Woman from China Carrying Malware Arrested After Entering Mar-a-Lago | Hacker News Reader

Woman from China Carrying Malware Arrested After Entering Mar-a-Lago

nytimes.com

100 pointssomerandomness54 comments

> She was allowed to enter by Secret Service agents stationed outside the resort after the Mar-a-Lago security manager on duty verified that her last name matched the surname of a member of the club,

Zhang is the third most common last name in the world (source: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-most-common-last-name-on-Ear...).

Definitely a bit lax on the part of security/Secret Service to just do a last name check... I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese intelligence have exploited similar holes before.

To be fair to the secret service, trump has put them on a terrible situation making them have to secure that place instead of using camp david like everyone else.

and is charging them money to do so.

> and is charging them money to do so.

You mean, charging us, the taxpayers, to do so.

I live less than a mile from Mar-a-lago, and I drive by it all the time. It seems insane to do anything high-security there.

Why is that?

Because the President is already provided with a "weekend" place to go called Camp David that is secure (it is a US military base), guarded by both USSS and US Marines, is located close to DC (thus only requiring helicopters instead of AF1), has a golf course and other recreational facilities.

It has been good enough for every President since FDR. Trump uses Mar-a-lago as a money making exercise, raising the membership fees after becoming President and charging the USSS and other government security services for the facilities they use to guard him.

It's (yet another) rort.

Never heard rort before! TIL.

It isn't worse than the Whitehouse itself.

There is access control. The ownership is friendly to the president. It is a physically large site, making it difficult to overrun. Targeting it with anything less than a nuke is unlikely to harm any specific individual.

The main downside is proximity to water from which submarines can launch SLBM strikes. It isn't reasonable to make this complaint without moving the Whitehouse. Seriously, all of DC should be moved for security. Give the current land back to Maryland, then chop a new DC off of the Oklahoma panhandle.

Maybe the Navy doesn’t want him at Camp David.

The 4 cell phones thing and her sketchy story is suspicious. But anyone could have malware on a USB stick. Especially from China.

That said this sounds way too sloppy for state espionage. Maybe it’s private? Or they are recruiting way too many people and let some bad ones in.

It does seem like a sloppy attempt at espionage. But perhaps it worked in the past.

Testing the waters maybe..

She could just be nuts.

This was actually my first thought. But I was going to call her a “random.”

Trojan horse? Distract Secret Service agents with a clueless decoy while the real spies are sneaking around out back. Seems to be a subplot in lots of action movies.

Her story is completely nonsensical, she's an awful liar. Or, is pretending to be an awful liar. Perhaps she's clever and is pretending to be a hapless rube, in an effort to diminish her perceived culpability. With spy shit like this, either is a possibility.

Too sloppy for state espionage? In my experience, the level of competence in government varied widely. This is entirely plausible as state espionage.

Yup. Moreover, most "state espionage" and the like is really just a state-sponsored variation of garden-variety opportunistic/criminal activity that would otherwise be quite ordinary. This is something that most people might not generally realize, because there's so much focus on high-profile espionage. But that's rare and not at all the common case.

Seriously they destroy Iran nuclear enrichment with stuxnet by leaving usb flash drive around. The worker took it, kept it as there own and use it at the nuclear enrichment site.

It does sound comical. Maybe the chinese are getting desperate after the huawei exec got arrested? Or maybe it's just a "setup" to apply pressure on china before the next round of trade talks. Usually espionage/intel related events are kept secret. When it's publicized, it's usually for political/trade/etc reasons.

Just like how china magically found canadian "spies" in their country right after canada arrested one of their executives and used their propaganda apparatus to put pressure on canada.

If this was real serious espionage, I doubt the secret service, cia, etc would release the info so quickly to the media. Does this mean the trade negotiations are not going well? Does it mean it is going well? It'll be interesting to read about the inner workings of the trade negotiations a few decades from now and what historians make of this time. Things like can only be understood in hindsight and never in the moment because we, no more than the chinese people, get to see what is really happening behind the scenes. Everyone gets the massaged and curated "news".

