If You're a Foreigner Using GPS In China, You Could Be a Spy 219
Posted
by
timothy
from the just-want-to-know-where-I-am dept.
from the just-want-to-know-where-I-am dept.
tedlistens writes "China has accused Coca Cola of espionage for its 'illegal mapping,' allegedly with the use of GPS 'devices with ultra high sensitivity.' On its face the case looks like yet another example of China's aggressive sensitivity about its maps, no doubt heightened by its ongoing fracas with the U.S. over cyberwar. Li Pengde, deputy director of the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, said during a radio interview on Tuesday that the Coca Cola case was only one of 21 similar cases involving companies using GPS devices in Yunnan to 'illegally obtain classified information.' According to Chinese authorities, geographical data can be used by guided missiles to strike key military facilities — a concern that one GPS expert says is overblown at a time when the U.S. government already has high-precision satellite maps of China. Nevertheless, Chinese law dictates that foreigners, be they companies or individuals, are prohibited from using highly-sensitive GPS equipment in China."
Re:The US is headed the same way, not as far along (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a time when the US stood for individual freedom...
When?
Re:Fuck USA (Score:3, Insightful)
so the "fuck China" gets a 3 and "fuck USA" gets a -1? ./ for it turns it is just another China bashing web site.
Cybercrime: Styxnet most likely created by USA and Israel
civic unrest: for the last 3 days in Brooklyn blacks are rioting because yet another 16 black kid was shot to death by the Police
Human rights violations: Guantanamo.
Fuck
Citation needed (Score:4, Insightful)
*Yawn* (Score:2, Insightful)
Legitimate complaint? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh.
Actually seems like it could be a semi-legitimate complaint to me. Realistically what applications are there for a high-precision GPS outside of geological/territorial surveys and military intelligence? Sure we've got the satellite maps, but one of the nice things about those maps is the ability for someone with a GPS on the ground to make "X is here" annotations for important locations. For military purposes the ability to know within a few feet/yards where a strategic "soft spot" is could prove very valuable in terms of, say, disrupting infrastructure with a minimum of the sort of civilian collateral damage which could be used to sway international opinion against you.
Re:Legitimate complaint? (Score:5, Insightful)
Realistically what applications are there for a high-precision GPS outside of geological/territorial surveys and military intelligence?
Ooh, ooh, teacher, teacher! I know this one! It's knowing which freaking road you're on when there are several close together.
Seriously, what kind of question is that?
Re:The US is headed the same way, not as far along (Score:5, Insightful)
Before 1913.
In 1913 we had a president who openly advocated white supremacist policies [wikipedia.org] and praised the KKK. Women were denied not only the vote, but many inheritance rights, right to serve on juries, and were openly discriminated against in education, financial services, and employment. The police regularly colluded in violently suppressing organized labor.
If you were a rich white guy, 1913 may have been the golden age. For everyone else, it wasn't so good.
Re:Legitimate complaint? (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that satellites can't do that? This is just about appearances, nothing more, or they just wanted access to those phones for industrial espionage reasons.
This is about as legitimate as banning hunting rifles because they could shoot down military planes. I'm sure it's technically possible to get lucky, but it's rather unlikely that somebody is going to be able to hit something going that fast that far up on purpose.
Re:Fuck USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at how Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, and other critics of the US live and prosper in the US. Now, look at how their Chinese equivalents are dead, rotting away in jail, under house arrest, or in exile.
That's all you need know to understand that the statements "Fuck China" and "Fuck USA" are weighed differently.
Re:Get out (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post strikes me as strange and inconsistent.
If, as a Canadian who has been hassled for taking photos of US buildings, your response is to be reflective of the silliness of these laws which govern photo taking in the US, the so too should you be reflective of the silliness of these laws which govern GPS usage in China. It would make more sense for you to have a heightened awareness for such shenanigans due to your previous experience and to be doubly outraged, rather than excusing one while pointing out the other.
You say that "If you don't like China and its laws don't go there" yet you don't seem to apply the same kind of hand-waving to your experience in the US.
Re:Fuck USA (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at how Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, and other critics of the US are marginalised into complete irrelevancy by the corporate-controlled mass media...
TFTFY.
Re:I am an American (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for posting through slashdot. We will now trace and destroy you.
Unfortunately, this is no longer funny. Thanks to such freedom-loving devices as the Patriot Act and that lovely little thing known as FISA, "interested" organizations can march up to Slashdot, demand all sorts of records under total secrecy (at least until yesterday's court ruling), use them as a basis for back-tracking, and apply pressure to foreign entities that would allow them to repeat the process all the way down to drawing cross-hairs on a drone-strike map.
Don't forget that post-9/11, your American citizenship effectively ends when you leave the boundaries of the USA. And, for the most part enter a US airport. You can also effectively lose your citizenship if someone chooses to label you an "enemy combatant". We no longer cling to the 200-year old archaisms that Once an American, Always an American, Innocent Until Proven Guilty, or other such quaint and silly "self evident truths". We may have been able to hold onto them while the Godless Communists of the Evil Empire were howling at the door, but mention the word "terrorist" and we soil our underwear.
We are not yet at the point where it is unsafe even to mention such things, or I wouldn't. But we're close enough that it's possible to receive a visit from certain people who might strongly advise keeping silent - and to more than advise keeping silent about the visit itself.
The true enemies of freedom and democracy are not the foreigners without, it's the Guardians within, The people who feel it necessary to destroy freedom in the name of saving freedom. The so-called Liberal "nanny state" might want to take away your Big Gulps, but the nanny state that you should really worry about is the one with the flags and the eagles. And offshore prisons.