Google Accuses China of Interfering With Gmail

Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that Google has accused the Chinese government of interfering with Gmail. According to the search giant, Chinese customers and advertisers have increasingly been complaining about their Gmail service in the past month and attempts by users to send messages, mark messages as unread and use other services have generated problems for Gmail customers. The announcement follows a blog posting from Google on 11 March in which the firm said it had 'noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target.' The search firm is not commenting further on this latest attack, but technology experts said it seemed to show an increasingly high degree of sophistication."

Comments

Old news?

[andrea.sartori]

Already seen that on /. more than once and other sources even date it to early 2010. Is this a gritty reboot?

Red Chinese arrogance

[benjfowler]

The sheer, breaktaking arrogance and aggression of the Red Chinese is unbelievable. I laugh out loud whenever I read an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party accuse teh yankee imperialist dogs of arrogance, when they themselves are shaping up to be the most brutal and self-interested global imperialists the world has ever known.

People are going to look back on the dominance of the West as a golden age once the mainland Chinese are through with us.

Re:Red Chinese arrogance

[milkmage]

not so much arrogance/aggression as pure paranoia.. they don't fucking trust anyone.

my sister was stationed in China during for her tour in the Peace Corps. She was teaching English at a University.

My mom sent her a care package - including some nicknacks for her students (candy, shit like that).. the padding in the package was a US newspaper, which just happened to have full color pictures of a gay parade. within 24 hours - Washington got a call from Beijing. Apparently the Chinese didn't appreciate the nature of the packing material and threatened to expel my sister from the country if it happened again.

when I went to visit, I was a guest speaker in her class - I was peppered by the students with questions like "do i know Michael Jordan, what's a drugstore, do I have a car".. then one guy asks (in much better english than the rest of the kids) - how I felt about the US presence in Afghanistan (this was less than a year after 9/11). The Party put a mole in my sister's class.

Behind the Red Door...

[MrWin2kMan]

Is anybody really surprised at this? China is a communist country. They are in the business of world domination. They will never stop trying to steal technology or stop attacking their political enemies using whatever methods at their disposal. A lot of people complain about our (the U.S.) government. We're amateurs at invading privacy and interfering with commerce compared to those guys...

Re:Behind the Red Door...

[GooberToo]

Response like this means China's propaganda absolutely is taking hold. Its really pretty sad so many so so weak minded.

They are an aristocracy of communist rule where capitalism is growing and leveraged only so long as it benefits the communist party. Its an extremely weird blend of communism and capitalism with very clear shades of every growing fascism. But no bones about it, China is still very much communist at its core.

The state still owes everything The state still takes from A and gives to B - except where that can be deferred via bribes; and then only at the whim of the party. The giving of A to B is typically to empower additional income via capitalism such that the monies can be used to further the power base and dominance of the communist party.

Even the extremely wealthy, who have made all of their money via capitalism, absolutely understand they must be gracious to the communist in power else they can lose everything over night. So while they do participate in a capitalistic trade, they do so only to further the means and reach of the communistic party.

Lastly, I also get the impression people confuse capitalism with democracy . One does not depend on the other. Which is why, for example, much of the pro-pirate community are actually advocating socialism; although frequently far too ignorant to realize it.

Re:Why always 'blame China' and not 'blame Chinese

[SuricouRaven]

Interfering with traffic in-transit is beyond the ability of all but the best hackers without government aid. They would need to either be good enough to compromise and operate network infrastructure without detection (hard) or actually be employed by an ISP in a high enough position that they don't have someone else checking their configs (Also hard). It can't be the work of some basement-dweller gang. It's either an organised group of super-hackers, or a government agency. The latter seems more probable.

Re:Just stop doing business with them.

[cpu6502]

>>>You could just stop buying everything made in China. But then there wouldn't be very much left you could buy.

You could just stop buying.
Wise advice for a US culture
~$120,000 in personal debt
(plus another 140,000/home national debt).