Quote: Chinese companies are doing something rarely seen since the 1970s: setting up their own volunteer armies. At least 16 major Chinese firms, including a privately-owned dairy giant, have established fighting forces over the past year, according to a CNN analysis of state media reports.
 
These units, known as the People’s Armed Forces Departments, are composed of civilians who retain their regular jobs.

Quote: 
The establishment of corporate brigades highlights Beijing’s growing concerns about potential conflict abroad as well as social unrest at home as the economy stumbles, analysts say.
 
The revival is also seen as a response to the pandemic, and part of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s efforts to tighten Communist Party control over society, including the corporate sector.
 
“The return of corporate militias reflects Xi’s rising focus on the need to better integrate economic development with national security as the country faces a more difficult future of slower growth and rising geopolitical competition,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
 
“Corporate militias under military leadership could help the Communist Party more effectively quell incidents of social unrest such as consumer protests and employee strikes,” he said.

Quote: By enrolling a large number of civilians into the brigades, Mao Zedong, China’s revolutionary leader, said he was enhancing the country’s defense against the threat of “imperial forces” such as the United States. But historians said Mao used the forces to promote his personal agenda and consolidate his power.
 
He embedded the brigades into the People’s Communes, huge collectives formalized in 1958 that managed almost all economic and political activities in rural China. The communes were a central part of Mao’s Great Leap Forward campaign, a disastrous effort to galvanize agriculture and raise steel production through collectivization that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.
 
Mao also expanded the militia system to suppress and intimidate people who opposed his radical policies, while developing a cult of personality within and outside the party.

Quote:  Chinese police are investigating an unauthorized and highly unusual online dump of documents from a private security contractor linked to the nation's top policing agency and other parts of its government — a trove that catalogs apparent hacking activity and tools to spy on both Chinese and foreigners.
 
Among the apparent targets of tools provided by the impacted company, I-Soon: ethnicities and dissidents in parts of China that have seen significant anti-government protests, such as Hong Kong or the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang in China’s far west.

The dump of scores of documents late last week and subsequent investigation were confirmed by two employees of I-Soon, known as Anxun in Mandarin, which has ties to the powerful Ministry of Public Security. The dump, which analysts consider highly significant even if it does not reveal any especially novel or potent tools, includes hundreds of pages of contracts, marketing presentations, product manuals, and client and employee lists.

Quote: The hacking tools are used by Chinese state agents to unmask users of social media platforms outside China such as X, formerly known as Twitter, break into email and hide the online activity of overseas agents. Also described are devices disguised as power strips and batteries that can be used to compromise Wi-Fi networks.

Quote: He said organizations targeted by I-Soon — according to the leaked material — include governments, telecommunications firms abroad and online gambling companies within China.
Until the 190-megabyte leak, I-Soon’s website included a page listing clients topped by the Ministry of Public Security and including 11 provincial-level security bureaus and some 40 municipal public security departments.

Quote:  Internal documents in the leak describe I-Soon databases of hacked data collected from foreign networks around the world that are advertised and sold to Chinese police.

Quote: I-Soon’s tools appear to be used by Chinese police to curb dissent on overseas social media and flood them with pro-Beijing content. Authorities can surveil Chinese social media platforms directly and order them to take down anti-government posts. But they lack that ability on overseas sites like Facebook or X, where millions of Chinese users flock to in order to evade state surveillance and censorship.

Quote: 
One leaked draft contract shows I-Soon was marketing “anti-terror” technical support to Xinjiang police to track the region’s native Uyghurs in Central and Southeast Asia, claiming it had access to hacked airline, cellular and government data from countries like Mongolia, Malaysia, Afghanistan and Thailand. It is unclear whether the contact was signed.
 
“We see a lot of targeting of organizations that are related to ethnic minorities — Tibetans, Uyghurs. A lot of the targeting of foreign entities can be seen through the lens of domestic security priorities for the government,” said Dakota Cary, a China analyst with the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne.
 
He said the documents appear legitimate because they align with what would be expected from a contractor hacking on behalf of China’s security apparatus with domestic political priorities.

Quote: Cary found a spreadsheet with a list of data repositories collected from victims and counted 14 governments as targets, including India, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Quote: Cary was also struck by the targeting of Taiwan’s Health Ministry to determine its COVID-19 caseload in early 2021 – and impressed by the low cost of some of the hacks. The documents show that I-Soon charged $55,000 to hack Vietnam’s economy ministry, he said.

Quote: Although a few chat records refer to NATO, there is no indication of a successful hack of any NATO country, an initial review of the data by The Associated Press found. That doesn’t mean state-backed Chinese hackers are not trying to hack the U.S. and it’s allies, though. If the leaker is inside China, which seems likely, Cary said that “leaking information about hacking NATO would be really, really inflammatory" — a risk apt to make Chinese authorities more determined to identify the hacker.

Quote: Mathieu Tartare, a malware researcher at the cybersecurity firm ESET, says it has linked I-Soon to a Chinese state hacking group it calls Fishmonger that it actively tracks and which it wrote about in January 2020 after the group hacked Hong Kong universities during student protests. He said it has, since 2022, seen Fishmonger target governments, NGOs and think tanks across Asia, Europe, Central America and the United States.

Quote: On Monday, Mao Ning, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said the U.S. government has long been working to compromise China’s critical infrastructure. She demanded the U.S. “stop using cybersecurity issues to smear other countries.”

(02-21-2024, 01:53 AM)guyfriday Wrote: China's mysterious vanishing MaosーNHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS (youtube.com)

In this video (which is not viewable outside of NHK World) they talk to people about missing Mao Statues, and the answers to get are nonexistent. Now why would this happen? I think this virtual "great Wall is falling down, and China will either be acting out stupidly or shutting itself off from the world once again.

