Invisible arms race: The internet balance of power - by Clifford Coonan

For the complete report from the Independent click on this link

The internet balance of power - by Clifford Coonan

Claims that China has been hacking into the West's military computers have led to concern that future global conflicts may be fought in cyberspace.

Somewhere here in Guangzhou, the balmy capital of the booming southern province of Guangdong, a shadowy group of computer scientists is said to be hard at work under the supervision of the People's Liberation Army, waging cyber warfare on Western military and industrial targets. Their fellow scientists in the dusty city of Lanzhou in northwestern China, not far from where the Chinese space mission is based, are also reportedly hacking into government files in Whitehall and the Pentagon.The secret agents and operatives are bleary-eyed computer whizzkids, cranked on cigarettes and coffee as they snoop through computer networks at Western military bases, armaments companies and aerospace giants. They hang out in online chatrooms rather than barrack rooms or smoky bars in communist enclaves, but they are just as hard to track as their Cold War counterparts.

Note EU-Digest:Spying through the Internet is not only limited to Chinese activities. The US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand are also collaborating in these activities through ECHELON, a term associated with a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for pre-programmed keywords or fax, telex and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the frequencies and channels selected at a station is automatically searched. Reportedly Echelon is monitoring up to two million communications every hour of every day. To view the CRS report to the US Congress - P.L. 110-55, the Protect America Act of 2007: "Modifications to the Foreign Intelligence, Surveillance Act", click on this link