The 'Biggest Villain of Our Age', Washington Owes World an
Explanation (Xinhua, China)
Has Edward Snowden revealed the truth: that as Washington has accused
other nations, particularly China, of cyber hacking, the biggest culprit of
such crime was in fact the United States? With Edward Snowden on the run in
Moscow and apparently awaiting a flight to Latin America, this column from the
state-run Xinhua News Agency insists
that America come clean about its record.
Ecuador Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, on a visit to Vietnam yesterday, tells reporters that his government is analyzing an asylum request from Edward Snowden.
BEIJING:
Edward Snowden, the U.S. intelligence contractor who has divulged some of the
most secretive spying activities of the U.S. government, has put Washington in
a very awkward position.
Over
the past few months, U.S. politicians and media outlets have thrown out one
Internet spying accusation after another against China, trying to make it out as
one of the biggest perpetrators of online spying activity.
Those
claims were highlighted during the highly anticipated summit between Chinese
President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart, Barack
Obama, which was held earlier this month in California, which had been designed
to help the world's two largest economies build a new type of relationship.
All
of this appeared to go relatively well for Washington until revelations emerged
of the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM
surveillance program.
According
to Snowden, the U.S. government has engaged in dubious, wide-ranging espionage
not only against its own citizens, but on governmental, academic and business
entities across the world.
The
latest reports from the Hong Kong-based South
China Morning Post, which appears to have had access to Snowden when he
fled to Chinese territory, revealed that Washington has hacked into the
computer systems of major
Chinese telecom carriers and one of the country's leading universities.
These,
along with previous allegations, are very troubling signs. They demonstrate
that the United States, which has long been trying to play the innocent victim
of cyber attacks, turns out to be the biggest villain of our age.
At
the moment, Washington is busy with a legal process of extraditing
whistleblower Snowden. As far as other countries are concerned, Washington
should come clean about its record. It owes China and other countries it has
allegedly spied on an explanation. It must share with the world, the range,
extent, and intent of its clandestine hacking programs.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
The
drama around Snowden also tends to support China's stand on the issue of cyber
security. Both the United States and China, along with many other countries,
are victims of hacking. In these uncharted waters of Internet age, all of these
countries should sit down and talk through their suspicions.
With
good intentions, they can even work to establish rules that will help define
and regulate Internet activities and mechanisms and allow for the working out of
differences when they arise.
The
ball is now in Washington's court. The U.S. government had better move to allay
the concerns of other countries.
