Espionage more than censorship


The news stories about Chinese hacking into Google and other American companies are mostly missing the point. While email accounts are being broken into - and have been for quite a while - the real goal is industrial espionage and theft of technology.

I realize a full list of the companies that have been attacked is hard to find, but even a simple search will show it includes Dow Chemical and Adobe. Those companies have little to do with dissent in China.

The media loves to write stories about hackers who break into computer systems for giggles or spread viruses as malicious pranks, they're the tip of the iceberg. There are any number of espionage programs underway on the internet every day. Some are being conducted by "private" criminal groups; a lot of others are government run or sponsored. Some are targeted; a lot are just generic let's see what we come up with probes. More than likely your computer - or rather its internet "address" - has been probed at least once in the past month.

And the probers weren't asking for sex.