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5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

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Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#131

Post by thematrixturtle »

philovivero wrote: post #4

Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial, and surely isn't happening. Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking people for political gain only? Then I remember the story of the lady in East Germany who, after it fell, managed to get the Stasi records that finally proved that yes, they had been stalking her, harassing her, and spying on her. They would do things like wait u…

This was an actual documented Stasi tactic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#132

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cwkoss wrote: post #110
ajsharp wrote: post #23

These details are wild, scary, and fascinating. Fascinating from the perspective of how easy it is for foreign governments on the other side of the world to try to scare the shit out of US citizens by hiring some scumbag PI for probably as little as $5k. > Beginning in September 2021, Lin hired a private investigator (the PI) in New York to disrupt the campaign of a Brooklyn resident currently running for U.S. Congre…

We should all reflect on why this story is getting so little coverage in contrast to the 'Russian interference' narrative of 2017.

At least partly because interfering with the election of the US president is quite a bit more significant than interfering with the election of one representative.

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#133

Post by jfoster »

mullen wrote: post #78
jfoster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for that? Sounds too high to be plausible. With a population of around 25 million, that would mean that 1 out of every 500 people would be an informant.

The Chinese "Spies" are not what you think of as Spies. They are Chinese foreign college students in Australia who report back to China if any of their classmates do something that the Chinese government would not approve of. They also steal information when they can and just basically tow the party line while overseas. They all do it because the government is paying for their education and they are proven loyal to C…

OK, but source?

Australian population in 2016 born in China was ~500k. If you assume that the majority of this was happening within that population, if it's 50k "informants", that would mean it's 1 in every 10 people. If you further limited it to students, it would be even more than that.

If this were actually known to be happening at such high frequency, I would expect that Australia would know about it & do something about it.

https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/get...

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#134

Post by alasdair_ »

vmception wrote: post #69
brailsafe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

relevant Onion https://youtu.be/FzoXQKumgCw

tangentially relevant Onion https://www.theonion.com/police-flip-through-unsolved-crimes...

Irrelevant onion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_onion

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#135

Post by actionfromafar »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #115
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is the time the FBI sent a bunch of fake correspondence making it seem like a bunch of prominent civil rights leaders were cheating on their spouses and was very confused when nothing came of it because said spouses already assumed they were and didn't care.

My fav story along those lines is the KGB trying to blackmail Sukarno with videotape of dalliances with prostitutes. He asked for copies to show his friends.

My favourite thing about that story is that it was on film reels, not videotape.

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#136

Post by batmaniam »

philovivero wrote: post #4

Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial, and surely isn't happening. Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking people for political gain only? Then I remember the story of the lady in East Germany who, after it fell, managed to get the Stasi records that finally proved that yes, they had been stalking her, harassing her, and spying on her. They would do things like wait u…

Even corporations do this kind of thing, not just state agents. There was an interesting case where Ebay harassed two old couple for running a blog that was critical of Ebay practices. Ebay went so far as to cause long-term psychological damage to the couple by mailing them bloody pig masks, signing them up to naughty magazines and sending them to their neighbors, van stalking them, and all other kinds of crazy stuff you wouldn't believe. Everything was directed by senior leadership at Ebay, and 'encouraged' by the CEO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroach...

Really interesting read, if you guys wanna learn more. But basically anyone with money and power can initiate this kind of harassment activity.

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#137

Post by pphysch »

solveit wrote: post #116
pessimizer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian claims of an interest in controlling the government of Ukraine are at least as legitimate as US claims of an interest in controlling Korea, or Afghanistan.

And is the Ukrainean state actually fascist? How about Korea? In the absence of UN intervention, would there have arisen an authoritarian state that was a menace to not only its own citizens but every neighbouring country? Clearly Ukraine is not fascist and Korea would have been. There is a difference.

North Korea is fascist, but harmlessly so. Despite endless flexing and threat inflation, they haven't actually done much harm since invading the South 70 years ago.

The main problem with fascism in Nazi Germany, Zionist Israel, and Banderite Ukraine is that these fascist states have overt policies of ethnic cleansing.

IOW the "fascism" part isn't necessarily bad (unless you are a liberal chauvinist), it's the ethnic cleansing part that is bad.

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#138

Post by [deleted] »

sjg007 wrote: post #57
orangepurple wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese grad students have already copied all university research lab hard drive contents and sent them back to China. One of them admitted to my friend to doing it and being sent to the school by the Chinese military. Chinese grad students are a massive espionage risk, second only to Israeli nationals.

I'm not really sure how meaningful or effective that is as a strategy .. I mean it's just data. Now exfiltrating designs of devices might be a different thing but science is more about the training and becoming an expert. Learning how to do research is the most important part. Most experiments are difficult to replicate anyway.

[deleted]

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#139

Post by kelnos »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #132
cwkoss wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should all reflect on why this story is getting so little coverage in contrast to the 'Russian interference' narrative of 2017.

At least partly because interfering with the election of the US president is quite a bit more significant than interfering with the election of one representative.

On the flip side, though, I could easily see a government spend very little money (say, a couple hundred thousand dollars) to disrupt the campaigns of several tens of potential US Representatives. Given how things work in the House, a state actor could nudge things in the direction they want by disrupting a fairly small percentage of elections.

Presidential election interference would seem to cost a lot more than that, and be a bit more difficult to hide.

Re: 5 Charged with Stalking, Harassing, Spying on US Residents for PRC Secret Police

#140

Post by kelnos »

pphysch wrote: post #95
creato wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty easy to look at North Korea, Cambodia, or Eastern Europe during the Cold War and say “hmm, it’s worth going to extreme lengths to prevent this from happening elsewhere”. That may have been misguided in many instances, but the basic motivation is sound. Characterizing the situation as “overthrowing democratic governments in favor of brutal dictators” is a vast oversimplification if not outright wrong at le…

> It’s pretty easy to look at North Korea, Cambodia, or Eastern Europe during the Cold War and say “hmm, it’s worth going to extreme lengths to prevent this from happening elsewhere”. That may have been misguided in many instances, but the basic motivation is sound. Careful, this is literally Moscow's reason for its invasion of Ukraine -- to prevent the rise of a hostile fascist entity in its frontyard.

Except Ukraine isn't a "hostile fascist entity", and Putin knows that.

Ukraine is (well, sadly, was) in danger of becoming more democratically- and West-aligned, which Putin (irrationally, IMO) feared, but my take on it is that he's really motivated mostly by fallen-empire envy. (Granted, that's just my opinion; I don't know what Putin is actually thinking.)

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