Snowden claims Chinese cell phone SMS messages being harvested
Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent has been in news for some time. He last claimed that the NSA hacked into the mainframe network backbones of Hong Kong and China several hundred times. Now Snowden claims that US has been hacking Chinese cell phones to get access to text messages and that the US has gathered millions and millions of messages. The report was published in the South China Morning Post on Saturday.
Edward Snowden, who has also been a contractor of the National Security Agency, was hiding in Hong Kong. He moved to Hong Kong after revealing the activities of a mass electronic spying program called PRISM launched by the NSA and US government. It is worth mentioning that the PRISM program has been under severe criticism and Internet giants like Facebook and Google have declined requests made by US officials and NSA personnel to disclose customer data.
Snowden, the former CIA technician stated that the NSA does all kinds of things like hacking into Chinese mobile companies to steal SMS data. Snowden, in an interview with the South China Morning Post stated that he has evidence available which can prove his claims about the NSA’s PRISM program. The South China Morning Post cited government data which reveals that Chinese people have exchanged over 900 billion text messages in year 2012, which was an increase over the previous year’s records by 2.1%.
Snowden did not really reveal exactly how the US and NSA personnel manage to get a hold of the Chinese text messages but according to reports, Chinese experts in cybersecurity have long been concerned about the US using backdoor attacks utilizing components which are manufactured outside China.
Washington has already charged Snowden with theft, espionage and conversion of US government property but Hong Kong on the other hand remained silent about whether they would detain Snowden or not. Considering the laws of Hong Kong and China, extraditing Snowden to US could have taken years.
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What do you make of Snowden’s choice, Todd? Cuirious to know whether or not you think he did the right thing…
Snowden claims Chinese cell phone SMS messages being harvested http://t.co/FHpO56kbRT
Good initiative – bad judgement. He skewed his motives by not being discretionary in his exploits. If Snowden walked the narrow path addressing only the Fourth Amendment concerns then he would be a champion for a just cause. Instead, he divulged knowledge of specifics (such as China.) There is a fine line between whistle blowing and spying. What’s your opinion?
For the record, I fixed my mobile typo above. lol My thoughts are somewhat in line with yours.