China used the People’s Daily to announce U.S. companies that the government claims are spies for the American government.
Companies asked by Washington to use online services to spy on customers
Foreign technology services providers such as Google and Apple can become cybersecuritythreats to Chinese users, security analysts said, one week after China announced that it willput in place a security review on imported technology equipment.
Other major tech companies, such as Yahoo, Cisco, Microsoft and Facebook, were requiredby the US National Security Agency to transfer their users’ information, according to WanTao, founder of Intelligence Defense Friends Laboratory, an independent institutionfocusing on cybersecurity in China.
Wan said that online services have become a major way for the US to steal informationglobally.
Ning Jiajun, a senior researcher at the Advisory Committee for State Informatization, said, “Previously, the US asked companies to install wiretapping software on their technologicalproducts, but if users found and shut down related functions, its ‘plan’ would fail,” he said.
For instance, information on a Chinese organization can be stolen when it places an orderon an international shopping website, he said.
With technologies such as cloud computing and big data getting popular, information can becollected and analyzed immediately, which means the damage can be much greater andmore difficult to prevent, analysts said.
“It can be said that those who master online services can get more information incyberspace,” said Du Yuejin, director at the National Engineering Laboratory for CyberSecurity Emergency Response Technology.
Last month, China’s Internet Media Research Center issued a report saying the NSAmakes use of large technology companies for its wiretapping plans, including Prism, whichwas unmasked by former NSA intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, asking them to collectinformation on their users and urging them to hand in the data regularly.
The report also said that the NSA has taken iOS and Android, two leading mobile operatingsystems applied to iPhone and Samsung, as the “gold mine” of data.
The NSA grabbed users’ information and stored most of it for analysis by invadingdatabase and communication networks of Yahoo and Google, while it has also controlledapplications on smartphones with Britain, said the report released at the end of May.
“The US, in fact, could get these users’ information or conduct the wiretapping by attackingthe network instead of ‘cooperating’ with the enterprises, but it might take more time andmoney,” said Wan.
The actions of the NSA have put huge pressure on US technology companies, as customersfrom Paris to Sao Paulo and from Beijing to Berlin worry about their privacy being invaded.
US President Barack Obama held two discussions with CEOs of major US technologycompanies in the past six months about the NSA snooping, which led to a “reform” of theNSA to focus on protecting US citizens’ privacy, but with little improvement on foreignorganizations and citizens.
In May, John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, wrote a letter to Obamaurging Washington to stop using the company for surveillance of its customers, according toan Al Jazeera report.
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