WTF? Sanctions Lifted Against North Korea

President Bush on Thursday lifted trade sanctions against North Korea and moved to remove it from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, a remarkable turnaround in policy toward the communist regime he once branded as part of an “axis of evil.”

The announcement at the White House came after North Korea handed over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear work to Chinese officials on Thursday, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearization process.

Bush called the declaration a positive step along a long road to get the nation to give up its nuclear weapons. Yet, he remained wary of the regime, which has lied about its nuclear work before. And North Korea’s declaration, received six months late, falls short of what the administration once sought, leaving it open to criticism from those who want the U.S. to take an even tougher stance against the regime.

“We will trust you only to the extent you fulfill your promises,” Bush said in the Rose Garden. “I’m pleased with the progress. I’m under no illusions. This is the first step. This isn’t the end of the process. It is the beginning of the process.”
Link: http://news.aol.com/story/_a/us-lifts-sanctions-against-north-korea/20080626080309990001

More like the continuation of the carrot on a stick process. You know, the one where the North Korean Gargoyle holds the stick.

Jeeezustapdancingchrist, George. You cannot be that naive about North Korea. When it comes to illusions, this one takes the cake. Taking Kim Jong Il at his word is just out and out stupid.

Don’t think he isn’t taking shit from Republicans over this:

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed her “profound disappointment” over the decision, while Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, also expressed his outrage.

“Lifting sanctions and removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism flies in the face of history and rewards its brutal dictator for shallow gestures,” said Hoekstra, who has not shied away from criticizing the White House in recent years.

“Just as the Clinton administration was fooled by the Kim Jong-Il regime, time will soon tell if the Bush administration will fall for the same bait,” he added.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0608/House_Republicans_blast_Bush_for_North_Korea_decision.html

If you give a despot like Kim Jong Il an inch, he’ll take a hundred miles. You cannot ply an entity like North Korea away from it’s dictatorship and nuclear ambitions, especially when it’s being propped up by China, who in turn, benefits from billions of dollars in U.S. trade.

Former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton weighs in:

“I think the steps the President announced today go a long way to granting enormous political legitimacy to North Korea,” he said.

“It will facilitate their economic transactions in the marketplace.”

He says it is dangerous to give North Korea concessions in return for information that is not verified.

“The estimates that we have of their plutonium production are well in excess in what they’ve declared, and even the famous 18,000 pages of documents that they’ve given over reveal gaps in their data,” he said.

“We can’t even verify the declaration based on what they’ve given us.

“I think their record of deception and duplicity over the years is such that any deal with them would have to have extensive verification mechanisms and we don’t really have that here.”

Link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/27/2287869.htm?section=justin

North Korea’s nuke program is Saddam Hussein, Part II.

Our Chinese “Friends” Commit Cyber Attacks

Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts.

One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.

Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.

……The Central Intelligence Agency’s chief cyber-security officer, Tom Donahue, said that hackers had breached the computer systems of utility companies outside the United States and that they had even demanded ransom. Donahue spoke at a January gathering in New Orleans of security executives from government agencies and some of the nation’s largest utility and energy companies. He said he suspected that some of the hackers had inside knowledge of the utility systems and that in at least one case, an intrusion caused a power outage that affected multiple cities. The CIA didn’t know who launched the attacks or why, Donahue said, “but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

……In addition to disruptive attacks on networks, officials are worried about the Chinese using long-established computer-hacking techniques to steal sensitive information from government agencies and U.S. corporations.

(Joel) Brenner, the U.S. counterintelligence chief, said he knows of “a large American company” whose strategic information was obtained by its Chinese counterparts in advance of a business negotiation. As Brenner recounted the story, “The delegation gets to China and realizes, ‘These guys on the other side of the table know every bottom line on every significant negotiating point.’ They had to have got this by hacking into [the company’s] systems.”

Bennett told a similar story about a large, well-known American company. (Both he and Brenner declined to provide the names of the companies.) According to Bennett, the Chinese based their starting points for negotiation on the Americans’ end points.

Two sources also alleged that the hacking extends to high-level administration officials.

During a trip to Beijing in December 2007, spyware programs designed to clandestinely remove information from personal computers and other electronic equipment were discovered on devices used by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and possibly other members of a U.S. trade delegation, according to a computer-security expert with firsthand knowledge of the spyware used. Gutierrez was in China with the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, a high-level delegation that includes the U.S. trade representative and that meets with Chinese officials to discuss such matters as intellectual-property rights, market access, and consumer product safety. According to the computer-security expert, the spyware programs were designed to open communications channels to an outside system, and to download the contents of the infected devices at regular intervals. The source said that the computer codes were identical to those found in the laptop computers and other devices of several senior executives of U.S. corporations who also had their electronics “slurped” while on business in China. The source said he believes, based on conversations with U.S. officials, that the Gutierrez compromise was a source of considerable concern in the Bush administration. Another source with knowledge of the incident corroborated the computer-security expert’s account.

