> What this really underscores is that what the PRC is doing through these proxy actors is really reckless and unbounded, in a way that is significantly outside of the norms of what we see in the espionage space,"
Given that the US intelligence community, with PRISM and Upstream and the like, hoovers up all the world's communications, I think the "norms" must be "nobody except the US was able to do this until now." Now China has shown that it can compete in the same space.
And yeah pretty much. I don’t know anything about anything but it feels like there is a hierarchy (norm? At least what they are trying to enforce) of US > Five Eyes > other Western Intel (France, etc) > Pakistan/Russia/Etc > China/North Korea/Iran; and Israel falls somewhere in that mix as a maverick. Of course in practice it doesn’t work out this way.
That’s NSA equivalent. But the point still stands - do you know the names of the agencies off the top of your head? I had to look them up on wikipedia, and they’re still pretty easy to forget about.
This is a thread about nsa style intelligence operations, where 5 eyes is explicitly called out.
What are we even talking about anymore? This sub thread is a weird digression on if it’s normal to include Israel in the phrase “western intelligence”. The US collaborates more with 5 eyes nations (2 of which are is the South Pacific) and Israel, be it Mossad or Unit 8200 than it does with France.
My contention is that the phrase Western Intelligence is a cultural signifier that has nothing to do with geography. And that pointing out that Israel is not in the west (while not doing the same for New Zealand) is more strange than including them by default.
At the point where you've suggested that Australia (of all countries) might not have an intelligence service, you've surrendered the ability to demand others come up with citations. For the record, not only do they, but they're one of the more important players. Trying to suggest otherwise to wriggle out from the "Western" argument was not a strong rhetorical move.
How are you defining West here? If we go by the international date line they're not all that far away and if you zag left as you go further south it works quite well. You need a similar shape on the other side too to get Europe but exclude Africa, so it makes for a pretty reasonable cut of the planet overall.
Imagine if there were movements in Switzerland to move to certain areas to push out the speakers of some local dialect, and literally organized home-buying in groups to get them out?
He's referring to the norm that only the American government is allowed to conduct unlawful mass surveillance of American citizens. Who do these Chinese think they are???
Indiscriminate targeting. It's clarified at the end of that paragraph, and was part of the article's lead-in:
"There's a thought among the public that if you don't work in a sensitive area that the PRC might be interested in for its traditional espionage activities, then you are safe, they will not target you," [deputy assistant director for the FBI's cyber division] said, during a Thursday interview with The Register. "As we have seen from Salt Typhoon, this is no longer an assumption that anyone can afford to make."
Yea, I wasn’t aware that there was a rule book for spies. I thought the only rule was “anything goes, but don’t get caught.” But perhaps I’m uninformed.
What norms are he referring to?