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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."
The government has been cracking down on this supposedly spiritual movement. This would surely stoke the fire even more.
I don't why they would want to do this. This is hardly a good public relations move. Smells like a childish prank by some teenagers.
No doubt the most of the Falun Gonger's are mortified by now.
The problem is, though -- brute force is still very effective at neutralizing dissent, even if the dissenters are canny at manipulating electronic media content and delivery systems.
But yeah, it does seem as though traditional control mechanisms are slipping a bit.
Don't read this!
So I guess you see nothing wrong with the civil rights violations associated with the chinese government. As long as it's not agains their laws.
Since you said you're an American, don't you realize that you're an American only because some TERRORISTS back in the 1700's decided to BREAK THE LAW and rebel against their government?
Funny, what do you think happened during our war of independence? Surely all of our soldiers in the war were terrorists. I'm sure had the events taken place a few hundred years later you would see us doing similar things as you see here.
The problem is that no clear-cut definition of what a terrorist is exists at this point. I call upon the US and International bodies to come up with a clear, accurate, definition of what a terrorist is. Otherwise, every common criminal (or accused person) could be labelled a terrorist and end up losing their rights granted by the constitution.
What?
I fear that this incident will prove highly counter-productive to Fa Lun Gong.
For the Chinese man on the street, who might not sympathize with Fa Lun Gong (many that I know don't), an act like this marks them as trouble-makers who have clearly gone beyond passive resistance.
For the Chinese government, this incident allows them to go to the American government and claim that Fa Lun Gong is a bunch of religious cyber-terrorists. An excuse to crack down on illicit internet-cafes, rights of religious freedoms (they can claim that religion preaches terrorism), and hackers in general (ala US-styled counter-cyber-terrorism proposals).
For American policy makers, this seems similar to Al-Qaeda cyber-terrorism scenarios, where a telecom disruption might occur concurrently with a physical attack, thus disrupting the C4 capabilities of the emergency support teams.
Get real. This isn't like in "Hackers" or "Johny Mnemonic" where the good guy hackers hack TV to expose The Man.
Patiwat Panurach
patiwat@sloan.mit.edu
I'm sure Martin Luther King and Ghandi would be amused to hear civil disobedience equated with terrorism. And in the logic of civil disobedience, it's justifiable to violate an unjust law.
You need to be thinking on the next level up.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
They could be seen as both. So could the Israeli soldiers who storm through Palestenian villages be seen as terrorists or "enforcers of law and order". It all depends on who is writing the book.
Despite what GW Bush would like us to think, rarely is it the case where a person is "pure evil" or "pure good". It all depends on whos perspective you are looking from.
IMO, the definition of "Terrorist" is not "Using crime to make yourself heard", but "Using crime to create fear and TERROR." - A key part of the word TERRORist.
Terrorists use violence to make themselves heard, not generic crime.
Using crime to make yourself heard is either simply immature (generic vandalism), or is activism (The civil rights movement, a key part of which was civil disobedience.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
By that defenition, the self bombing palestinians who are resisting the
israeli occupation are NOT terrorists but freedom fighters.
You see, that's the whole point: terrorism is a label that can be conveniently slapped on just about anyone. You did not answer the poster's question, but I don't suppose you would consider the "freedom fighters" that fought against the british rule over what is now the US to be terrorists. Well to the palestinians, it's the same fight, and they fight it with the only means they have been given: weapons and bombs.
Don't go thinking for a split second that I advocate attacks against civilians of any kind: I don't. I just don't believe that stigmatizing some groups as evil terrorists solves anything. The concept of "terrorism" is empty, and much to emotional to be of any use in a level-headed discussion, unless of course you want to buy into all of the propaganda we've been seeing in the last months.
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
All the idjits who whine about "1984" in the US aren't paying attention to the country where there's a good chance of it really happening.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
No, it doesn't, you putz.
No one called Martin Luther King, Jr. a terrorist. That's because he didn't attack and/or kill civilians while fighting for civil rights.
This is something that left-wing, anti-American pinheads purposely obfuscate: TERRORISTS ARE TERRORISTS BECAUSE THEY INTENTIONALLY ATTACK CIVILIANS TO ADVANCE A POLITICAL AGENDA.
Bullshit all you want to wiggle around this definition, but it's true.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Don't be fooled by Falun Gong. They hide behind their sham-of-a-religion to promote an overthrow of the current government. Their leader is a coward and a phony who should be dragged out and shot.
Let's hear it for President Jiang Zemin, everyone! Give him a big hand! Isn't he great?
Gee, what are they going to do? Ban them and then torture them in jail?
Comparing them to Al-Qaeda is ridiculous.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The chinese openly admit to censorship, restrictions on individual rights, etc.
Here in the US, we are every bit as much a police state as china is, however we claim to be the freest place on earth. (richest sure, but the freedom is an illusion)
Here we curtail civil liberties in "defense of freedom". Here we have a working massive fingerprint database, and a credit database that says if you are a good person or not, which furthermore you cannot argue against.
Our government has huge monitoring systems which silently listen to communications all over the world combing for information.
We have a War department that is called "The Dept. of Defense" which has been waging nearly perpetual war for 50 years across the globe.
We have huge witchhunts for the enemy of the day "communists" "child molesters" "terrorists".
The scariest thing is that it all arises without rigid central control: we censor ourselves to further our careers.
The doublethink in the USA is getting pretty scary.
So do we--you've heard of the Constitution and the bill of rights, no? In the interest of protecting individual rights and freedoms, we repress other individual rights. Freedom is no illusion, it is a careful, careful balance. The difference is that I can go to court and challenge _any_ law that I perceive to be too restrictive, and I can win! It happens every day. Some might argue that the system's out of whack right now, but...
scariest thing is that it all arises without rigid central control
Exactly! It's brilliant! We control the extent to which our freedoms are suppressed, sometimes in the interest of safety, sometimes because of FUD, but always because we have chosen. And no doubt, the pendulum swings a little extreme one way, we see the error of our ways, and it swings back too far the other way. It's just human nature.
waging nearly perpetual war for 50 years
Rome went to war much longer--was it a police state? So did Britain--police state? You digress here, methinks.
BTW, I've been to some peaceful demonstrations, in our nation's capital and other places, and no tanks and soldiers have ever shown up, shot large numbers of peaceful demonstrators, and covered the numbers up. That kind of thing just can't happen here; part of the beauty of our system is that horrible things like Kent State can happen and be displayed by the media, to become a forum for the public to discuss for the next hundred years. How did the public discussion go in the People's Republic after that little incident in the Square? There are some bad trends in the US right now, but I do NOT think you can draw similarities between the States and China.