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Western officials say Chinese agents contact foreign citizens using LinkedIn
- ga-vu 7y agoCongratulations to the New York Times newsroom for finally reaching 2007!!! Drinks are on me
- crb002 7y agoAnd the US uses DICE owned ClearanceJobs.com. So?
- rdtsc 7y agoOr they could recruit directly from the OPM database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management.... Even more interesting is that a Chinese company owns most of Grindr. Think of all the possible blackmail opportunities if they could cross reference those. At some point there were security and privacy "concerns" and US, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investmen... ruled that the Chinese company had to sell Grindr by 2020.
- thrwayxyz 7y agoBeing gay in the US is about as blackmail worthy as being left handed.
- cm2187 7y agoThough Grindr is also a treasure trove of dick pics!
- thaumasiotes 7y agoBlackmail isn't just about embarrassment in public. It's more commonly about embarrassment in front of someone in particular.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoNot if you have 4 kids, are an "upstanding community member" etc etc etc. Not all outings are the same....
- nxc18 7y agoNot the best journalism, but a good overview: http://www.newnownext.com/19-republican-politicians-gay-sex/12/2016/ http://www.newnownext.com/19-republican-politicians-gay-sex/... Seems like a big scandal happens every few years. This is career-ruining if you’ve built your career on hypocrisy and self-hate, as at least a handful of politicians have.
- pawelmurias 7y agoIf Trump was caught paying of Ron Jeremy instead of Stormy Daniels wouldn't he loose more popularity?
- kache_ 7y agoThere is a large amount of stigma associated with homosexuality. You are incorrectly assuming that the rest of the population has the same world view as you do. For example, being outwardly homosexual is a great way to lose the muslim vote - a sizeable portion of the Canadian population.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago> For example, being outwardly homosexual is a great way to lose the muslim vote - a sizeable portion of the Canadian population. That's amazing. We should keep importing more of these wonderful folks. (/s obviously)
- microcolonel 7y agoThere are some places in the U.S. where it's still a big deal, parts of Utah come to mind as places where I know people have been mistreated routinely, and in some cases, been in serious danger. And of course there are individuals who would rather not make that preference public because they have business elsewhere. If you had intended to do business in the middle east, it is a real material loss to be outed, or to be selectively/privately outed with just the right people to make your life difficult. Of course, activists tend to choose the most useless and counterproductive ways to promote safety and tolerance for homosexuals, so something tells me things will tend to get worse when they could've gotten better. You could expect things to get worse, especially as the zoomers are exposed to these activists rather than to the truth.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoIs there no stigma around being promiscuous, or taking part in risky sexual practices?
- hobs 7y agoNot if you are a republican congressman whose famously come out as anti-homosexual. https://www.metroweekly.com/2019/04/former-anti-gay-gop-rep-aaron-schock-allegedly-had-his-hand-down-a-mans-pants-at-coachella/ https://www.metroweekly.com/2019/04/former-anti-gay-gop-rep-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal
- davinic 7y agoIt's not just about "being gay". There are also private photos and private chats, as well as full location history.
- rdtsc 7y agoAny information that someone is afraid of becoming exposed about them to someone else - the public, their religious organization, their employer, their family is good for blackmail.
- Kalium 7y agoJust cross-referencing those two datasets will surface blackmail opportunities.
- killjoywashere 7y agoThis article is not a hot news story. It is meant to get the word out to politically connected folks, possibly with emphasis on those on the West Coast, and possibly low-key focused on the relatively large contingent of Democratic policy folks sitting in non-governmental jobs right now (it is the New York Times after all). I suspect the government sources in the article would appreciate it if the politicos above keep themselves relatively clean of unnecessary foreign contacts for the next year as the remaining few folks still in government are probably giving at least 50% odds that the Democrats win again in 2020, and are thus anticipating the possibility of large backlog of background investigations checking in about 1 nano-second after the election.
- mc32 7y agoThere’s a difference between “contacts” and being a witting or unwitting spy. Having foreign contacts, despite current furore, is not a crime, or improper. Now if you’re doing bad things, that’s obviously a crime and will result in disqualification, but simply “contacts”? No, that’s no reason for DQ.
