Edward Snowden: Classified US data shows Hong Kong hacking targets

What is with HN?!<p>Just because they are Chinese means they don&#x27;t deserve basic human liberties? Just because you live in a different country doesn&#x27;t mean you lose these rights, they may not be recognized but you are still entitled to them.<p>Furthermore, there&#x27;s an extremely large cognitive dissonance here. China owns trillions of US national debt... this is debt that the leaders of our country have given willingly, and gladly pocketed the resulting cash. How is that any less treason than alerting our lenders that their systems have been broken into?<p>&quot;We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...&quot;<p>Chinese, American, British, Pakistani, Russian, French, it <i>doesn&#x27;t matter</i>. The targeting of innocents by drones is wrong no matter where you are from, why does the right to privacy and property (or happiness, depending on your school of philosophy) not follow that same logic?<p>Perhaps we should be more concerned that we are continuing to pick petty fights with our fellow man over ideologies, rather than the fact that one man is perceived to have violated our specific ideology. But I guess my idealist is showing.<p>My 2 cents.

<i>The detailed records - which cannot be independently verified - show specific dates and the IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland hacked by the National Security Agency over a four-year period. [...] &quot;I don&#x27;t know what specific information they were looking for on these machines, only that using technical exploits to gain unauthorised access to civilian machines is a violation of law. It&#x27;s ethically dubious,&quot; Snowden said in the interview on Wednesday.</i><p>So he has no idea what foreign entity the NSA is targeting or why, yet he decides to warn them about it? This is supposed to be ethical, responsible whistleblowing?

I don&#x27;t get the sense Snowden is pro-China, or that his goal is to defect to China. Definitely however, these new classified disclosures raise temperatures across many fronts, including his own boiling pot.<p>The status of his four computers (whether in his possession, or hidden elsewhere in HK) is significant because China could overrule HK and get its hands on all of Snowden&#x27;s data if he&#x27;s arrested.<p>I personally trust Snowden&#x27;s actions, and believe his personal motives are ethical, albeit controversial.<p>国民我相信，美国和中国政府不相信。<p>See related NY Times article. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5880362" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5880362</a>

He&#x27;s going to lose American support with this kind of thing.<p>This is more or less what the NSA is supposed to be doing, and many Americans are going to openly support these activities. It will make many much more sympathetic to accusations of espionage against Snowden.<p>Undermines the privacy concerns raised earlier, unfortunately.

He is a smart kid. He has to position himself as a bargain chip, that`s one reason he picked HK.<p>You can number the countries in this world who would be powerful enough to withstand US pressure.<p>Never forget he is only 29 without an escape plan you dont make this kind of journey. If he has to live his remaining life in China&#x2F;HK he is probably fine with that.<p>And please step out of your box it does not matter where someone is from. Now everyone is screaming &quot;traitor traitor&quot; and you all forget what he uncovered and brought to main media attention.<p>But soon he will be forgotten marked as a traitor and everything will move back to square one. And secret courts will grant agencies powers nobody knows about :).

The pattern of events is pretty strange.<p>Snowden, a US citizen, chose to leak the documents to Guardian and not New York Times, meant to be published while he is in Hong Kong, which is under Chinese rule in the matters of foreign policy.<p>I&#x27;m genuinely trying to understand as to why he didn&#x27;t trust a single person from his country? With the claims of the access he made, it should have been far easier to find one, without going to a non-US newspaper* and boarding a plane to a nation that is not on exactly the friendliest terms to US.<p>(* Nothing against Guardian, it&#x27;s just that the visible pieces of the puzzle do not seem to fit together.)<p>It is very hard to believe that he had sweeping access levels. For one, NSA has its own chip manufacturing facilities, teams of mathematicians and security experts. Even if we don&#x27;t know how NSA works, we can deduce from its contributions to open source: selinux, Apache Accumulo. Surely, they are expected to have tighter systems.<p>Besides, he was an employee of a contractor. Even less reason to provide elevated access to him. So, if he has material in his hands, than his security clearance would allow, then it is way more surprising.<p>Snowden&#x27;s statements ought to be taken with a grain of salt.<p>Edited: grammar.<p>Update: thanks to zecho and brown9-2 for their comments; Snowden leaked it to an American.