Russia has openly attacked the US, UK, EU with their online efforts.

These days you don't need to be convert.

Reading the article I was immediately concerned the cellphones and/or malware were used as probable cause for her arrest. Four cellphones is definitely excessive but not illegal (at one point I had three for work + a personal) and malware on a USB stick could happen to anyone. From the complaint[1] it looks like she's being charged for knowingly making false statements to gain access to a restricted area and (thankfully) not for having the phones/malware.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/404159332/USA-v-Zhang-Compla...

Why did you have 3 cellphones for work? That seems excesive to me. I can understand 1 for work, one for personal - I had this situation for quite a while myself.

I'd prefer to only carry 1 phone, but I won't 'byod' to a company that reserves the right to remotely wipe my personal phone.

It absolutely was excessive. I had a US work phone and two international work phones because I dealt with foreign regulators who needed to be able to contact me at a "local" phone number. I'm not sure I ever managed to have all four charged at the same time.

And I learned about BYOD the hard way. I do a bit of freelance legal journalism on the side and at one point I had a Reuters email address even though I wasn't an employee and I had it set up on my personal iPhone. One day I was getting off the subway and the entire phone went blank. A complete factory reset. Reuters had accidentally wiped the personal cellphones of everyone who had set up the company email on an iPhone. I remember one guy saying he lost the video of his daughter's first footsteps. This was before companies had controls around BYOD but I will certainly never allow a company to have any access to my device again.

I do the same, I would never trust a company's IT department to have any access or administrative power over my personal phone - same goes for laptop.

Yeah, your example of someone losing their kid's first steps video is the sort of reason I keep my stuff separate. Either give me a phone, or dont expect an off hours response.

If BYOD just meant they can remotely remove my Outlook account and any local cache, sure, I'd be fine with that. Wipe my entire phone? Go take a shit in the woods and wipe with a ponderosa pine cone.

Comparing this to myself, I often carry two cell phones, I assume my USB drives are not infected, but have no idea if they are and if they are I wouldn't be able to tell based on what I understand of infections that live in the firmware, and when I was much younger, in my teens and early 20s, I definitely snuck into quite a few nice swimming pools at hotels and clubs, along with every one of my peers! I also snuck into a major party presidential convention once because why not, and it was educational and interesting and democratic to do so anyway.

I don't have two passports, but I've heard a lot of people do.

So this all sounds dodgy when they report on it like that, but there's also a chance she's just someone going for a swim. In which case though trespassing charges and false statements charges are still legit.

Of course there's more to the case than this, she changed her story multiple times and eventually said that a person unknown to her had asked her to fly from Shanghai to Florida in order to speak to Trump. I think it would be a waste of time to try to get to the bottom of what she was up to, best way to handle this is get a quick conviction and permanently deport her back.

Going for a swim without a swimsuit?

For her case that fits into the general bit where she changed her story a bunch of times. (Assuming that's the case, she alleges she never said she was there to go swimming.)

In my own case as a teen, not having a swimsuit never stopped me. I definitely never had a towel since hotels provide that, it's one of the advantages of hotels vs random people's backyard pools where they definitely knew you weren't supposed to be there. Even when questioned by hotel staff (which seldom happened) saying I was with the Smiths often passed the test if I was a guest or not. Another tactic was to take the elevator up, then down and out to the pool. Never approach the pool directly from off-property.

Mar-a-Lago would obviously be considerably harder to sneak into since the staff there knows who the members are even if the Secret Service doesn't.

It is inconceivable that the Secret Service permitted the leak of this level of detail to the press. That she was carrying malware makes this an espionage-class event. The intelligence community must be fuming mad that these details weren't sealed.

The NYT article either leaves out that the woman was carrying Republic of China passports, or is erroneously conflating RoC and PRC.

it says "passaports". Do people from RoC must now have a PRC passport too after the recent occupation? I have no idea how passports work for people under the Taiwan political mess.

