One of the pleasures of writing this website is that new e-friends appear, usually people who know all sorts of things I don’t know.

Thus I am pleased to share with you this interesting contribution about Google/China and US/Switzerland as sent to me from a reader who closely follows IT security questions and knows how things work:

Google/China
An intelligence operation sophisticated enough to author successful targeted attacks on infrastructures of high tech companies is incapable of hiding its tracks.  Oh really?  Trying to sell the Chinese as "dumb" might work in the US, but I have an other angle of sight.  Big question, this one.
 
"You are hacking us so we want to stop censorship!"  Huh?  I can’t quite connect the two..
 
Google is not doing well at all in China, but it can’t just pull out without some sort of explanation (keep that in your head for a moment)
 
Google founders have announced they intend to sell shares.  News of failure to beat the competition in one of the biggest markets will affect the price of those shares.  Ah, how interesting.  A motive to camouflage item (3).  How?  Well..
 
Any company in China is likely to have a couple of insiders.  Of course, that makes it easy to "discover" them and start yelling about being hacked.  However, bizarrely nobody called the Chinese police.  But the screeching unleashed a couple of other things like statements that "China is never a safe place to do business or to keep things and IP safe" – which must have given Apple a shock as they have been using Chinese assembly and manufacturing for ages.  See the back of any iPhone..
 
Google was initially quite happy to go along with censorship.  What changed?  As for Human Rights, privacy is also a Human Right, yet Google is trying to ignore that in countries like Japan and Switzerland.
 
In my opinion, this whole storm was kicked up by Google to camouflage its flagging Chinese performance to keep share prices afloat – no news there, although I’m impressed by the sheer arrogance of Google of trying to force a whole sovereign nation into letting it do something that is disallowed by local law.  That is about as ambitious as an ant climbing an elephant’s leg with rape in mind.  It was disappointing (though not surprising) that this resulted in politicians trying to ride the publicity, upfront Mrs Hilary Clinton who appears to have forgotten the global effort that has very large golf balls spread all over the world, the UK location of which is Menwith Hill.  Yes, Echelon, the SIGINT setup that the UK gets tiny snippets from if they ask nicely..  

Oh, and for spying on the locals the US appears to do better than the Chinese as well, as a recent report into FBI PATRIOT activities revealed on page 45 that in some cases the formal authorisation was .. a Post-It note.  It’s not that I’m defending the Chinese, but a bit of honesty and level headedness would have gone a long way.  But that would not provided the cover for Google.  It could also have yielded the annoying observation that practically all Internet censorship is actually performed by US companies with US equipment – and we all know a US company needs to seek permission before it can supply high tech to China.  Oops..
 
Google are now claiming they want to stay, but not censor, knowing well that isn’t going to happen.   I reckon it’ll bumble along for another month, and then they will either "reach an agreement" (read: censorship is back) or they’ll bail out, claiming " loss of trust" or something.  Most certainly not "we could push our competitor off the market".
 
US versus Switzerland
 
That other war, US vs Switzerland, is also heating up again. As the Swiss court recently came to the conclusion that handing bank client data to the US was illegal without specific claims ("John Doe" fishing expeditions are not permitted under Swiss law) it threw somewhat of a spanner into the "agreement" reached with the US (it was simply blackmail, but let’s call it an "agreement").  A couple of interesting facts have since emerged:

–   it appears no details were handed over yet

–   the US "agreement" details a total number of 10’000 IRS cases for the terms to be satisfied.  As it so happens, a total of 14’700 have reported to the IRS, so if 10’000 of those were UBS, Switzerland could effectively tell the US it has delivered, and close shop as the voters want it to.  That the US simply ignored the existing agreements (appears to be a habit) has not gone down well with the population and has lead to US Citizens become virtual banking pariahs.  Most Swiss banks with sensible management were already pulling out of the US market, and have gratefully used the UBS affair to accelerate their risk reduction programmes.  It’s even so bad that someone living and working in Switzerland but with a US passport has trouble keeping even a current account open – there are few banks left that allow it.
 
There is a very ugly side effect that the US hasn’t quite "banked" on yet: Switzerland is where all the stable, "old" money goes, partly because it also has stable currency.  No Swiss banks in the US means no access to Swiss held funds for the US economy, and that will eventually hurt.  Not yet, I give it another year.  It will also probably not manage blackmailing Switzerland again, not only are law changes planned, but the new president of Switzerland, Doris Leuthard, is quite a different animal to Merz.  Under that good exterior is, amongst others, a high grade, Swiss precision steel spine, and she’s a lawyer as well..
 
Fascinating what goes on. And what seems to be going on. And what goes on even though it seems not to be going on.