……“China is indeed a counterintelligence threat, and specifically a cyber-counterintelligence threat,” said Brenner, who served for four years as inspector general of the National Security Agency, the intelligence organization that electronically steals other countries’ secrets. Brenner said that the American company’s experience “is an example of how hard the Chinese will work at this, and how much more seriously the American corporate sector has to take the information-security issue.” He called economic espionage a national security risk and said that it makes little difference to a foreign power whether it steals sensitive information from a government-operated computer or from one owned by a contractor. “If you travel abroad and are the director of research or the chief executive of a large company, you’re a target,” he said.

Read the entire article here: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20080531_6948.php

And they also stole information from our hapless Commerce Secretary:

WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers……
Surreptitious copying is believed to have occurred when a laptop was left unattended during Gutierrez’s trip to Beijing for trade talks in December, people familiar with the incident told the AP. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080529/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/china_hacking;_ylt=Ak8kZa4faFUxq__tTXNZTUCs0NUE

Ok, how stupid do you have to be to leave a government computer unsecure during a trip to a hostile country?

The advent of the computer age brought new threats. Everything the government and industry transacts online is vulnerable. We rely on internet technology for everything from news to banking to military communications.
When it’s hacked or shut down by hostile agents like those in the Chinese government, we not only need to step up security measures, but do substantial counter-cyber attacks of our own.

Food for thougt: Cyber wars, if threatening or devastating enough to our infrastrustures, may lead to a real shooting war.

Defense Department Analyst, Former Boeing Employee, 2 Chinese Arrested in Spy Cases

WASHINGTON — A Defense Department analyst and a former engineer for Boeing Co. were accused Monday in separate spy cases with helping deliver military secrets to the Chinese government, the Justice Department said.
Additionally, two immigrants from China and Taiwan accused of working with the defense analyst were arrested after an FBI raid Monday morning on a New Orleans home where one of them lived.The two cases — based in Alexandria, Va., and Los Angeles — have no connection, and investigators said it was merely a coincidence that charges would be brought against both on the same day.

Wanna bet the Chinese government knew the connection?

The arrests mark China’s latest attempts to gain top secret information about U.S. military systems and sales, said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein. He described China as “particularly adept, and particularly determined and methodical in their espionage efforts.”

“The threat is very simple,” Wainstein said at a Justice Department news conference in Washington. “It’s a threat to our national security and to our economic position in the world, a threat that is posed by the relentless efforts of foreign intelligence services to penetrate our security systems and steal our most sensitive military technology and information.”

……In the first case, prosecutors said weapons systems policy analyst Gregg W. Bergersen, 51, of Alexandria, Va., sold classified defense information to a New Orleans furniture salesman. In return, the salesman, a Taiwan native identified as Tai Kuo, a 58-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, forwarded the information to the Chinese government.
The data outlined every planned U.S. sale of weapons or other military technology to Taiwan for the next five years, prosecutors said.

It’s not clear how much money Bergersen received for the classified information, or if he was even aware it was intended for the Chinese government. Court documents portray him as nervous during at least one meeting when he handed over a diskette of documents to be recorded, asking Kuo to keep their deal a secret.
“I’d go to jail, I don’t wanna go to jail,” Bergersen said in a conversation taped by the FBI.
“I’d probably go to jail too,” Kuo responded. Prosecutors described him as chuckling.

Funny, jail was never a concern during the Clinton-Gore tryst with the Chinese. You gotta love how the ChiCom plant their spies in innocuous jobs like “furniture sales” to avoid suspicion.

A third alleged conspirator in the case, Chinese national Yu Xin Kang, 33, served as the go-between for Kuo and the People’s Republic of China, prosecutors say. Kuo and Bergersen, who worked at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in Arlington, Va., made an initial appearance before Magistrate Judge John Anderson at the federal courthouse in Alexandria. Bergersen was charged with conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Bergersen, who was arrested at his home early Monday, wore a long black T-shirt and blue shorts. His wife, who identified herself only as Ofelia, told reporters Bergersen was innocent and the charges “came out of the blue.”

Tai Kuo was charged with conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government. He faces life in prison if convicted. Kang, 33, who faces the same charges as Kuo, appeared briefly in federal court in New Orleans. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Louis Moore Jr. postponed the hearing until an interpreter could be brought in when it appeared Kang, who cried throughout, did not understand the charges being read.

