Google said Tuesday that it may pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating in China and targeting its e-mail service.
The company said it had evidence to suggest that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts” of Chinese human rights activists. The attack was discovered in December.
……David Drummond, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer, added that the attacks “have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.”
Google has further decided it is no longer willing to continue censoring its search results in Chinese Google sites, Drummond said, and over the next few weeks it will discuss with the Beijing government how it may operate “an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all,” he said.“We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China,” he said.
In 2005, Google kowtowed when China cracked down on political dissidents using the site as an outlet. Drummond’s company made a deal with Chinese government censors to prevent its search engine from being used by dissidents, and even handed over the names of dissidents who posted on Google. Those poor people are either languishing in prison or dead.
Now, Drummond and company have their panties in a wad over cyber attacks by the Chinese government; which hacked into Google servers to glean information on the very activists snubbed by Google.
I stopped using Google years ago. Between its stupid, snarky attacks on George W. Bush and it’s left-leaning practices, I could no longer tolerate using their site.
And of course, our wimpy-assed State Department isn’t much better.
The State Department has allocated funds to companies to help get around Internet firewalls put up by China and other countries, although there is some controversy over those funds because one of the most successful outfits that does that kind of work is run by members of the Falun Gong sect, which is banned in China. The Global Internet Freedom Consortium has yet to receive significant, if any, government funding.
“The Chinese would go ballistic if we did that,” said one U.S. official.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/12/AR2010011203024.html
More:
http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/111/wor031010.pdf
Oh, gawd forbid we anger the ChiCom. We’re up to our asses in debt to those little bastards. Our foreign aid has helped their military buildup. They’ve been able to hack into our DOD classified computer systems, stealing information on the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project, and it’s been sucking up investments in energy and other natural resources, in a serious threat to the world economy.
China’s banks are stuffed with cash, thanks to the trillions of dollars from years of selling goods to the West.
Think about this when the products you buy say: “Made in China”.
As for companies like Google, at least they might pack up their assets and go home, even if our own government doesn’t have the guts.
Related posts:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/our-chinese-friends-commit-cyber-attacks/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/head-of-world-bank-sees-china-as-financial-savior/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/chinas-military-buildup/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/hackers-breach-fighter-jet-program/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/china-on-a-buying-spree/