US Inadvertently Enabled Chinese Google Hackers 103
Phrogman writes "In this CNN article by Bruce Schneier, he states that the US Government inadvertently enabled Chinese hackers access to Google's Gmail. The article states 'Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn't that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated — we knew that already — it's that the US government inadvertently aided the hackers.'"
Update: 02/22 20:26 GMT by S : As readers have noted, Schneier said not long after he wrote this article that he no longer thinks this is what happened.
Re:Ahem. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Open letter to Chinese computer professionals: (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice sentiment, but Capitalism isn't the problem. Crony Capitalism is the problem. The wealthy gamble with the people's money. If they win, they keep all the profits. If they lose, politicians make sure the taxpayer bails them out. This needs to stop.
That's not "Crony Capitalism", that's just Capitalism. Capitalism done poorly, but still, plain old vanilla Capitalism.
Crony Capitalism is when you get the contract because of who you know (which is still plain old vanilla Capitalism, actually, just done poorly in a different way).
The problem isn't with Capitalism per se, the problem is with worshipping Capitalism as the highest ideal form of economic system. It's not. It's really good, but to blindly follow a rule of "Capitalism or bust" is doomed to failure.
The banking system fiasco is a perfect example of pure Capitalism at work. The banks got your money voluntarily. They then "invested" it voluntarily. They then lost it, all completely voluntarily. Although it should have happened much sooner, *that's* when the government finally stepped in to halt this perfectly valid form of Capitalism. Had they not stepped in, we would very likely be in a depression right now, instead of being in an actual state of economic improvement.
They should have stepped in sooner, and disallowed the high-risk gambling of something so precious as the savings and checking accounts of the American people. But the ruling party at the time has the motto of "Capitalism or Bust". The problem is they actually got both.
Now, the standard Capitalist response would be that, sure, *some* banks will gamble, and they will fail, but the smart banks will not and they will outcompete their competition and rise to the top, making the market even *better* than before.
The problem with that is that in some configurations, that doesn't really work. If it takes a long time for failure to occur. This is what happened with the banks, where it took about a decade for the house of cards to collapse. In the mean time, all the smart banks (of any significant size) *had* to follow suit with the risky practice for two reasons:
1. They *were* being outcompeted by their competitors. Those that took the risks were seeing the higher rewards immediately. Those that were playing it smart were not, and their boards and shareholders where at their throats if they didn't also see similar earnings.
2. The cancer of these bad investments where making their way all throughout the system. It's difficult to invest in anything without having it be involved, in some way, with this house of cards illusion.
Sure, there were a few small institutions that weren't a part of this scheme, but they were hardly capable of taking over the financial burdens of the US.
And once everything fell apart, *HUGE* amounts of American capital instantly disappeared. This left a huge vacuum, and as the *rest* of the economy began to collapse, the government, and specifically, the Federal Reserve, did the only thing it could to prevent full catastrophic failure. They filled in some of those gaps with printed money. This slowed the collapse and is in fact reversing it as we speak. But at a cost, a huge cost. The cost is inflation. With more dollars in existence, each dollar is worth less.
This is all thanks to Capitalism. Not Crony Capitalism, not Any-Other-Qualifier Capitalism. Just plain old Capitalism. Some things should not be allowed to happen. *Not* because government knows better than you or I, but because some things are traps. Traps where a profit seeking Capitalism, done completely correctly, has no choice but to fall into. Some traps may be acceptable, if they get us to a better state of affairs, and maybe it means horse and buggy dealers have to lose out to the automobile industry, or electric cars replace gasoline cars, or the Internet topples the current music industry configuration.
But some traps are far too devastation to be allowed to be sprung. And *any* trap which will inevitably lead to the decimation of our banking system one such trap. For the government to put into place restrictions protecting such a thing is *NOT* Communism. It's the government protecting the very fundamental building blocks of Capitalism.