Governments will keep spying despite roaring hacking scandals, as they are engaged in a global cyber war, seeking actionable information to advance industrial and state interests, Chris Kitze, founder of encrypted communications provider Unseen told RT.
RT:The US is once again caught out, while stealing data. How long will Washington continue with the spying?
Chris Kitze: I think they will do it forever. That is what the NSA is paid to do, is to spy on different governments throughout the world. The real question is, every government in the world does this to their potential adversaries, but the real issue is how these governments do it to their own citizens too?
I think really that is the big issue. Most of your listeners are mostly concerned with that. They kind of expect security services to be keeping tabs on other countries and potential adversaries and even people who are considered friendly. Although I think that personal spying on people like Angela Merkel definitely go over the line. You damage that personal relationship when you do something like that.
RT:The US says it is protecting its domestic market from Chinese hackers. Is that the case?
CK: There is definitely something like that going on. President Eisenhower many, many years ago talked about the military-industrial complex. It turns out all major powers have the same complex right now. The French do it. I know a lot of American businessmen who get spied on when they go to France. And it is spied on by the government. It is very well known. It happens anywhere in the world. When you go to China, you expect you're being spied on.
RT:One of America's fears, according to the report, is that China could be spying on the US. Isn't that ironic?
CK: It is like this old cartoon they used to have, Spy vs Spy, and these spies, they are just spying on each other. I think maybe what they are doing is getting a little bit of information so they can get a little bigger budget, and drive a little bit better car and have a faster computer on their desktop or something.
The real question is where the real data gets used, and what all these agencies are looking for is actionable information. There is a lot of information that people can get.
They can go in and break into finding out what President Obama's daughter's soccer schedule is, but that is probably not really actionable information. They are looking for things like technological breakthroughs that give one country a military edge or a technological edge. And it is really hard to separate today the real difference between the government and the military and the largest industries.
We have seen some spying that has been happening; in fact, it is almost like a cyber war. The main place right now it is happening is in the switches and the routers of the internet. They are all over the world. And that is when you look at Huawei, which is the company allegedly being spied on, that is their main activity, is manufacturing this type of equipment. This is the backbone of the internet and really what you are seeing here is you're seeing the first stage of the cyber war.
International cyber war, world cyber war is happening right now. And to some extent it is being conducted against citizens within countries. You see that in Egypt, you see that in China against Falun Gong. And the suppliers, interestingly enough, even the great firewall of China has been supplied by large companies like Cisco, IBM. The biggest American companies have been suppliers to this technology for internal uses in these other countries. And some of this stuff is being turned around and being used outside.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.