> after the recent occupation

???

Taiwan citizens can get two flavors of PRC passport-equivalents for travel to the PRC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Travel_Document

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_Travel_Permit_for_Tai...

PRC nationals going to Taiwan need an almost-visa, but can use their PRC passport:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_%26_Entry_Permit

My Taiwanese friend has two passports. She uses the PRC one for the mainland and ROC in the West. Basically just use whatever passport causes less trouble. It's a fairly simple arrangement

> She was allowed to enter by Secret Service agents stationed outside the resort after the Mar-a-Lago security manager on duty verified that her last name matched the surname of a member of the club, according to a complaint filed in federal district court in South Florida.

I mean, Zhang is a pretty common surname, so if that's the only checking they did this sounds pretty inadequate…

Why again did we decide that it's okay for our President to spend every weekend at his private, unsecured, for-profit clubs? The Secret Service has already said they can't and won't keep a log of all guests to Mar-a-Lago. Can you imagine the number of bugs/listening devices that are already there?

Dozens of foreign nationals already work there on H2B visas[1], they have open-air national security crisis response meetings in front of random Palm Beach socialites[2], he's personally profiting off of the club's increased membership fees[3] and Secret Service expenses[4], existing members included several people with criminal backgrounds and most recently the proprietor of the 'massage parlors' that ensnared Robert Kraft[5] and she was already caught selling access[6] and illegally bundling contributions[7] -- This seems like a security risk approaching the level of all the Russian weirdness.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-mar-a-lago-cl...

[2] - https://twitter.com/i/moments/831212884675981313?lang=en

[3] - https://www.thedailybeast.com/mar-a-lago-membership-fee-doub...

[4] - https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/405407-trumps-go...

[5] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-spa-owner-and...

[6] - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/03/a-florida-massa...

[7] - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/03/a-florida-massa...

> Why again did we decide that it's okay for our President to spend every weekend at his private, unsecured, for-profit clubs?

We elected him. Presidents get this purview. If this pisses you off, register to vote, volunteer for campaigns and join your local political club.

My point is more -- Why this President?

It would never been acceptable at any point in prior history. Jimmy Carter famously had to sell his family's peanut farm to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest. In the same election that Trump won, it was a huge campaign issue that people seeking influence donated to The Clinton Foundation -- a Foundation that the Clinton's did not, and could not financially benefit from. Yet it's okay that unelected Mar-a-Lago members that are currently putting money in the President's pocket can run a hundred billion dollar government organization from the shadows and steer its funds?[1]

What changed in the American psyche? Why did we collectively assent to let this President break all of the norms that constrained previous administrations?

[1] - https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/26/mar-a-lago-trump-i...

My honest opinion: previous Presidents (mostly) willingly followed the rules. This President thought, "I wonder what would happen to me if I didn't follow the rules". And the answer seems to be "Nothing".

If anything's changed, I think it's a kind of "democratisation" of opinion. For example, the Washington Post was essentially able, though investigative reporting, to impeach a President. I don't think the same thing would happen now because the idea that "something must be done" used to come from those same media outlets. There was a more focused opinion driven by a few players. Now opinion can be swayed by anyone with a Twitter account (or access to Facebook data, it seems). Several people opined that Trump would not make it through his first term without getting impeached and I think he's shown that he has the ability to dilute public opinion. There have been several points in his first term where I think a President would have been devastated by public opinion had they tried the same thing in the past. He's had relatively no trouble navigating the issues. I think there is just no way to unify the chaos that is public opinion these days.

And I will say, although I'm not a fan of Trump's policies (or actions), he's pretty darn good at surfing that chaos -- and stirring the pot so that the chaos continues. If you want to put a different kind of President in power in the next election you're going to have to pick someone who can diffuse that chaos and create a clear, powerful and unified message that the average person is going to identify with. I suspect it will be incredibly difficult.

someone who can diffuse that chaos and create a clear, powerful and unified message that the average person is going to identify with. I suspect it will be incredibly difficult.

