Huawei exec out of jail, just as US accuses China of Marriott hack The trade tensions between the US and China continue to build as American officials have accused Beijing of backing the massive Marriott data breach. Huawei CFO Meng out of the slammer This after Huawei exec Meng Wanzhou was bailed out of jail on Tuesday by Canadian authorities. Meng will continue to face the possibility of …
Liberty and justice for all - except when the Mighty Dollar is at stake. That high ground is starting to look and smell like a dung-heap.
Arresting a Canadian was just stupid. Up to that point there was a reasonable groundswell of public opinion against Ms Meng's arrest¹ as political capital. Now it seems like six of one and half a dozen of the other. The PRC would do well to have a word with a decent PR agency...
¹ Let's not forget, though, that Ms Meng and Mr Kovrig are sentient persons, regardless of nationality, being used as stakes in a game where only the most extremely privileged can ante up.
Liberty and justice for all - except when the Mighty Dollar is at stake.
I do not think it is even there. We are at the point of: "You know that pretty daughter of yours, it will be a shame if something happens to her" as a negotiating method.
It is enough that we have to deal with one mob state armed with weapons of mass destruction. Two is frankly pushing the survival chances of the human civilization.
"Arresting a Canadian was just stupid."
Correction, make that 'arresting two Canadians'. The PRC have kidnapped* a second person.
----
*Walk like a duck, talks like a duck, etc. The PRC have two Canadian hostages right now. Meanwhile, it seems at least plausible that this CFO of Huawei was lying through her teeth when she claimed that Skycom and Huawei were separate, and therefore the fraud charge is real. There's a jurisdictional question, which is the very interesting question of 'if I defraud you and I am in a different country to you, can you sue me in your country?' It gets even knottier if my law says I didn't defraud you and your law says I did.
and therefore the fraud charge is real.
See, as a I understand it, the US are trying to extradite a Chinese National who is the CFO of a Chinese company who sold Chinese technology to Iran through a Hong-Kong subsidy, to face charges of breaking a US trade sanction.
And my question is, what the fuck has it got to do with the USA?
As I understand it, while in the United States, she stated (under oath?) that Huawei had not sold American equipment, in violation of US Export control laws, to Iran, and that if Skycom had, it was nothing to do with Huawei because Huawei did not own Skycom. The US is stating that Skycom did, and that Skycom was a defacto subsidiary of Huawei and therefore Huawei was in violation of those export laws and Ms Meng was lying to Federal authorities when she denied it.
"amidst vague charges of 'harming national security.'"
Just because a particular mindless attitude was mocked to death 40 years ago doesn't mean it can't rise up again as a zombie with only trifling changes, I suppose. Chalk this one up as "being white without good cause".
The problem I have with attributing hacks is there there is a difference between a hacker based in China/US/Ukraine/France/Russia which is who you always find in your typical website 404 log, and a government sanctioned operator/operation..
1 - I am *always* suspicious of casual tagging a whole group or country as it makes for lazy and unnuanced thinking;
2 - how can you tell the difference?
3 - how trustworthy is the claim? Making such claims is also subject to political manipulation.
4 - "bigging up" the alleged hacker may make it appear that the hack would have happened anyway, and from what I have seen so far, that really isn't a feasible excuse for Marriott. There's quite a difference between making a mistake and simply not paying attention at all.
how can you tell the difference?
Well, China has a major state programme in place to control and monitor its citizens' internet access, so there is a reasonable argument that exfiltration of data on such a scale and over such a long period could not have happened without at least tacit facilitation.
Other countries have major state programme in places merely to monitor citizens' internet access, so there is a reasonable argument that exfiltration of data on such a scale and over such a long period could not have happened without their choosing to look the other way.
There's a difference - but whether it's more than semantic, I'm really not sure...
China have made the mistake of arresting Canadian citizens in retaliation for Meng's arrest in Canada, but Canada were acting on the arrest warrant from the US. So if they want the US to drop the charges they need to look at getting a high profile US citizen on some made up charges who is visiting China. Trump has pretty much said he will intervene in the interests of national security (read between the lines that means money) but at the moment there is no incentive for him to do so.
“US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who in the midst of a media interview directly named China as being responsible for the hack”.
That's good enough for me, without producing any evidence what so ever, if US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said it, it must be true.
“the harvest of detailed information of 500 million of the hotel chain's customers was the work of a Chinese intel-gathering operation”
It would be simpler to get a job on the front desk and harvest the records through out the night shift.
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Surprised and disappointed that no media outlet has dug deeper into all of these cases and just lashed out at Canada for being America's lap dog (they aren't) and support Meng for being an innocent pawn of international relations (she isn't).
Meng was arrested on charges related to defrauding the US financial system in order to evade sanctions.
Canada has done the right thing - international law cannot be based on whether or not some action will piss off a superpower in the middle of X or Y important deal.
Meng has had full access to family, lawyers, consular support and fair hearings - none of which is afforded to foreign citizens or Chinese nationals arrested in China for even petty crimes. China's media has pushed the angle that Canada or the US have not given full details of the charges, but this is actually because Meng's lawyers applied for a gagging order which has been respected.
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