Nbadan
06-25-2013, 11:08 PM
It’s true that this is likely to sap some goodwill from the U.S.-China relationship, though a drawn-out extradition battle would have been even messier. From Beijing’s perspective, Snowden was an asset of diminishing value: he had already given Chinese authorities a gift that will be paying dividends for years to come. In an interview, he said that the N.S.A. “does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data”; he described the hacking of university computers in Beijing and of systems run by Pacnet, a telecommunications company. Xinhua, the state news agency, responded with glee. “These, along with previous allegations, are clearly troubling signs. They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age.”
In China, Snowden left an astonishing feat in his wake: he actually improved the credibility of government censors and information-security czars, who make up one of China’s most unloved groups. Fang Binxing, a computer scientist known as the “father of the Great Firewall” for his role in developing China’s censorship régime, is so unpopular among his countrymen that he has been pelted with eggs and shoes while giving speeches; when he opened a social-media account in 2010, people called him a “eunuch” and a “running dog” and someone Photoshopped his head onto a voodoo doll. For years, Fang justified government intervention on the Web largely by arguing, as he once did, that unseen enemies abroad “sit comfortably at home, thinking only of how, through their fingertips on a keyboard, they can bring chaos to China.” He warned that using telecom equipment from international companies like Cisco threatened China’s national security. Snowden has given Fang and his cohort new reasons to argue for stricter control of the Web.
But, over time, Snowden was becoming popular in China for reasons that the government almost certainly found intolerable. China may have invented the whistle, but today’s Communist Party has little appetite for whistleblowers—and Snowden’s popularity as a digital renegade was not going to be allowed to grow forever. His usefulness was almost exhausted. Intelligence experts cited by the Times believed that the Chinese government “had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel.”
Last week, I was asked on the Sinica Podcast, by the host Kaiser Kuo, whether I thought Snowden’s revelations have affected U.S.-China relations. I said no, on the principle that both sides already knew the general parameters of each others’ espionage efforts. After watching the events of this weekend, I’m quite sure I was wrong: Snowden has indeed altered U.S.-China relations, by giving China new strength on an issue of which it was struggling to gain any leverage at all. And that—more than any single secret—may be the greatest legacy of Snowden’s visit to Hong Kong.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2013/06/why-china-let-snowden-go.html
”I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are, and so forth.”
- Snowden
In China, Snowden left an astonishing feat in his wake: he actually improved the credibility of government censors and information-security czars, who make up one of China’s most unloved groups. Fang Binxing, a computer scientist known as the “father of the Great Firewall” for his role in developing China’s censorship régime, is so unpopular among his countrymen that he has been pelted with eggs and shoes while giving speeches; when he opened a social-media account in 2010, people called him a “eunuch” and a “running dog” and someone Photoshopped his head onto a voodoo doll. For years, Fang justified government intervention on the Web largely by arguing, as he once did, that unseen enemies abroad “sit comfortably at home, thinking only of how, through their fingertips on a keyboard, they can bring chaos to China.” He warned that using telecom equipment from international companies like Cisco threatened China’s national security. Snowden has given Fang and his cohort new reasons to argue for stricter control of the Web.
But, over time, Snowden was becoming popular in China for reasons that the government almost certainly found intolerable. China may have invented the whistle, but today’s Communist Party has little appetite for whistleblowers—and Snowden’s popularity as a digital renegade was not going to be allowed to grow forever. His usefulness was almost exhausted. Intelligence experts cited by the Times believed that the Chinese government “had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel.”
Last week, I was asked on the Sinica Podcast, by the host Kaiser Kuo, whether I thought Snowden’s revelations have affected U.S.-China relations. I said no, on the principle that both sides already knew the general parameters of each others’ espionage efforts. After watching the events of this weekend, I’m quite sure I was wrong: Snowden has indeed altered U.S.-China relations, by giving China new strength on an issue of which it was struggling to gain any leverage at all. And that—more than any single secret—may be the greatest legacy of Snowden’s visit to Hong Kong.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2013/06/why-china-let-snowden-go.html
”I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are, and so forth.”
- Snowden