When that person does come, I fear they are going to be magnitudes of order more dangerous than Trump.

Why and in what way?

Jimmy Carter did not "sell his family's peanut farm."

His mother and brother managed it. In fact, ol' Billy Carter got in a bunch of trouble using it as a sort of slush fund when he was hanging out with the Libyans.... but, I suspect that is long before your time....

Nobody sells off nothing merely to take a 4-year gig. At most, they simply let other family members take over the business.

You're right, I had the history wrong -- he put the ownership into blind trust from which his brother was embezzling. In either case, a peanut farm was important enough to avoid impropriety but somehow all these businesses actively putting money into the President's pocket are kosher?

What would people have said if all of the sudden the Iranians started buying tons of peanuts exclusively from Carter's farm?

You did have the history wrong.

What's more interesting is WHY you believed 'fake news' about Jimmy Carter selling off his family farm.

I can't think of ANY President who 'sold off' anything. Kennedy certainly didn't.

Neither Bush did. (Indeed, you may wish to compare the frequency of Trump at Mar-a-lago vs. Bush Sr. at Kennebunkport...)

Reagan had Rancho del Cielo -- his several hundred acre ranch at which he spent so much time that it was referred to as the "Western Whitehouse."

Obama went from $0 to a multimillionaire.

The Clintons went from a $0 to several hundred million. (As far as the Clintons... well, if you think the Clinton's didn't benefit from the Clinton Foundation, I guess you've drunk the Kool-Aid... You oughta take some time to see how many millions of dollars in speaking fees, travel, and accommodations the Foundation paid to the three Clintons.)

The Bush's were already incredibly wealthy, but probably quadrupled their net worth through their semi-private 'Carlyle Group' investment fund.

Your animosity towards Trump leads you to attack the one area where he's head and shoulders above the others: he's going to leave office with a lower net worth.

There are all the obvious corruption problems with post-Presidential activities, and obviously it's a huge source of corrupting influence. The Clintons became obscenely wealthy -- but that had nothing to do with their Foundation (speaking as an expert in nonprofit finance).

My only animosity is toward public corruption. The Bushes visiting Kennebunkport was obviously different because other people couldn't pay to access the president at Kennebunkport. The Saudis bought 500 rooms at a hotel that the President personally owns immediately after the inauguration. That's completely different in scale, kind, and timing in terms of the 'normal' corruption and I'm flabbergasted that it doesn't register as such.

Phrased another way:

What's the method to illicitly influence the Bushes at Kennebunkport? How about the method to influence the Obamas after they've left office? You could absolutely make a case about influencing the Clintons since Hillary obviously wanted to run for President. The story to illicitly influence the current President is very straightforward and keeps happening in the open. Regardless of what happened in the past, shouldn't we try to stop it when it's happening now?

Same reason other presidents spent unusual time in hawaii which required undue expenses by the taxpayers to accommodate.

You do see the difference from spending time and taxpayer money in your home state and spending time and taxpayer money in your home state at commercial properties you own and that you profit from right?

Its not about having a tight lead every second of every moment on the president.

There are always millions of vectors of attack, its an impossible and fruitless game to evaluate how to break through to a single human being.

so, in summary for the article: journalists found that her story checks out. and it's related to an event organized by a prostitution entrepreneur who claims to have access to Trump, and the secret service filled in a report saying they have no idea of such event?

I think the human trafficking angle is most likely. Someone was trying to introduce her to this Ms. Yang to get her in to her business, but wasn’t aware that the event was cancelled.

This will turn out to have been a mentally ill person. I seriously doubt a real intelligence operative would show up for work with multiple passports, a pile of cell phones and a cover story that hinges upon a non-existent event being scheduled.

OTOH, mentally ill persons might have trouble obtaining one or several passports.

You can't just go around calling everyone mentally ill because you don't like the idea that this person really was a spy.

There are lots of people who want to spy, not just the CPC. If it helps you sleep at night, blame a company spy from TenCent instead.

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