The intellectual property agreement the U.S. and China signed last year has seemingly not been honored, as sensitive and valuable information has been targeted and obtained by hackers allegedly employed by the Chinese government.
In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin explained the threat. “Our economy depends on the ability to innovate and if there’s a dedicated nation state who’s using its intelligence apparatus to steal,” Carlin said. “This is a serious threat to our national security.”
Described as a national security emergency that people can’t see, cyber terrorism and cyber crime can be catastrophic because of the far-reaching nature of the Internet, as well as the insufficient amount of defense systems and protocol.
It’s a lucrative business: A Chinese credit card fraud scheme in 2014 “made headlines…when an individual from Hangzhou was tried in the United States (US) for a successful spam run that cost card providers roughly RMB 5,130,000 (~US $808,855).”
The Chinese government did arrest a handful of hackers at the end of 2015, according to The Washington Post, just before President Xi Jinping visited the U.S. to discuss cyber security and intellectual property.
Such agreements may be virtually impossible to fulfill, because the evidence of who the hackers are loyal to may never be provable.
China has been formulating laws that force personal data, as well as “important business data,” to be made available to the government, according to CNBC. The draft of the bill requires network operators to abide by the social morals of the country and accept the “supervision of the government and public.” Earlier this year, for example, Chinese authorities said they would require people to register domain names with local service providers and the government.
Chinese regulators also warned the media to not use news found on social media without first requesting permission from the government.
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