At a time when the personal information from fingerprints to
criminal records to identities of family of 22 million Americans’, current and
former federal employees, is in the hands of the Chinese hackers, CIA pulled a
number of officers from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as a response to that huge data
breach.
It is said that the CIA took the step, in order to protect
its officers whose personal information was compromised during the Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) data breach.
Now, the U.S. officials, who had claimed that the data
breach was conducted by a hostile party to identify spies and other American
officials who could be blackmailed to provide information, said that China
could have compared those records with the list of embassy personnel. It could
help China to replace anyone with who wouldn't be just as vulnerable and not on
a CIA official.
According to a news report, senior intelligence officials
clarified that America’s cyber-theft deterrence measures to lawmakers.
James Clapper Jr, director of National Intelligence,
explained that the difference between the OPM hacks and the theft of U.S.
companies’ secrets to benefit another nation.
He regarded the OPM hacks as egregious as it was. He said
that was not a cyber-attack rather a form of theft or espionage.
“We, too, practice cyber espionage and . . . we’re not bad at
it. The United States would not be wise to seek to punish another country for
something its own intelligence services do. I think it’s a good idea to at
least think about the old saw about people who live in glass houses shouldn’t
throw rocks,” he said.
News reports confirmed that last month, U.S. President
Barack Obama had warned Beijing that it could face sanctions for the alleged
cybertheft. And the further state-sponsored espionage could be considered an
“act of aggression” that Washington would not tolerate.
"We have repeatedly said to the Chinese government that
we understand how traditional intelligence gathering functions and that all
states engage in it including us," he said earlier this month. "What
is fundamentally different is your government or its proxies engaging in
industrial espionage and stealing trade secrets from a company. We consider
that an act of aggression and it must stop.”
