting in California. But did Xi return the favor to Obama when snowden showed up and exposed what the NSA has been doing all along? Obama and his American media got no class. The chinese are actually very restrained and nuanced when they retort back.
 
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