CCP Actions In The US And Around The World
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, was charged on Tuesday with acting on behalf of the Chinese regime and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), federal prosecutors said.
Sun, 41, and her husband, Chris Hu, 40, were arrested on Tuesday morning at their home on Long Island.
In July, the FBI searched the address but didn’t release details.
Sun was also charged with visa fraud, alien smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, while Hu was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, bank fraud, and misuse of means of identification.
The couple is scheduled to appear before United States Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo later on Tuesday, the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.
www.theepochtimes.com
Sun, 41, and her husband, Chris Hu, 40, were arrested on Tuesday morning at their home on Long Island.
In July, the FBI searched the address but didn’t release details.
Sun was also charged with visa fraud, alien smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, while Hu was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, bank fraud, and misuse of means of identification.
The couple is scheduled to appear before United States Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo later on Tuesday, the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.
Former Top Aide of Hochul Charged With Spying for Beijing
Linda Sun, who worked for Hochul and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was accused of being an undeclared agent for the Chinese regime while working for the politicians.
Massive Chinese Cyberattack Is a Disaster of Unimaginable Proportions
Using a security loophole that allows the US government access to anybody's electronic traffic, Chinese hackers gained access to an unknown quantity (perhaps all) of internet traffic on American networks. In an exclusive report in Saturday's Wall Street Journal the secret breach was revealed.
The attack SOUNDS like the hackers could potentially have access to everything that crosses certain networks by using backdoor access that the US government mandates to permit wiretapping when authorized by a warrant. In other words, there is a built-in insecurity to the networking systems in order to allow government officials to tap your data. The Chinese got access to the backdoor.
The wording here is a little vague, and I think intentionally so, about whether the Chinese had access ONLY to data that the US government was wiretapping. That seems impossible, given that the access to wiretapping abilities is not limited to splicing wires or something like that. It is a function of software, and that software was hacked. In this case the Chinese could access whatever they chose. No doubt that didn't include everything, since there would be no way to store and make sense of it all, but as with our own government they could target whomever they wanted using the security hole built into the system.
CCP Is Impersonating Americans to Influence 2024 Elections
Harlan Report appeared to be a startup news program like many others. Its bio on TikTok promised to make American media great again.
The owner of the Harlan Report account originally claimed to be a U.S. military veteran who had lost faith in Biden. Soon after, they claimed to be a 29-year-old Trump supporter in New York. Months later, they claimed to be a 31-year-old Republican social media influencer from Florida.
Then, the account’s handle was later changed to “Harlan_RNC,” insinuating an official link to the Republican Party.
But Harlan was neither a legitimate news source nor run by an American citizen.
According to the findings of a report released last month by Graphika, a social network analysis company, Harlan Report was one of thousands of accounts linked to the world’s largest online influence operation.
That operation, dubbed “Spamouflage,” is a state-backed campaign from communist China with links to Chinese law enforcement.
Unlike the Harlan Report, most of Spamouflage’s efforts are not focused on targeting American conservatives but on amplifying existing criticisms toward American society and government at large.
There are other accounts that create similar content, but tailored for Democrats, and others that aim to anger and polarize independents, further disenfranchising them from the political process altogether.
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Foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections are nothing new, but their increasing stridency and varying levels of success are.
China, Iran, and Russia are all currently engaged in influence operations aiming to interfere in the 2024 elections, according to a report published in August by cybersecurity company Recorded Future.
That report found that Chinese state-backed actors are “amplifying content highlighting polarizing domestic issues”—including issues related to Black Lives Matter, school campus protests, and U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Ukraine—to sow discord between Americans.
Moreover, Iranian-backed actors have targeted Trump’s reelection campaign, attempting to gain access to its inner circle.
Russian-backed influence operations, meanwhile, have attempted to discredit the Democratic presidential ticket by spreading fabricated stories and images about Vice President Kamala Harris.
The report found that Chinese influence operations, including Spamouflage, have historically failed to generate traction among American audiences but are now seeing sporadic breakthrough success with viral content.
Those breakthroughs, in large part, are due to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfakes, which the operators behind Spamouflage use to play on the likes and dislikes of a target audience.
John Mills, who previously served as the director of cybersecurity policy at the U.S. Defense Department, told The Epoch Times that the CCP is using AI to sort and interpret user data to better exploit users’ fears and desires.
“People don’t understand the immense power of big data, big data analytics, and the AI component that China has mastered and is using on an unbelievable scale,” Mills said.
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Those operations could then attempt to trigger mass distrust or hysteria over real or faked events, which Mills referred to as “tailored mass psychosis.”
“This is psychological operations 101: knowing your target audience, knowing their trigger points, and that’s what they’re doing with Spamouflage on a breathtaking, unbelievable scale and creating these fake accounts,” Mills said
Last year, Meta, which first characterized Spamouflage as the world’s largest online influence operation, said China created 4,800 fake social media accounts posing as Americans.
In most of those cases, the accounts did not start by spreading fake content. Instead, they reshared posts created by real politicians and news outlets from both liberal and conservative sources to build followings and amplify divisive content.
As those followings grew, the profiles changed, both in who they claimed to be and in the type of content they delivered.
Mills said the technique used to identify and exploit Americans was essentially a new iteration of the same type of profiling that big tech corporations have used for years to track consumer preferences.
“When I’m looking for a trailer hitch [online], that commercial for a trailer hitch follows me wherever I go,” he said.
“Now, China has taken what our big tech was doing, but they’re doing it on a much grander scale, with a much more sinister agenda, and without any semblance of bumper cushions or guardrails.”
[ long comprehensive article at link ]
China like Russia before it aims to sow dissension
Iran and Now China Hacked The Trump Campaign; I Wonder Why They Support Harris...
It was just a few weeks ago that we learned that Iran hacked the Trump campaign and leaked (rather anodyne) documents to the world's media.
More recently, we learned that China hacked our telecoms and got access to phone and internet taps that were created by our intelligence "community," and while the information put out suggested that the information they got was only from accounts that the federal government was watching, I had my doubts about that.
Now we learn that China has been going after (getting?) data from President Trump's and J.D. Vance's phones.