Snowden’s Leaks on China

Snowden’s Leaks on China Could Affect Its Role in His Fate

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: June 14, 2013 68 Comments

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HONG KONG — The decision by a former National Security Agency contractor to divulge classified data about the U.S. government’s surveillance of computers in mainland China and Hong Kong has complicated his legal position, but may also make China’s security apparatus more interested in helping him stay here, law and security experts said on Friday.

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The South China Morning Post, a local newspaper, reported on Friday that Edward J. Snowden, the contractor, had shared detailed data showing the dates and Internet Protocol addresses of specific computers in mainland China and Hong Kong that the National Security Agency penetrated over the last four years. The data also showed whether the agency was still breaking into these computers, the success rates for hacking and other operational information.

Mr. Snowden told the newspaper that the computers were in the civilian sector. But Western experts have long said that the dividing line between the civilian sector and the government is very blurry in China. State-owned or state-controlled enterprises still control much of the economy, and virtually all are run by Communist Party cadres who tend to rotate back and forth between government and corporate jobs every few years as part of elaborate career development procedures.

Kevin Egan, a former prosecutor here who has represented people fighting extradition to the United States, said that Mr. Snowden’s latest disclosures would make it harder for him to fight an expected request by the United States for him to be turned over to American law enforcement. “He’s digging his own grave with a very large spade,” he said.

But a person with longstanding ties to mainland Chinese military and intelligence agencies said that Mr. Snowden’s latest disclosures showed that he and his accumulated documents could be valuable to China, particularly if Mr. Snowden chooses to cooperate with mainland authorities.

“The idea is very tempting, but how do you do that, unless he defects,” said the person, who insisted on anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities in the case. “It all depends on his attitude.”

The person declined to comment on whether Chinese intelligence agencies would obtain copies of all of Mr. Snowden’s computer files anyway if he is arrested by the Hong Kong police pursuant to a warrant from the United States, where the Justice Department has already been reviewing possible charges against him.

A Hong Kong Police Force spokeswoman said earlier this week that any arrest would have to be carried out by the Hong Kong police and not by foreign law enforcement. The Hong Kong police have a responsibility to share with mainland China anything of intelligence value that they find during raids or seizures of evidence, according to law enforcement experts.

Patricia Ho, a lawyer who specializes in political asylum at Daly and Associates, a Hong Kong law firm, said that if Beijing decides that it wants Mr. Snowden to stay in Hong Kong for a long time, the simplest way to do so would be for mainland officials to quietly tell Hong Kong’s government officials not to hurry the legal process.

The United States and China have long accused each other of monitoring each other’s computer networks for national security reasons. The United States has also accused China of hacking to harvest technological secrets and commercial data on a broad scale from American companies and transferring that information to Chinese companies to give them a competitive advantage.

Tom Billington, an independent cybersecurity specialist in Washington, said that mainland China could benefit by obtaining a copy of the data that Mr. Snowden gave to the South China Morning Post. The data, if independently verified, could help Chinese officials figure out which computers have been hacked, patch security holes, itemize compromised data, analyze the quality of computer security defenses and develop techniques for hardening other Chinese computers against future surveillance by the N.S.A.

According to The Guardian newspaper of Britain, Mr. Snowden showed up with four laptop computers for a meeting with its journalists in Hong Kong. But the Los Angeles Times has reported that Mr. Snowden originally smuggled electronic files out of the National Security Agency in Hawaii using a USB thumb drive. Simon Young, the director of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, said in a statement that it would be a violation of Hong Kong law to disclose any information that had been shared confidentially by the Hong Kong or mainland Chinese governments with the United States.

“These recent developments underline the importance of Mr. Snowden obtaining immediate legal advice in Hong Kong, especially before any further disclosures are made,” Mr. Young said.

Mr. Young did not suggest whether any of the data shared by Mr. Snowden would fall into this category. But the Hong Kong government has a history of close law enforcement cooperation with the United States, particularly in the area of counterterrorism. The Hong Kong police have long focused on trying to prevent the territory’s freewheeling financial system from becoming a base for Al Qaeda-related money laundering.

The South China Morning Post said that one target of N.S.A. hacking identified by Mr. Snowden was the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which hosts the city’s main hub for Internet connections to the rest of the world. “The University has not detected any form of hacking to the network, which has been running normally,” the university said in a statement.

The newspaper said that it had not independently verified the accuracy of the data that Mr. Snowden provided. But the United States government has not questioned the authenticity of any of the documents he has released.

The Global Times, a nationalistic mainland Chinese newspaper under the direct control of the Communist Party, published an editorial on Friday calling for China to glean as much information as possible from Mr. Snowden.

“Snowden is a ‘card’ that China never expected,” the commentary said. “But China is neither adept at nor used to playing it.”

The commentary also called for China and Hong Kong to treat Mr. Snowden kindly enough so that others with national security secrets will not be discouraged from fleeing here. “China should make sure that Hong Kong is not the last place where other ‘Snowdens’ want to go,” it said.

The Associated Press reported on Friday that Britain had issued an alert to airlines around the world warning them not to bring Mr. Snowden to its soil, and threatening them with a fine of 2,000 pounds, or $3,125. Geoffrey Robertson, of London, who was an initial lawyer for Julian Assange during the WikiLeaks dispute, criticized the alert as unusual because it was being applied to someone who has denounced government policies.

“This is a power hitherto used only against those who incite terrorism, race hatred and homophobia — never before against whistle-blowers,” Mr. Robertson wrote in an e-mail. “The British government is simply afraid that its judges, who are fiercely independent, and the European court would embarrass its closest ally by ruling that Snowden could not be extradited because, even if his “revelations” prove to be mistaken, he would be subjected to oppressive treatment akin to that being meted out to Bradley Manning,” the American Army private accused of having leaked secrets in the WikiLeaks case.