Justin Lalputan, Broadside Correspondent
About two weeks ago, I heard a story about how China attempted to hack Google in order to gain access to the e-mail accounts of human rights activists, and frankly it didn’t surprise me.
I have gotten used to China’s attempts to control what its people can or cannot do on the Internet, from the time the Chinese government blacked out YouTube and then moved on to block Twitter and Facebook.
What did surprise me, however, was that this time around, the United States was actually berating China for its attempted hack in.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has openly attacked China for its alleged censorship, which has evoked a response from China: “Any accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyberattacks, either in an explicit or indirect way, is groundless and aims to discredit China,” said an unnamed ministry spokesman.
My question is, why are we even getting involved in this? With all the crises that are currently going on in the world, the hacking of Google doesn’t seem very important, and yet the United States government seems to think it is.
They’ve even gone as far as to further stress relations with a country that is both very powerful and one that we owe billions of dollars to.
A Chinese state newspaper said that the United States was attempting to impose “information imperialism” on China, and, sadly, I am forced to agree with them. China is a sovereign nation — it can do whatever it wants and the United States has no business telling it what to do.
This is one of the reasons why so many countries all over the world dislike us, because sometimes the United States feels that it has the power and responsibility to meddle in the affairs of other nations.
Not to say that sometimes that isn’t good. When people are being murdered or put in inhumane conditions, I fully support the United States in any endeavor that they undertake to aid them.
What I don’t like is when the United States starts meddling in the affairs of nations like China, whose citizens aren’t being put in inhumane conditions.
If the Chinese government wants to block the Internet in their country, then they fully have the right to do so. It is not the job of the United States to push our values down the throats of other nations.
We don’t even have any proof that the Chinese government was directly involved with the attempted hacking of Google. Google was able to trace the hackers to their location in China, but there is no direct proof that the Chinese government ordered the attempt or was even involved.
Honestly, it is obvious that the Chinese government was behind the attempt, but we have no proof, and proof is exactly what the United States government needs before it starts slinging around accusations.
In fact, China has a few complaints of its own for the United States. Zhou Yonglin, the deputy chief of operations for China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team, said that he logged attacks on 262,000 Chinese computers by Trojans, which can allow a hacker to access the infected computer, and more than 16 percent of these attacks came from computers in the United States.
I simply think that China can do what it wants and the United States shouldn’t involve itself so much in the affairs of a nation that is functioning perfectly fine.
I’m all for free speech and freedom of communication, but if China doesn’t want its citizens to have that, then that’s China’s prerogative.
In this instance, the United States needs to mind its own business and focus on other matters that are more important and are better uses of our time.
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