[HN Gopher] Canada police charge Hydro-Quebec employee with Chin...
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Canada police charge Hydro-Quebec employee with China espionage
Author : boringg
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-11-15 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| 71a54xd wrote:
| The issue with this kind of public enforcement is China quite
| frankly could care less about the plaintiff. They got the info
| they required, the chinese way of thinking is that these foreign
| assets are largely expendable and easily replacible.
|
| Sanctions and other forms of proactive and offensive protection
| of these assets is the only way to curb this kind of espionage.
| This kind of counter-intelligence and sabotage was actually one
| of the only things Reagan got right during his presidency.
|
| Something worth reading is the operation, in which the US
| realized Russians were attempting to steal information to
| automate operation of a newly constructed natural gas pipeline
| through Siberia. Ironically, the US contacted the Canadians and
| found a willing oil and gas engineering firm to take the bait and
| provide "functional" code and licensed tech to the soviets. The
| soviets were smitten with what they thought was genuine
| information and tech - however, shortly after one of the largest
| non-nuclear explosions in history occurred when the pipeline
| failed in the middle of Siberia. (take what you will from this in
| regards to the recent Nordstream explosion) The gist here - is
| you have to erode trust in data stolen from your country to a
| deadly extent. As soon as China realizes that 40% of their stolen
| "intelligence" is useless or something designed to fail...
| they'll think twice about stealing. Also, just make it harder for
| people with a clear past linking them to the PLA to you know...
| run important infrastructure.
|
| Source here -
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r...
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| What kind of IP can a hydro-electric dam have that isn't "general
| knowledge" at this point? *Edit: Batteries used for Electric
| Vehicles*
|
| Also for some context, related to China-Canada relations; there
| has been rumour that China has operated state run (semi-secretly)
| policing departments in BC and other areas of Canada and has
| forced people to return to China that were legally in Canada. AND
| Canada has recently been engaged in a trade mission specifically
| with South East Asian countries (bypassing China) for
| textiles/garment production. (I have no idea what Canada is
| offering in return for cheaper clothes.) {Probably some kind of
| natural resource.}
| bouchard wrote:
| He didn't work on dams...
|
| > A company statement said that Mr Wang worked on batteries for
| the utility's Center of Excellence in Transportation
| Electrification and Energy Storage (CETEES), which develops
| technology for electric vehicles.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| What an odd case.
|
| > RCMP Inspector David Beaudoin said that Mr Wang used his
| position at Hydro-Quebec to conduct research for a Chinese
| university and other researcher centres. He allegedly published
| scientific articles and submitted patents in "association [with]
| this foreign actor rather than with Hydro-Quebec", he said.
|
| So the guy _very_ publicly used privileged information to benefit
| a third party, without his current employer 's consent.
|
| Doesn't sound much like state sponsored espionage, to be honest.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| This is a pretty common strategy used by China, and I think
| they leverage the fact that it is so "above board" and
| transparent in some ways to their advantage... it's easier to
| recruit scientists and engineers into espionage by doing so in
| an apparently legitimate way with the sponsorship of an
| academic institution. I'm not sure if it's directly applicable
| to this case but the whole thing in general is known as the
| Thousand Talents Plan and is well-publicized in China... but
| conflicts with intellectual property and espionage policy in
| many other countries and was a perennial source of
| embarrassment for US universities (when their faculty were
| found to be on the Chinese payroll and publishing their work
| there) five years ago or so. People are thought to often be
| recruited into the program while attending academic events in
| China, which also gives it a degree of normalcy... it's
| presented as academic collaboration, not espionage.
|
| My point is that "doesn't sound much like state sponsored
| espionage" is probably exactly why Thousand Talents found so
| much success for a while. It has a veneer of legitimacy and
| stays pretty far away from anything that has the "cloak and
| dagger" appearance people associate with espionage.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| "Chinese University" is an arm of the Chinese state and
| potentially also of the CCP. It's not a purely commercial third
| party.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Right, but why would anyone file a patent on stolen IP? It
| would both defeat the purpose of stealing the IP in the first
| place, and put a target on their backs.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Picking flowers, making honey
|
| https://www.aspi.org.au/report/picking-flowers-making-honey
| AMerrit wrote:
| This sounds more like a case of an ambitious dummy being
| prodded into being a stooge that leaks IP rather than
| purposeful espionage on his part.
| ISL wrote:
| If it provides cover for another entity, it could have
| value.
|
| "Hey, we licensed that patent from $(thief). We thought it
| was legit! We're innocent. All the liability for our
| infringement falls on $(thief)."
| [deleted]
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Every time someone from China does something bad or just without
| thinking it through, it's painted as communist party espionage.
|
| Our western media and governments really want us to see yellow
| spies everywhere.
| kube-system wrote:
| But it's _not_ just people randomly doing these things. These
| people are targeted by official CCP programs which intend to do
| exactly what they 're doing. The targets are often useful
| idiots, but that doesn't make it not espionage.
| Kukumber wrote:
| how is that different from gov/military backed US companies
| who steal talents from foreign countries?
|
| by being passive racist, the US unveils to the world what
| they are doing for ages, and when it's others it's painted as
| evil
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, spying is practiced worldwide by just about everyone.
| I never claimed otherwise. But that doesn't mean it's
| tolerated. Every country wants to spy _and_ not be spied
| on.
| SlickNixon wrote:
| Is this a boilerplate response to someone bringing up the
| Thousand Talents program? Because "steal[ing] talents"
| doesn't make much sense in an English language context
| outside of Space Jam.
| Kukumber wrote:
| You'll be surprised if Aliens speak english
| SlickNixon wrote:
| You got me there.
| Elv13 wrote:
| I think one important bit of context that may be missing here is
| that Hydro Quebec is technically also a public research
| (graduate) university. You can get PhD there when working on
| these projects (how this is implemented is confusing, but it's a
| de-facto stand alone university). It's not "just" a power
| company. It's also one of the larger income/export source for the
| the government.
| tokai wrote:
| Assuming that the Mr Wang is Yue-Sheng Wang; Their suspect has
| published 59 articles according to Scopus and 31 are without
| affiliation to Hydro-Quebec. I would hope that publications alone
| would be a problem, but maybe they point at possible sharing of
| data etc. in a way that could fall under espionage - who knows.
|
| I work with documenting scientific publications and I have seen a
| lot of wonky affiliations used. Its surprising who many
| researchers don't understand their own affiliations correctly, at
| least as seen by the institutions that pay their wages. That
| being using co-authors affiliation, imagined or misunderstood
| affiliations (yeah our informal work-group is definitely a
| department!), or even something more obscure (A professor
| publishing his whole career from university X even though he
| hasn't been affiliated since his postdoc 25 years ago. Due to
| pride I guess?). Another issue is co-authors not knowing each
| others True(r) affiliation, and ending up getting the wrong
| addresses in the final publication. And so on and so on. Some
| researchers seem to feel such details are trivial.
|
| Just another example how bureaucratic control butts heads with
| the actually way scientists work.
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