As much as I&#x27;m glad NSA snooping came to light, I&#x27;m very uncomfortable with a rogue 20-something singlehandedly deciding issues of national defense. It is not enough simply that something be illegal. IMO, something must be highly unethical and capable of causing severe lasting harm in order to justify turning over classified information. Snowden is not a justice, an elected representative, or someone in general who we want deciding what we should and shouldn&#x27;t know.

I really don&#x27;t understand this outrage about the NSA (allegedly I know, but let&#x27;s be serious) hacking Chinese targets. That&#x27;s their job. The Chinese, through hacking, have obtained highly classified information about our most advanced weapons systems. They&#x27;ve stolen critical information about the F-35, AEGIS radar, not to mention hacking US companies to steal their intellectual property.<p>The internet open, free, etc but the world is still defined by borders and national interest. Nations have always needed to collect intel to inform their decision making and they&#x27;ve employed spies to do it. It just so happens the medium that the NSA operates in is the digital one, with their spies sitting in a big black building in Virginia instead of being some James Bond style agent.

While it&#x27;s interesting to have confirmation that we are also engaging in cyberwarfare internationally, I think this most recent disclosure is evidence that he is in way over his head. This seems to be a desperate attempt to use this information to win safe haven over there. The problem is that the fact that we hack them and they hack us is not news, and no one is going to risk trade relations with the US in order to provide safe haven to him because he told them something they already knew. Also, he no longer has access to top secret information. Therefore he has zero value to them as an intelligence asset, and his mere presence is an enormous liability.<p>While I am grateful for what he has done, and he&#x27;s welcome to hide at my place anytime, the moment a warrant is issued, he is toast. He has overplayed his hand, and unfortunately he is about to feel the wrath of a very vindictive US Government. He will be locked up, likely for the rest of his life.

I can&#x27;t quite understand what Snowdon is trying to do here. Maybe I&#x27;m missing something, but it seems the most likely outcome from this revelation is to alienate his existing supporters in the USA and to possibly seed a cold war with China.

So is this his strategy for why he chose hong kong over iceland for the initial leaks, he believes he can get china on his side to offer him protection?

Not to go all conspiracy, but maybe it&#x27;s US Government providing the info in order to discredit Snowden and lay the groundwork for getting rid of him?

Just speculation, but any thoughts on the possibility of this being coordinated FUD put out there to discredit Snowden (although this would require some degree of USG collaboration with South China Morning Post)?<p>If this were the case it&#x27;s already worked reasonably well in muddying the opinion &#x2F; perception here on HN, and would obviously give significant ammunition to the mainstream media.

I think its a good thing to bring light on this. I hope this will get both sides to draw up some boundaries for cyber war - at least we might get a relatively peaceful standoff so we can trade with each other.<p>A standoff is better than all out escalation with increasingly dramatic incursions and dialog where each side loses face, raising political tensions.<p>We should realize the beneficiaries of cyberwar escalation are the contractor companies coupled tightly to the NSA. I don&#x27;t think that many hackers are getting rich, comfortable maybe, but not the big bucks.

So basically he&#x27;s trying to get people in HK to like him so they&#x27;ll fight his extradition.<p>&quot;Hey HK, the US gov is spying on you too! We&#x27;re in this together! Please don&#x27;t send me back.&quot;

I have to say, it would renew my faith in the competency of government if this was all some elaborate scheme to get an agent close to other countries to plant targeted, specific misinformation, and Snowden is actually some super-spy.<p>Alas, there are easier ways to accomplish that, an operation this big would never remain secret, and acting in the open like this has to have a hundred other downsides.

Dude is going away for a long long time... He honestly better get himself at least 1000 miles deep into the center of mainland china

Sounds like Snowden is warning the NSA that there are far more secrets that could be revealed, potentially very damaging to the US. I wouldn&#x27;t be the least bit surprised to learn of a dead man&#x27;s switch.<p>It&#x27;s one way to make sure the US doesn&#x27;t insist too much for the right to extradite.

This is to garner local support.<p>A HK legislator is backing Snowden because civilian infrastructure in HK has been hacked. This is a criminal offence and must be investigated.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;video&#x2F;data&#x2F;2.0&#x2F;video&#x2F;bestoftv&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;13&#x2F;china-support-for-snowden.cnn.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;video&#x2F;data&#x2F;2.0&#x2F;video&#x2F;bestoftv&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;13&#x2F;...</a><p>There will also be a rally in HK to support Snowden on Saturday.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;supportsnowden.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;supportsnowden.org&#x2F;</a>