So if, say, Germany was found to have hired tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers around the world, we should just chalk it up to their "different system" and let them off with a slap on the wrist?
Australia is currently attempting to censor movies, the internet, and video games in rather absurd ways--and just like China, they're getting criticized for it. Why should China get special treatment? Why shouldn't we be allowed to criticize them as we would criticize anyone else who did the same things?
but is similar to the system that has been in place for 5000 years of chinese civilisation.
There is absolutely nothing similar between China's current embarrassing actions and their glorious history prior to ~1800. Merely comparing the current oligarchy to the institutions of the past is a huge insult to China and its history.
Can you provide a reference for the tens of thousands of hackers to break into companies and servers? Surely there would be some whistle-blowers, after all hackers are such an unreliable bunch!
That's exactly what the parent is talking about: all this smells fishy. Google says it and 34 other companies have been attacked and the world goes crazy. Companies exist to make profit, government is here for security.
I think it is quite realistic to assume that Google did it to make more money, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062059
The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army
has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese
military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector
computer experts, whose mission is to steal American
military and technological secrets and cause mischief in
government and financial services.
We're trying, but for the most part we haven't yet developed the type of comprehensive strategy for these types of operations that the PRC has. You should read the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission's report linked from Google's blog entry.
More like the government agencies are all falling over themselves to be the 'one true agency/military branch' that does all of the cyber-defense. I remember a few years ago about the Air Force starting up some sort of Cyber Intelligence branch which was going to be completely separate from any other branch/agency's efforts.
"Australia is currently attempting to censor movies, the internet, and video games in rather absurd ways--and just like China, they're getting criticized for it."
If China's online censoring was like Australia's, there wouldn't be a problem. Australia makes public a list of blocked sites, with the reason, e.g. porn. China blocks http://www.python.org/download/ and subpages seemingly arbitrarily, so everyone thinks someone paid someone.
Australia is currently attempting to censor movies, the internet, and video games in rather absurd ways--and just like China, they're getting criticized for it. Why should China get special treatment? Why shouldn't we be allowed to criticize them as we would criticize anyone else who did the same things?
but is similar to the system that has been in place for 5000 years of chinese civilisation.
There is absolutely nothing similar between China's current embarrassing actions and their glorious history prior to ~1800. Merely comparing the current oligarchy to the institutions of the past is a huge insult to China and its history.