US To Charge Chinese Military Employees With Hacking

jfruh (300774) writes "The U.S. federal government will announce today indictments of several employees of the Chinese military with hacking into computers to steal industrial secrets. The indictments will be the first of their kind against employees of a foreign government. Among the trade secrets allegedly stolen by the accused are information about a nuclear power plant design and a solar panel company's cost and pricing data."

Comments

Vs the NSA

[Rick Zeman]

Which just steals secrets from the states, vs corporate secrets and giving them to GM, Apple, General Electric, etc.

Re:Vs the NSA

[gl4ss]

yeah it's weird in that regard that they went for opening that pandoras box... the chinese will just indict in response.

Re:Vs the NSA

[captainpanic]

At least that makes for a bulletproof court case: NSA files show that the data is now stored on a Chinese government computer... Oh, wait.

Re:Vs the NSA

[Richard_at_work]

A country can claim jurisdiction anywhere on the planet, but the trick is to be able to enforce that claim of jurisdiction...

Jurisdiction

[Richy_T]

The US govt doesn't know the meaning of the word. Sovereignty's another.

Talk about

[Ukab the Great]

the pot and the kettle.

Does that mean ...

[Alain Williams]

that I can sue the NSA for trying to crack my machines and that the USA will extradite the NSA employees to the UK so that they can be tried in our courts ? Do the people at the USA DOJ understand the meaning of the word ''irony'' ?

This is more outlandish than even something that most political satire writers would have dreamed up.

Do as I say, not...

[ThomasBHardy]

Does anyone else find this particularly ironic and posturing after the "Cisco Complains To Obama About NSA Adding Spyware To Routers" article earlier?

Good luck with that.

[pla]

No doubt, China will cooperate fully in extraditing members of their active military so they can stand trial in the US for following their orders.

Not an Obama hater, but seriously, Russia and now China? Trying to start WWIII on two fronts, in case one backs down? 2016 can't come fast enough.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

"2016 can't come fast enough." You're an idiot if you think that changes ANYTHING AT ALL.

Re:Good luck with that.

[just_another_sean]

If the democrats are the ones currently instigating WWIII than 2016 ain't going to help. If a Republican gets elected (unless it's Ron Paul, and I'm not holding my breath for that!) than their just going to look at the previous 8 years as laying the ground work. And any democrat that gets elected is going to assume that their election is voter approval of the current administration's policies, otherwise the voters would have ousted the Dems and brought in a Rep.

In other words, in a two party system, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't...

Very Bad Precedent

[HighOrbit]

Except for the special cases of crimes against humanity and "non official cover" spies, soldiers and civil servents should not be held criminally liable for doing their jobs or executing policy set by their superiors. Since we don't want our own military and government employees charged with 'crimes' for carrying out their duties, this is a very bad idea because it sets the precedent.

Re:Very Bad Precedent

[jbmartin6]

On the contrary, every person should be held criminally liable for their actions regardless of instructions from "superiors". This would be an excellent precedent, let's get rid of the idea that a person can hide behind an organization or some other conspiracy and not be responsible for their own actions.

Re:Very Bad Precedent

[radja]

There is already a precedent. German soldiers were tried and sentenced for carrying out orders in the concentration camps.

Re:Very Bad Precedent

[mlyle]

If it's unjust enough, yes.

First, if we hold people immune/not morally responsible for whatever they do as part of misbehaving organizations, we've removed one of the final checks and balances from these organizations. We've effectively capitulated, saying that when you get enough people together they can turn into a crushing, evil leviathan, as long as there's not a blatantly clear organizational criminal conspiracy. People should be people, making (and held accountable for) moral judgments about the actions they take.

My former boss made a mistake with the whole AMT thing. He exercised below market rate stock options and held the stock until the value went to 0. He made no actual money, but ended up with a tax liability and IRS employees systematically liquidating his assets. There are supposed to be things in the organization to protect against this-- an ombudsman, proscriptions against proceeding with such blatantly unfair and unaffordable collection practices, etc. He's in his late 60s and they just took everything. I think the people who didn't pull the organizational lever to stop the process, presumably because it wasn't helping them meet their collection targets, should be in prison.

These indictments are pure lip service.

[Apharmd]

How will the US enforce them? This will just make our government look weak.

Interesting Strategy

[diakka]

Surely they're not going to get any cooperation from the Chinese government on this, but by naming these individuals, they could be limiting the future career choices of those individuals. Want to work at a foreign compa ny? might be tough. Want to travel to the US or country that has extradition with the US? Better think twice about that. Even if you want to work at a local Chinese company, you might not be able to command as high of a salary if you can't get competing offers from foreign companies. A high percentage of well moneyed and educated individuals in China have plans to emigrate to foreign countries with the growing pains China has on the horizon, and some talented folks might be dissuaded from this career path. How this will play out in the real world is hard to say, but If the US didn't think it would have some effect, I don't think they'd do it.

Re:Sanctions

[pla]

Next up is sanctions against the individuals in question. No more iPhones for you!

I can hear the quote from Zhang Gaoli already: "After analyzing the sanctions against our military officers, I suggest to the USA to make their iPads using cardboard and trained fireflies".

Oh, wait, China makes most of the world's cardboard, too. Hmm... Woven cat hairballs? I think we still have at least some domestic production of those, if Fluffy hasn't outsourced it to a Mexican Hairless (don't ask) yet...

Re:Oblig frosty

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

US?

What a bunch of arrogant, hypocritical pricks. The whole NSA SHITHOUSE comes down around their ears, with backdoored network devices and eavesdropping on world leaders - then these paragons of fucking virtue blame "cyber war" on individuals in a foreign government?

Why the fuck don't they haul meglomaniac Keith Alexander off of his fucking starship and drag his sorry arse, along with Elmer Fudd^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Michael Hayden, into the dock?

China has a developed diplomatic culture. This type of International behavior from the US is pure "play at home" propaganda, with the diplomatic effect of a bull in a china-shop, so to speak. Offensive, ignorant, unnecessary, and duplicitous.