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USA Busted Trying to Bug China's Presidential 767
morcheeba writes "A new Boeing 767-300ER was refitted to become China's presidental aircraft. What goes into a plane like this? Besides the bedroom, sitting room, bath with a shower, there was a 48" TV, satellite communications, anti-missile defense systems and advanced avionics. And oh yeah, numerous high-tech listening devices. Wonder how those got in. Read the article at washingtonpost.com." CD: The question is, what was the bug in the headboard for?
Then we should stop whining when we find out that other countries have been spying on us. It makes us look like a bunch of hypocritical crybabies.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Heck, it's not the spying they're taking personally. It's the insult of not bothering to cover your tracks well enough.
To put 20+ bugs in a plane and assume that the Chinese won't find them is simply insulting the Chinese intelligence community and via them, the Chinese government. That's what they're taking personally. It's kind of a "Just how stupid do you think we are?" personal.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I don't know if it would be all that bad. Remember, this isn't some random plane, this is one specifically retrofitted for high-level Chinese government officials. It's a matter of respect for our spooks to bug it--shows we're taking them seriously. Then their spooks comb the plane, trying to find _all_ the bugs we planted. The Russians did the same thing with the embassy they built for us, I'm sure we did the same for them.
We have these things called Facts...
1: The American spy plane was in international waters (as recognized by the rest of the world save China)
2: The pilot of the Chinese plan was killed because he flew too close to a larger plane and ran into it
First off two wrongs don't make a right. The bigger question to me is why would the US do this to a plane that will be examined from the top down the second it gets delivered? The mostly likely conclusion is to generate more tensions between the US and China.
From the get-go the bush administration has been very adamant on trying to create a new red-scare ostensibly to help defense contracts get through. Think back before 9/11 and look at the various games of cat and mouse the US has been playing with China.
The sad part is that there is lots of trade to be lost by being percieved as the world's biggest spy. Look at the European take on MS and government collusion, Echelon, etc.
In the end this kind of strategy will cost companies revenues, jobs, and negatively affect the economy just to appease the military-industrial complex. In a slumping economy pissing off your potential customers is very bad business and I doubt the big defense contracts are going to make up for what the US is going to lose in trade by its reputation. Even if they did the money comes from American taxes, so its a no-win situation.
This is cold war politics at action. The Russians took this kind of thing as par for the course, but our current administration does not have a firm grasp on how important perception is in the 21st century. The old cold war games may now not be non-event exchanges but could cost us dearly.