This really highlights the total absurdity of the Mike Pompeo “China spying” fear agenda, doesn’t it?
The NSA has been spying on us for over a decade, recording all of our emails and electronic communications.
But all of a sudden, the threat of China doing that was supposed to be some big deal?
Is there anyone in America who wouldn’t rather that China have their private data than the NSA?
Chinese spies used code first developed by the U.S. National Security Agency to support their hacking operations, Israeli researchers said on Monday, another indication of how malicious software developed by governments can boomerang against their creators.
Tel Aviv-based Check Point Software Technologies issued a report noting that some features in a piece of China-linked malware it dubs “Jian” were so similar they could only have been stolen from some of the National Security Agency break-in tools leaked to the internet in 2017.
Yaniv Balmas, Checkpoint’s head of research, called Jian “kind of a copycat, a Chinese replica.”
The find comes as some experts argue that American spies should devote more energy to fixing the flaws they find in software instead of developing and deploying malicious software to exploit it.
The NSA declined comment. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
A person familiar with the matter said Lockheed Martin Corp – which is credited as having identified the vulnerability exploited by Jian in 2017 – discovered it on the network of an unidentified third party.
In a statement, Lockheed said it “routinely evaluates third-party software and technologies to identify vulnerabilities.”
Countries around the world develop malware that breaks into their rivals’ devices by taking advantage of flaws in the software that runs them. Every time spies discover a new flaw they must decide whether to quietly exploit it or fix the issue to thwart rivals and rogues.
If the NSA didn’t want China to steal their spying software, then maybe they shouldn’t have developed it in the first place? What could possibly be the justification, in the “free society” we are continually told we live in, for software designed to collect and store all electronic communications?
China tells its own population that they live in a “free society” as well?
What is the difference?
Other than that China’s claim is obviously more true, given that the average Chinese person has so much more personal freedom than the average American?