- PaulHoule 7y agoI was using LinkedIn to get leads for a sales campaign years ago and wound up talking to all sorts of people who told us things that they probably shouldn't have. At the time I thought it would be the bee's knees for espionage.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- killjoywashere 7y agoI live overseas, I have tons of foreign contacts. Of course it's not illegal (that would be terrible), but they definitely create more work when it comes to listing them on SF86 background checks.
- yorwba 7y agoRelated discussion 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547
- palisade 7y agoI figured they already knew since they're watching all social media and communications anyways. In addition, foreign adversaries also hide messages in seemingly random but innocuous comments on forums and blogs made to look like real user communication but makes no sense to anyone but their intended target.
- PakG1 7y agoRecalling memories of how Ethan Hunt first communicated with Max in the first Mission Impossible movie.
- fleg 7y ago> In addition, foreign adversaries also hide messages in seemingly random but innocuous comments on forums and blogs made to look like real user communication but makes no sense to anyone but their intended target. Sounds like the digital version of Number Stations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
- imglorp 7y agoI've been contacted once. We had an intrusion on some dev boxes. The vector was an open management service on some public facing Tomcats, deployed open by accident. The intruder installed a custom Tomcat container that apparently sent some 443 traffic to a .cn domain. We figured they got some class files, not much use to anyone without the rest of our products. We never got to see their actual payload. So we killed the instances and that was that. A week or two later, a few of us at $work got recruit pings on LI from a Chinese company to work abroad. None before or since. We figured either it was a coincidence, or whoever got our class files wanted some help learning how our product worked.
- tenebrisalietum 7y agoThe red duck quacks at midnight.
- Gusmann 7y agoQuiet hypocritical considering all social media is banned in China for usual citizens
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoThe original paper previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547
- novaRom 7y agoIt's naive thinking that organizations like CIA and their analogies in other countries do not track as much people as possible. And there are not so many, right? Population of the Earth is close to 8 billion, so at least a detailed global social connections graph is what they already have.
- microcolonel 7y agoYeah, be careful with these people. I'm a virtual nobody and I've had some very weird experiences with Chinese state actors.
- whitepoplar 7y agoCare to share your experiences? I'm interested!
- microcolonel 7y agoThe one that particularly stuck with me is phonecalls from embassy numbers to people I know in Canada, claiming that I'm trying to enter China and that they would need to confirm details for me to gain entry. AFAIK this is an actual thing that they do for some entrants. Since most people don't record phonecalls, it's easy to deny this sort of thing; and since it's similar to an official activity of the government there, I suspect for a lot of people it goes unnoticed, if it is more common. I've never visited the PRC, and I have no intention of ever visiting it as long as it is run by the party. Chinese students here are under watch as well, and it's not all that subtle. You should read some of the things that go on in North American schools.
- echevil 7y agoSounds like a fishing scam
- nomnomray 7y agoIt's a simple scam. There is one about DHL as well you don't have to read so much into every little thing.
- microcolonel 7y agoI've received the "DHL" one before, where they read you off a tracking code in Mandarin hoping you'll call back and tell them you don't speak it, this is not that. You can think what you want, but this is not that.
- geodel 7y agoChinese should be aware of self styled thought leaders and experts pop-up based on current demand on linkedin. I am sure someone would be updating CVs claiming a 10 years of deep experience in suppressing protests worldwide.
- vectorEQ 7y agoim 100% sure western agents don't contact chinese citizens on chinese social networks. that would NEVER happen. no way.
- randogogogo 7y agoThis didn't really strike me as a very profound story. I'm sure in a bygone era newspaper classifieds would have been used instead.
- sailfast 7y agoMaybe, but when people working in sensitive positions post their entire history, clearances, and build their own network and all you need to do is pay a nominal fee to become a LinkedIn "Pro" to get access, it makes fishing for the right targets quite a bit easier than classifieds. Recruiting agents abroad is one thing - I'd think this would also be useful / more useful for social engineering attacks and other deeper attacks on sensitive networks. "Hey I was with you at university - want to grab coffee? Friend me!" > Now has access to the entire network of cleared professionals working at [place X]
- jessaustin 7y agoA) Obviously. B) It might be better spycraft to use this obvious entry to Chinese intelligence in the other direction. Of course TFA may just be cover for that... are there any details that seem plausible but perhaps misleading? C) These people ain't playin'. No one wants to end up like Shane Todd.