The e-mail appeared to come from me. It began with something I’d previously written. Then the font changed and the English degenerated. “Attched [sic] is I want to know and discuss the issues,” said the note to the new leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. Lobsang Sangay was savvy enough to figure out that neither the message nor an attachment in Chinese were really from me. The Tibetan PM wanted to let me know that someone had hacked my work e-mail account and pressed “reply.” But before he began composing a warning, he saw that the reply was not being automatically routed to me. Instead, the “to” field bore the e-mail address of the private secretary of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. It looked as though my e-mail was designed to spread virally to other users and cause maximum confusion.
We are all alert to the perils of online communication, of suspicious financial requests from supposed Nigerian bankers or friends who have apparently lost their wallets in remote capitals. But people in China have an especially fraught relationship with the Internet. It’s not just that the Great Firewall of China limits access to sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Blogspot. More disquieting is the realization that every word typed may be under surveillance and every e-mail or post prone to infiltration. Yes, snooping happens in Western countries too. But China has tens of thousands of trained monitors. The nation’s tech companies employ huge teams to comb their servers and delete any material the government deems unfit for public eyes. (See pictures of China stamping out democracy protests.)
Then there’s the overt meddling. I’m one of many foreign journalists in China who have had their e-mail accounts hacked. Some have found that all their messages were being auto-forwarded to mysterious e-mail addresses. Who is doing this? I can’t say for sure. But Google has accused hackers in China of breaking into Gmail. In August, the world’s biggest security-technology company, McAfee, released details of Operation Shady RAT, a five-year infiltration of around 70 large computer networks, including those belonging to the U.S. and Taiwan governments, the International Olympic Committee and the Associated Press. Cybersecurity experts speculated that no power but China would be interested in those targets. Beijing dismissed the allegation.
