10 HAMODIA

18 SIVAN 5773

MONDAY, MAY 27, 2013

Ed-Op

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EDITORIAL

Sprint Has to Hang Up On Softbank

Chinese hackers, many of whom collect their paychecks from the Peoples Liberation Army, may be having a big celebratory bash soon. Their jobs will likely get a whole lot easier. Thats because Sprint, one of the major owners and operators of broadband internet infrastructure in the U.S., may be on the verge of inking a deal to sell off a major chunk of its network to Softbank. Softbank is a Japanese company that relies heavily on its ties to the Chinese telecommunications industry for parts and support. The Japanese company offered Sprint $20 billion for a 70 percent stake in Sprint Nextel. Chinese telecom is not a private industry like here in the U.S. In China, the telecom industry like most of the countrys industries is a quasi-government entity; its been the Chinese government which is behind the PLAs hacker units recent ferocious launch of cyber-attacks against the U.S. Allowing Sprint to go through with the sale would potentially give the PLA the keys to critical high-speed networks here in the U.S. Such a sale would make it a cakewalk for Chinese hackers to breach and infect U.S. broadband networks. Heres what Sprint will be giving away in the proposed sale: more broadband spectrum than any other telecom company in the U.S.; 40,000 miles of highspeed optical network that forms much of the critical backbone for public and private networks; service contracts with the Department of Defense and the Government Services Administration; and secure PIP, peerless networks isolated from the public internet, that the U.S. government uses for highly secure communications. Its true and a concern that many American telecom companies use components from China in their systems, but it is far more difficult for U.S. cybersecurity officials and regulators to keep tabs on a Japanese company using Chinese equipment than it is to investigate an American company. As it is, Chinese hackers have committed serious breaches of U.S. computer systems. Security experts have pointed the finger at the PLAs cyber unit 61398 as the group that has stolen vast amounts of data from U.S. companies and Federal agencies. Recently, it was revealed that Chinese hackers stole data in 2011 from Google servers that would identify which Chinese operatives were under surveillance by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The FBI had asked Google to tag certain users for surveillance. A similar breach hit Microsofts servers at the same time. This month, for the first time, the U.S. Defense Department cited Chinese cyber-attacks on the U.S. in a report on Chinese military capacities. According to security experts, hacking damage from the PLA runs into hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A report compiled by the Financial Times put the figure at $873 million in 2011 alone. Companies have had their intellectual property stolen, and their networks crashed under attack from Chinese hackers. Hackers have ransacked the corporate secrets of such American firms as Lockheed, Boeing and Apple. Virtually no U.S. institution, corporation, media outlet or government agency has gone without being cyber-blitzed by the Chinese. They have attacked Bank of America, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Richard A. Clarke, former White House terrorism adviser and cyber-espionage expert, said that the Chinese are stealing our intellectual property. Theyre getting our research and development for pennies on the dollar. According to Clarke, Chinese hackers also have the capability to hit the critical computers that run our infrastructure: they can throw a cyberwrench into our power plants, satellites and subways. Wall Street traders could one day be staring at blank screens, courtesy of a cyber-attack from an IP address in Beijing. China has also unleashed its army of hackers to disrupt web sites that dont agree with its policies. They have lifted data from sites that support Tibet, hacking into databases of e-mail addresses and donors. In 2008, hackers traced back to China got their sticky fingers on data from the Save Darfur Organizations databases. The organization had been trying to pressure China to lean on the Sudanese regime to stop the mass killings in Darfur. China is Sudans largest trading partner. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has been very vocal about his concern over the sale. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, Schumer wrote, I have real concerns that this deal, if approved, could make American industry and government agencies far more susceptible to cyber-attacks from China and the Peoples Liberation Army. Until China backs down from its ferocious and criminal intrusions on U.S. computer systems, its vital that we make it as difficult as possible for hackers to penetrate our networks. Sprint has to put its business interest aside in the interest of protecting our critical infrastructure.

OPINION

Rand Pauls Bold Stand Against Arming Islamist Syrian Rebels

BY JOSEPH KLEIN

On May 21, 2013, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 153 to arm vetted elements of the Syrian opposition against the government of Bashar al-Assad. This provision was part of a bill co-sponsored by the committee chairman, Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), and ranking member of the committee, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee). Hailed by its supporters as an overwhelming bipartisan show of support for the Syrian opposition, the bill, entitled The Syria Transition Support Act, now goes to the floor of the Senate where its fate is uncertain. Nor is the position of the Obama administration on directly arming the Syrian opposition very clear at this moment. Up to this time, the administration has proceeded cautiously. The time to act and turn the tide against Assad is now, Senator Menendez said at a hearing on his bill. The United States must play a role in tipping the scales toward opposition groups and working to build a free and democratic Syria. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), along with Democratic Senators Chris Murphy (Connecticut) and Tom Udall (New Mexico) voted against the bill. Senator Pauls proposed amendments striking the bills weapons provision and ruling out the authorization of the use of military force in Syria were rejected. Senator Paul tried to introduce a dose of reality into the deliberations on the bill, but the bill went ahead anyway. This is an important moment, Senator Paul warned. You will be funding, today, the allies of alQaida. Its an irony you cannot overcome. The bills supporters took refuge in the bills stipulation that weapons and military training would go only to those members of the opposition forces who have been properly and fully vetted and share common values and interests with the United States. This is sheer fantasy. The Syrian opposition is hopelessly fragmented, but it is alQaida affiliates and other Islamist jihadist groups in Syria who dominate the oppositions armed forces. ... During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in April, [Joint Chiefs Chairman] General [Martin] Dempsey testified: My military judgment is that now that we have seen the emergence of alNusra and Ahrar al-Sham notably, and now that we have seen photographs of some of the weapons that have been flowing into Syria in the hands of those groups, now I am more concerned than I was before.

Libya provides good reason for General Dempseys concern. After the Obama administration had secretly given its blessing in 2011 for Qatar, a U.S. ally in the Gulf region, to ship arms to Libyan rebels, the administration belatedly woke up to the fact that these arms were ending up in the hands of jihadists who hate Americans. They were more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official according to a December 5, 2012 New York Times article. The same thing appears to be happening with arms transferred by Qatar and Saudi Arabia to the Syrian rebels, with U.S. intelligence and logistical support. The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we dont want to have it, an American official familiar with the arms transfers was quoted by The New York Times as saying in October 2012. Supporters of direct U.S. arms transfers to Syria seem to believe the risk of arms getting into al-Qaida and its affiliates hands can be greatly reduced if the U.S. itself retains control over who gets its weapons by first carefully vetting the proposed recipients. This argument is fatally flawed. The Syrian opposition has no effective centralized political or military leadership. Ahmed Mouaz al-Khatib, a Sunni Islamist opposition activist, who had served as president of the U.S.-supported political opposition umbrella group, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (National Coalition), resigned in April. His willingness to negotiate with Syrian government figures had drawn criticism from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has a seat in the umbrella National Coalition. At the same time, Khatib took issue with the Obama administrations decision to designate the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organization. The National Coalition incorporated the existing Syrian National Council (SNC) in which the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has substantial influence. The Muslim Brotherhoods deputy leader Mohammed Farouq Tayfour serves as the SNCs deputy president. Tayfour said that the al-Nusra Front is well-liked by the Syrian people. They are seen as [a group that] can be relied on to defend the country and the civilians against the regular army and Assads gangs, Tayfour said. In other words, within the umbrella
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