Kang served as a courier for Bejiing but he ‘didn’t understand the charges’. He probably had no problem with English until he was caught, then all of a sudden it’s “Solly, no speak Engrish”.

In the second, unrelated case, former Boeing engineer Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 72, was charged with working as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government who stole trade secrets from the defense contractor. The stolen data largely focused on aerospace programs, including the Space Shuttle, prosecutors said.

Chung, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was indicted last week on espionage, conspiracy and obstructing justices charges that were unsealed Monday. He appeared briefly in court in Santa Ana, Calif., and posted $250,000 property bond.
He has been the subject of an FBI investigation for nearly a year as part of an inquiry into another Chinese-born engineer who was convicted in 2007 of stealing military data for the Chinese government.

As early as 1979, prosecutors said, Chinese officials were tasking Chung to collect data on U.S. aviation, including the Space Shuttle and various military and civilian aircraft. At one point, Chung responded in a letter that he wanted to “contribute to the motherland,” according to the Justice Department.

Over an 18-year span, Chung traveled to China many times to deliver lectures on the Space Shuttle and other programs, and he allegedly met with Chinese government officials there to discuss how to transfer U.S. data.

Chung, who has a security clearance, worked for contractor Rockwell International from 1973 until 1996, when Boeing acquired Rockwell’s defense and space firm. He retired from Boeing in 2002 but returned the next year as a contractor. He ultimately left Boeing in 2006.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330320,00.html

Jayzzustapdancingchrist. You gotta wonder about the way these defense contractors conduct background investigations, especially on foreigners.

Big trouble in ‘little’ China

Thousands in Hong Kong held a protest march on Sunday calling for direct elections in 2012, in a public rebuke against Beijing’s decision not to permit universal suffrage that year, but allow it in 2017 instead.The peaceful protest march, which police said drew over 6,000 people, was the largest public demonstration in Hong Kong since a landmark ruling by China’s parliament on December 29, which barred direct elections in 2012, but left open the possibility of picking the city’s leader by universal suffrage in 2017.Organizers said 22,000 people attended the rally.

“We want universal suffrage in 2012. Return our right for universal suffrage,” the crowds chanted into loudhailers.

Wearing black and white clothes, the protesters, led by Hong Kong’s elderly Catholic leader Cardinal Joseph Zen, marched several kilometers through Hong Kong’s streets and waved banners with such slogans as: “Democracy delayed is democracy denied”.

“Hong Kong’s democratic development has been too slow, we want it to be faster,” said protester Irene Wong, who works in the financial sector and marched with several friends.

But before the protest, Hong Kong’s leader Donald Tsang urged the public not to focus on what wasn’t possible, and accept Beijing’s timetable for delayed democracy in 2017, saying it still represented a “historic opportunity”.

“Now that a timetable has been set, I hope everyone will be able to focus on what is possible, rather than what is not,” he said in a morning radio program.

“It’s crunch time for everyone involved in our political development. It’s never been a question of whether, it’s no longer a question of when — it’s now a question of ‘how’.

While few of the protesters explicitly criticized Beijing, the city’s pro-democracy camp dismissed what it called the promise of “fake democracy” in 2017.

“In politics, nothing is impossible. Donald Tsang said don’t fight for the impossible, but we believe we should fight for what’s right and good for Hong Kong,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan during the march.

A recent public opinion poll by the Chinese University showed more than 70 percent of people found Beijing’s timetable of 2017 acceptable, yet over a third of respondents backed attempts by pro-democracy groups to fight for full democracy in 2012.

Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, promises universal suffrage as the “ultimate aim” but is vague on a date, giving Beijing scope to dictate a glacial pace of progress.

The chief executive is currently picked by an 800-seat election committee stacked in Beijing’s favor, and only half of the city’s 60-member legislature are directly elected with the others picked by various business and interest groups.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSHKG32702820080113?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

This is what greeted the people of Hong Kong when the British gave the territory back to China in 1997:

4000 PLA troops entered the city ten minutes after the British Governor skipped merrily on his way to the airplane to go home.

Hong Kong isn’t used to being under such imposed restrictions. The showcase of “new Chinese democracy” was inherited, and say what you will about British Colonization, it was a hell of a lot better than Chi-com oppression of civil rights.
How Bejiing reacts to the continued rebellion by Hong Kong citizens, remains to be seen. The mainland isn’t too pleased with the upstarts flexing their free-speech muscles, but knows that any overt crackdown will bring condemnation.

The next decade will be real interesting.