ENEMY OF THE STATE PART FOUR: THE HACKING SIDE OF THINGS

What role does hacking play in the national security and Snowden ordeal? What does hacking look like from an international and domestic standpoint? What justifies - or does not justify - hacking? First, take a look at how the United States is attempting to condemn other hackers, while the only hackers currently in sight are in the United States. The espionage spotlight has recently shifted from Edward Snowden to the Chinese hackers recently charged for "cyber espionage" as the FBI documentation states – and that is also how the journalists frame it. Is the acts of espionage committed by these Chinese men, however, what this is really about? In the FBI documentation of the Chinese hackers' crimes, it alleges that Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, and Gu Chunhui – the five members of the Chinese military accused of these crimes – not only engaged in computer hacking, but also in a sort of economic espionage by stealing U.S. trade secrets in order to benefit Chinese corporations. Also within these documents is a chart indicating the charges against the five Chinese hackers and the sections of the U.S. Code that correspond to the charges. The prominent statute that acted as grounds for several of the charges was found in section 1030 of the U.S. Code, called "Fraud and related activity in connection with computers". However, also within this section of the U.S. Code is a series of accusations that not only apply to the Chinese hackers but also the recent actions of the United States. For example, “Whoever intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains—information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, or of a card issuer as defined in section 1602(n) [1] of title 15, or contained in a file of a consumer reporting agency on a consumer, as such terms are defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.)… [or] information from any protected computer…” Is that not similar to, if not exactly what the NSA does to American citizens? Furthermore, it seems as though that this is all an attempt to veer the world’s focuses from the United States and their unconstitutional actions of what may essentially be referred to as computer hacking to another country all the way across the globe, despite the fact that the counts against the five Chinese “computer hackers” are not likely to ever be debated in a courtroom and are not even legitimate. One thing that reduces the credibility of these charges is the many suspicious coincidences – that may not actually be coincidences at all – that may be found within the FBI documentation. One thing to note is that the documentation was released by the Pittsburgh division of the FBI. Also, the victims of the Chinese hackers such as Westinghouse were companies that deal with steel as well as energy – particularly, in Westinghouse’s cases, nuclear energy. Though these may seem like small, irrelevant details, they are most definitely not, due to the one thing they have in common: Representative Tim Murphy. What exactly does this member of the House of Representatives have to do with the indictment of these Chinese men? Representative Tim Murphy seems to be in pretty deep with both Westinghouse and several American steel corporations, as he is, for one, the Congressional Steel Caucus Chairman. In fact, he commented on the Chinese hackers’ indictment recently, saying, “This indictment proves we’re losing manufacturing jobs not because the US stopped making great products, but because the Chinese government is stealing ideas, inventions, and intellectual property straight out of Western Pennsylvania,” said Rep. Murphy. “The Chinese government hacked into our computers, stolen business blueprints, erected trade barriers, and manipulated currency markets all to give state-owned enterprises an unfair and illegal advantage against American competitors.” He expresses clear allegiance with the American steel companies while denouncing the Chinese hackers. Also, Representative Murphy has strong ties to Westinghouse, as he recently backed the global company’s loans. In addition, Representative Murphy represents the 18th district of Pennsylvania in the House, the very state from which the FBI indicted the five Chinese men. There is too great a number of connections between Representative Murphy and this indictment to be considered mere coincidences. In conclusion, something just does not add up in regard to these charges against the five Chinese men. There is much more to this story than there seems to be, and it may very well be a cover up to shine the spotlight of unauthorized surveillance and hacking on anyone aside from the NSA. What do the u.S.'s most prized publications have to say about hacking, and the justification thereof? John Stuart Mill’s publication On Liberty which is held by many Americans in the highest of regards contains an entire chapter that may be applied to the NSA’s methods of surveillance that have recently emerged at the forefront of American controversy – chapter four, entitled “Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual”. Within this chapter one may find text that supports the claims of the opponents of the NSA, such as Glenn Greenwald. One such excerpt that Greenwald and those with similar views to him could use to support their arguments is when Mill says, “What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly inseparable from the unfavorable judgment of others, are the only ones to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of his conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does not affect the interests of others in their relations with him.” Essentially, what Mill means in that passage from On Liberty is that only the person in question engaging in activities that are harmful to society should be held accountable, and that anyone connected to the person in question should not be dragged into the person in question’s accountability. This can be applied to the situation with NSA surveillance in that this statement would serve to condemn the NSA’s mass surveillance and method of monitoring suspicious persons in that the NSA – after detecting suspicious activity coming from a single person – not only begins to investigate the person of interest but also proceeds to connect the dots between the person of interest and all people in relation therewith. This, according to the aforementioned claim of Mill, is where the NSA is crossing the line, for it is only justifiable to monitor the actions of the person of interest and rather unjust to drag others into it. This excerpt from On Liberty serves to give one possible answer to the ever important question: What are, or what should be, the limits of the NSA? John Stuart Mill’s publication On Liberty not only contains what may be described as Greenwald’s sentence, but also former head of the NSA General Michael Hayden’s sentence. Mill follows Greenwald’s sentence directly with Hayden’s, as he says, “Acts injurious to others require a totally different treatment.” Mill elaborates upon that statement by defining the injurious acts in saying, “Encroachment on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage not justified by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in dealing with them; unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even selfish abstinence from defending them against injury — these are fit objects of moral reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment. And not only these acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are properly immoral, and fit subjects of disapprobation which may rise to abhorrence.” What Mill means this time is that though, as Greenwald believes, only the persons of interest require special attention and that no one in relation to them should be similarly monitored, when the actions of the person of interest include harming other people, that opens the door to more desperate measures. He also provides a definition of what exactly these “acts injurious to others” entails. Thus, it seems as though Mill’s On Liberty serves neither to favor people like General Hayden who support the NSA or people like Glenn Greenwald who rather oppose the NSA. This is the case because when Mill states support for Greenwald in condemning the methods of connecting the dots that the NSA carry out when investigating persons of interest, he immediately follows it with what the exception to this is, and the exception is when people are engaging in acts that are detrimental to society. Thus, Mill does not support either extreme – no method of surveillance for the sake of national security nor the indiscriminant metadata method of surveillance – but rather a happy medium. Mill calls for neither an indiscriminant nor nonexistent NSA, but instead for an ideal NSA that does not collect all but only makes exceptions and connects dots between people when a real threat to the American public is present. In conclusion, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty only goes to show that neither extreme is justifiable, and that a compromise must be reached in order to uphold both the rights of citizens and national security.