WikiLeaks cables discuss vast hacking by a Chinese government that fears the Web

[Better Believe It]

Cables discuss vast hacking by a China that fears the Web
China has engaged in attacks aimed at American military and political data, and its leaders have been obsessed with Google’s role in China, cables say
By James Glanz and John Markoff
December 4, 2010

As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the American Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing why top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: they were Googling themselves.

The May 18, 2009, cable, titled “Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,” quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China’s top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country’s senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google’s main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found “results critical of him.”

That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China’s leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power — and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.

Extensive Chinese hacking operations, including one leveled at Google, are a central theme in the cables. The hacking operations began earlier and were aimed at a wider array of American government and military data than generally known, including attacks on computers of American diplomats preparing positions on a climate change treaty.

The cables catalog the heavy pressure that was placed on Google to comply with local censorship laws, as well as Google’s willingness to comply — up to a point. That coercion began building years before the company finally decided to pull out of China last spring in the wake of the successful hacking attack on its home servers, which yielded Chinese dissidents’ e-mail accounts as well as Google’s proprietary source code.

Read the full article at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40506903/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times

[Hissyspit]

1. Hmm, any other governments worried about censoring info on the Web

that we can think of?

[Better Believe It]

2. Russia, the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan .....

are worried about not censoring information on the web for starters.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

3. I figured it was the Chinese. n/t

[Better Believe It]

4. And them too.