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Falun Gong Hacks Chinese Satellite
maetenloch writes: "Last week Falun Gong hackers in China were able to briefly take over the Sinosat-1 satellite and broadcast a banner for several minutes on all channels of China Central Television. This was apparently repeated several time on different channels on Sunday but so far the Chinese government has imposed a news blackout on the incident. However thanks to the Internet and the millions of witnesses, word has leaked out. Surprisingly, security on satellites can be very weak - often transponders are left on when not active and will continue to rebroadcast whatever is beamed at them. It's believed that Falun Gong used a 3 meter dish antenna mounted on a vehicle to overpower the government's uplink signal. This is not the only time that satellite signals have been hacked - there was the famous 'Captain Midnight' incident in 1986 and it's believed that Iraq has been attacking Kurdish satellite tv channels for several years. Hackers have even (discreetly) made use of the U.S. Navy's FleetSatCom satellites."
Friends of Falun Gong
The Falun Gong take on the story is here:
Revealing Broadcasts Are Truly Serving the People-- From the Editors of FalunInfo.net: Falun Gong Practitioners Risk their Lives to Tell the Truth
If you would like to help out the cause, there is a page about it here:
Become a Friend- Alleviate the Suffering, End the Injustice
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
You need to read Stratfor, and maybe some Foreign Affairs magazine.
Fulan Gong originally had no political aspirations at all. Mostly just a self help group drawing on an odd collection of Chinese cultural traditions.
But then the communist gov't decided there were too many of them (and a huge number of them were party officials themselves) and decided to repress them.
All attempts to change the opinion of the Chinese gov't have failed, leaving the multitudes of followers with a choice:
1. Disappear
2. Foster regime change
Since most members were part of the emerging middle class it is not surprising to see the kind of sophisticated hacking taking place. At least one hacking team has been caught and disappeared into the Chinese prison system. Which just shows that this group is far more sophisticated and robust than any had thought. They must have several teams out there. They are not just hacking satellites either- but also hijacking cables.
Most of the attacks have taken place in North Eastern China- The Rust Belt of China. This area has the highest unemployment of the Nation, and has seen many demonstrations against the Gov't in the past several years. Again, this shows the sophistication of the group's planners and reveals their goal: change the gov't to one that will allow for freedom of expression and religion.
As for comments by people calling them zealots and criminals, I'd take this lot over the lot of Zealots and criminals that has been running China for the past 50+ years any day!
China is a great place (lived in Taiwan and Asia for 5 years), but the communists have done tremendous damage to Chinese culture (most notably during the Cultural Revolution)
Does that help you understand?