By Claude Arpi
Was
it a great master coup by President Xi?
A few weeks ago, the US President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China decided to meet for a week-end at a
luxurious desert estate known as Sunnylands in southern California.
The
atmosphere of the first official encounter between the new Chinese President
and his American counterpart was to be as ‘relaxed’ as possible — no stiff
protocol, no long speeches, no ties, not even a formal agenda.
More than the North Korea or South and East China Seas dispute,
Obama had in mind the Chinese hackers visiting the
Pentagon’s and other US Government Internet servers and taking away American military secrets. This
was a major irritant for the United States and Obama was keen to corner Xi on
the subject.
As
he entered Sunnylands, Xi knew that the stakes were vastly different from the
previous day.
Welcoming
his counterpart, Obama reiterated the importance of the relationship which was
“reflected with this somewhat unusual setting that we are hosting the President
Xi in”. Obama spoke of sharing the “visions for our respective countries” and
how a new model of cooperation between countries based on mutual interest and
mutual respect could be forged (it sounds Panchsheelian).
In his opening remarks, Xi denied any wrong doing from
China. But when he said that the cyber security issue needed to be resolved in
a ‘pragmatic way’, as China was also a victim of cyber attacks; he was probably smiling to himself.
The
Guardian had
just reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had obtained direct
access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants.
The British newspaper quoted from a top secret document demonstrating that the
NSA had been using a previously undisclosed programme called PRISM, allowing
the US officials to collect personal information, including search history,
content of e-mails, file transfers and live chats.
Suddenly,
it was the pot calling the kettle black.
The
Guardian had
verified the authenticity of a 41-slide top secret PowerPoint presentation,
which was not to be shown to foreign allies.
According
to the new revelations, PRISM is able to directly collect information from the
servers of most major US service providers.
Earlier
in the week, The Guardian had already leaked of a top-secret
court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone
records of millions of US customers.
The
US companies’ denial is similar to Beijing rebuffing the fact that there are
active hackers in China.
President
Barack Obama had suddenly to staunchly defend his Government’s surveillance
over his countrymen’s phone and Internet activities. He called it a ‘modest
encroachment on privacy’, necessary to defend the United States from outside
attack. And he differentiated surveillance and espionage!
We
shall never know if Xi told Obama, “Please look in your backyard before
pointing a finger at us”; but the fact remains that the Chinese President had
won the battle. Obama could not lecture him anymore on the human rights and
liberties, so dear to the American people.
Another
serious question emerges from the revelations about PRISM: could the famous
Chinese hackers be for something in the ‘timely’ disclosure?
Guess
where Edward Snowden, already termed the ‘most consequential American
whistleblower’ emerged day the after the Sunnylands Summit? In Hong Kong, the
Special Administrative Region of China!
The
29-year-old working for a defence contractor under the CIA told The Guardian, “I have no intention of hiding who I am
because I know I have done nothing wrong.”
Strangely,
he was staying at an unnamed ‘plush hotel’ in the former British colony. Why
did he choose Hong Kong? Because the city has: “A spirit of commitment to free
speech and the right of political dissent,” he said.
Could
Hong Kong be a good place for Snowden to get ‘protection’ from Beijing if
needed be? The future will tell us.
In
the meantime, the United States will continue to snoop on the rest or the world
(as well as on its own citizens), while the Middle Kingdom will maintain its
surveillance of each of its nationals and peep into the US servers whenever
required for its ‘defence’.
President
Xi Jinping can be happy, Barack Obama repeated his favourite formula for
foreign politics (in Internal politics, Xi speaks of a ‘Chinese Dream’): A “new
model for major country relationships.”
Xi said that both sides need a new path, “Different from the
inevitable confrontation and conflict between major powers in the past”. Well,
where is India in this scheme? Did Dr Manmohan
Singh take up the
issue of cybersecurity when Premier Li Keqiang visited Delhi? Will the ‘honest’
Defence Minister broach the topic during his forthcoming trip to Beijing?
Of
course, not! China is a friend and a strategic partner; Beijing may bother us
in Ladakh, but it would never do this in the cyberspace!
In
any case, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) is watching!
Unfortunately, there is another side to it, the Indian agencies are also
watching Indian citizens.
The
International NGO Human Rights Watch said that the new Central Monitoring
System (CMS) recently introduced by Delhi “was chilling, given its reckless and
irresponsible use of the sedition and Internet laws” in India.
It
seems that the system has the capacity to provide Government agencies like the
National Investigation Agency or the IB, centralised access to the country’s
telecom network and monitor phone calls, text messages, and Internet messages
bypassing service providers.
Earlier,
when my website site was hacked, I could without hesitation, point a finger at
the Dark Visitors from China, now I will have a choice on who to blame. India,
however, remains far behind the US and China in the great snooping game and as
far as external threats are concerned, India needs to work harder, much harder.
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