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Comment by maxklein | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to shut down the site when you are losing the search game to local competition.

In any case, even though I find freedom of speech to be necessary and encouraged, I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

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I do not think that Google is right to imply in this blog post that the Chinese government is behind the attacks.

Unless they have evidence to support that implication...

Reading between the lines, that's exactly what I saw.

Google simply stated the facts.

The implication (or more accurately, the inference) is yours.

Google is doing something good. This could be a catalyst for something bigger & better.

But, kudos to you for putting things in perspective. Baidu is where 77% of Chinese get their search done. Google is at 19% there.

Edit: @maxklein read the Northrop Grumman report linked on this post in case you think attribution to a country is solely based on origin IP. Usually, it's a bit more deeper than that.

The targeting of Chinese human rights activists' email accounts don't seem Suspicious to you? Exactly what /private/ group would have motive for this?

There are supposedly a lot of hyper-nationalistic youths (specifically in the teens-20s age range) in China right now. I could see a group of them being hackers and feeling that they are doing this for the 'honour of their country' or something similar.

It'd be more like 1 hyper nationalist cherry picking the best hackers through tests and exam results and then telling them (ie forcing them) to weed out dissenters and whatever else they can get.

Chinese nationalistic is a coin with two sides. It's could be turned against Party and govn't easily. Just think of what happened in 1989.

It seems very likely it's the Chinese govt. But I don't doubt that other governments have an interest in what activists all over the world do, including our own.

A fair point. Heard recently that the "Iranian Cyber Army" attacked Baidu as well. Nothing major - they weren't able to do much more than hassle Twitter, and they didn't do much to Baidu either.

Exactly what /private/ group would have motive for this?

Possibly a human rights activists' group, which knows the implications of such a hack ?

Notice that only the subject line of the emails were accessed, not the contents.

I am not saying that it is the case, but your question brings forth this possibility.

Someone wanting to blackmail the activists.

But who else would want to garner information from emails of human rights activists in China?

that's incredibly naïve. Plenty of organizations would find that information useful.

That may be true, but the facts lend themselves to the implication that the Chinese government is involved. Though that might not be true, it likely is true that the Chinese government is the the single largest entity with the highest interest in these emails.

Why do you defend the Chinese government at every chance you get?

Edit: I am talking about this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1036908 in particular.

If this person believes in the value of the Chinese government, it is their right to defend that opinion, just as it is your right to argue against it. Of course, the fact that they have a dissenting opinion by arguing that China should be allowed to suppress dissenting opinions is certainly ironic (from the linked post).

Because I believe in china, the chinese government and the chinese system. I will defend what I believe in, even though it's obviously shared by very few people here.

I think it would be unusual if I did not defend something I believe in.

And yes, you may think I am wrong, but don't forget that _I_ think you are wrong. What's the difference? If this where a chinese board, you would be the one in the minority.

Yours is a ridiculously cynical argument. 17% of China is far larger than 100% of Germany or France.

I am talking about 19% of Chinese who have Internet access (from a total of 200 million people) and you're talking about 17% of population. Here is some actual numbers/data. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/23/comscore-internet-popul...

Ya, true. Perhaps there is some other hand at play behind the scenes investing treasure in obtaining information on outspoken China human rights activists.

maxklein was introducing a key point in the debate here, and was downmodded. I think negative votes should be reserved for spam, offtopic and that ilk. Otherwise, people will not voice dissent, thus ignoring an entire branch of reasoning, which ironically is what this entire debate comes down to.

It's hard not to imply that.

What were you trying now max?Social Engineering people to downvote you ? :-) JK

We definitely need more granular flags. People shouldn't need to be downvoted for expressing a dissenting opinion, but I agree that in the current HN climate it was inevitable.

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