Hua Chunying

While the US was bluffing the world with its "China threat" policy, and warning that Beijing could steal their data, Washington has been the world's top source of telecom espionage all the time, Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry, told the Global Times at a press conference on Tuesday, urging some US politicians to stop smearing China immediately.

The response came after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in an interview with a US radio program on Monday that the US will prohibit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from stealing users' data, to prevent TikTok users' data from falling into the hands of China's ruling party. 

We have an obligation to ensure that the data of American citizens does not appear in the wrong place, and we will make every effort to prevent the CCP from obtaining data from hundreds of millions of American citizens, Pompeo said

The US secretary of state has indeed put into practice the famous phrase "We lied, we cheated, we stole," and is lying every day on network security matters, Hua said. 

"How could a social media software organization like TikTok, that is favored by young people, with all those videos showing people dancing and singing, pose a threat to the national security of the US?" Hua asked.

 While the US was bluffing the world about its so-called "China threat" policy, and warning that China could steal users' data, it has been the world's top source of telecom espionage all the time, added the spokesperson.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has long forced telecom operators such as AT&T and Verizon to provide users' data to it. As early as 10 years ago, the NSA used a "pseudo base station" called "Dirtbox" in monitoring projects such as the "Boundless Informant" program to simulate mobile phone base station signals, and it secretly accessed phones and stole users' data. In this way, the US has stolen data from at least 62.5 million mobile phones in France through "Dirtbox," Hua said, citing a report from the French newspaper Le Monde.

Moreover, Pompeo has repeatedly slandered TikTok, WeChat and other apps as "infiltration" tools of the Chinese government, but he did not tell the world that the US is the habitual criminal that manipulates mobile phone apps to steal secrets. 

According to information disclosed in PRISM, a surveillance program under the NSA, the NSA has long regarded mobile phone apps as "data gold mines". In recent years, it has spent a lot of money in this field to mine data through apps. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, Google Maps and even the mobile game Angry Birds have all been forced to cooperate with it.

Hua further noted that one of the "innovations" of the US intelligence service is to steal secrets from mobile phone app stores. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, the NSA and the intelligence agencies of other members of the Five Eyes Alliance initiated the so-called "Irritant Horn" project, which is to use Google's app store Play Store to plant spyware or exploit program vulnerabilities.

In recent years, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel has exposed the NSA's invasion of the largest submarine optical cable between Europe and Asia, SME4.  A number of optical fiber theft projects code-named Oakstar, Stormbrew, Blarney and Fairview, all initiated by the NSA, have also been exposed by media reports. 

US media outlets have also reported that the true purpose behind the US Navy's all-out effort to upgrade and transform the Jimmy Carter submarine is to facilitate the theft of optical cables.

Moreover, the US State Department's so-called clean internet is nothing but a China-free internet and an ethno-exclusive network, according to an article posted on the US website Intercept. The US policy is nothing but a statement of "If there's going to be a world-spanning surveillance state, it better be made in the US," the report pointed out.

It is also widely reported that Crypto AG, a Swiss encryption firm selling equipment to more than 120 countries for more than half a century, is secretly owned by the CIA. So is the US Stateroom surveillance program revealed by Edward Snowden, in which spying activities are conducted in almost 100 US embassies and consulates worldwide.

 "People should have a minimum of integrity and shame. Faced with these iron-clad facts, I hope that some senior US officials will stop discrediting China immediately," Hua said.