US spies on the internet

Secret court orders forced US telephone companies to hand over customers’ phone records to the National Security Agency. The PRISM programme required US-based tech companies to hand over user information stored on their servers – email, social media, and other data – to the US government. US companies routinely provided the US government back doors to their “encrypted systems”. The US and British governments worked together to intercept internet traffic flowing through fibre optic cables all over the world.

Something to ponder about beyond Covid-19

The author is a Taiwanese American, Ph.D. in Mathematics, and is engaged in radar-related work at Boeing. He talks about "China and the United States must have a war" and provides us with some interesting perspectives.

Never mind the coronavirus, Trump’s America is still going full throttle in its attacks on Huawei

• After two years of repeated accusations of espionage, no concrete evidence against Huawei has been produced
• The US obsession with Huawei can only be understood in light of its national security goals – it means to thwart China’s rise as a world power by means fair or foul

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Coronavirus triggers an ugly rash of racism as the old ideas of ‘Yellow Peril’ and ‘sick man of Asia’ return

A headline referring to China as the ‘sick man of Asia’, a cartoon of the Chinese flag with stars replaced by coronaviruses, an increase in xenophobic incidents against Chinese people: the epidemic seems to have brought out people’s uglier side

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Donald Trump’s campaign against Huawei is a symptom of digital orientalism, ignoring similarities in Chinese and Western surveillance

• The US’ targeting of Huawei is rooted in long-standing fears that China might challenge the idea of civilisational superiority on which the West constructs itself
• Focusing on Chinese surveillance effaces the threat posed by Western tech giants

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