Quote: Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team has been silently editing news headlines in Google search results to make it seem like major news outlets are on her side, according to a report.
 
The altered headlines — all paired with a “Paid for by Harris for President” banner — were changed without the news outlets’ knowledge, Axios reported Tuesday.
 
Nearly a dozen publishers were swept up in the faux headline campaign, including major companies like The Guardian, Reuters, CBS News, The Associated Press and PBS.

Quote:The former high-ranking aide for Gov. Kathy Hochul who was arrested along with her husband Tuesday acted as a foreign agent for China in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks and fancy perks such as salted ducks, according to a bombshell indictment.

Quote:Sun shadily used her position under Hochul and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo – who are unnamed but clearly referenced in the court documents – to turn the governor’s office into a virtual mouthpiece for the People’s Republic of China and Chinese Community Party, the indictment contends.
 
At several points, Sun bragged about effectively blocking Cuomo and Hochul from making statements that arguably recognized Taiwan, including when the disputed island sent 200,000 much-needed masks to New York during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, documents state. 
 
She also blocked representatives from Taiwan’s governor from visiting the New York governor’s office, according to the documents.
 
“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” said US Attorney Breon Peace in a statement. “The illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family to the tune of millions of dollars.”
 
Sun and Hu laundered kickbacks she received from China and the CCP to buy the $4.1 million Long Island home that FBI agents raided in July, the indictment contends.

Quote:Recently, many California residents were disturbed to learn that a small, privately-operated bio lab in the Central Valley town of Reedley was shut down by Fresno County Department of Public Health officials after they found that it had been improperly managing almost 1,000 laboratory mice and samples of infectious diseases including COVID-19, rubella, malaria, dengue, chlamydia, hepatitis, and HIV. The lab was registered to a company called Prestige Biotech that sold a variety of medical testing kits, including for pregnancy and COVID-19, and it was likely storing disease samples for the purpose of developing and validating its testing kits. Government authorities are still investigating the company’s history, but it appears to have previously operated a lab in Fresno under the name Universal MediTech, where city officials flagged it for investigation regarding improperly stored chemicals.

Quote:Association-1 was a nonprofit 501©(3)organization closely associated with the United Front Work Department (“UFWD”) and the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”). The UFWD was a CCP department that attempted to manage relationships with and generate support for the CCP among elite individuals inside and outside the PRC, including by gathering human intelligence. After 2018, the UFWD reported directly to the CCP’s Central Committee, a national party organization that helped drive political decision-making in the PRC. In his role as president of Association-1, CC-1 maintained contact with PRC government officials and frequently traveled to the PRC for UFWD-sponsored events.

Quote: China has stepped up efforts to intimidate and spy on its diaspora, as Beijing’s influence grows outside its borders.
 
For more than six months, The Washington Post has been investigating a global surge in campaigns of cross-border repression. Our latest story examines the violence during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November. It is based on an analysis of more than 2,000 photos and videos; interviews with more than 35 witnesses, U.S. officials and analysts; text messages from American security guards working with Chinese diplomats; messages shared in Chinese diaspora WeChat groups; and medical reports and police reports obtained by The Post.

Quote: 
Here are five key findings:
 
1. While there was aggression from both sides, the most extreme violence was instigated by pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) activists and carried out by coordinated groups of young men embedded among them, verified videos show.
 
2. The Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles paid for supporters’ hotels and meals as an incentive to participate, according to messages shared in WeChat groups reviewed by The Post; and at least 35 pro-CCP Chinese diaspora groups showed up to the APEC summit protests.
 
3. Videos show at least four Chinese diplomats from the consulates in Los Angeles and San Francisco among the crowd of pro-CCP protesters, sometimes directly interacting with aggressive actors over four days of protests from Nov. 14-17.
 
4. Chinese diplomats hired at least 60 private security guards to “protect” Chinese diaspora groups gathered to welcome Xi, according to seven people involved in the arrangement.
 
5. The FBI is investigating the violence at the APEC summit, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
 
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said that members of Chinese communities who traveled to San Francisco to welcome Xi were the ones subject to “multiple incidents of provocations and violence.”

Quote:Fights between journalists and the powerful are so commonplace they’re rarely worth remarking upon — there are always going to be stories officials don’t want us reporting, and we’ll try our best to do them anyway.
 
But it’s worth informing Post readers about what’s happening at the NYPD, which under Commissioner Edward Caban has become hostile to any transparency.
 
First, the police department banished reporters to a trailer outside of NYPD headquarters. Less chance pesky journalists covered anything other than the “official” narrative.
 
All inquiries, they decreed, must come in writing and go to one press office — questions they’ve been regularly ignoring.

Quote:Then, on Thursday, the bureau chiefs of both The Post and The New York Times were banished from the trailer. The sin of our reporter, Tina Moore? She reached out to the Police Benevolent Association about doing a feature related to the upcoming anniversary of 9/11.
 
After The Post complained, Moore was allowed to return, but given a lecture on what she did “wrong” — that is, try to speak to anyone on the force without the NYPD’s permission.
 
That’s a ridiculous rule on its face, but even more so when it comes to the PBA. That’s a union that the NYPD does not control. If the PBA wants to cooperate, it is up to them.
 
Of course, the increasingly authoritarian press office of the NYPD does not see it this way. They do not consider themselves taxpayer-funded servants of the people of Gotham, they are thin-skinned propagandists who spend their days lashing out at reporters on X.