Cyber Attacks and Our Southern Border
by Chris Burgard
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter program – the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever – according to current and former government officials, familiar with the attacks. Former US officials say the attacks originated in China, although they are difficult to track.
Perhaps this doesn’t qualify as an open act of war, but it would be hard to term it “friendly espionage.”
At the same time the Pentagon is fending off cyber attacks from China, Texas ranchers are experiencing the continuing flow of human trafficking from mainland China.
These two individuals were only two of 75 Chinese nationals apprehended in just the Falfurias sector alone, in January of this year. This kind of trafficking has been going on fairly steadily for the past few years, and it isn’t cheap.
One rancher friend of mine sat with a Chinese girl after calling Border Patrol. The rancher gave the Chinese girl water and tried to make her as comfortable as possible for the two hours needed for Border Patrol agents to arrive. Living on a remote South Texas ranch offers unique opportunities for Americans to meet international travelers and connect with them on a human to human level. To pass the time, and although the girl spoke no English, they were able to communicate through a Chinese language application on the rancher’s iPhone. The Chinese girl asked the rancher to call her stateside contacts to inform her family that she was ok. They offered the Texan $20,000 not to hand the girl over to Border Patrol. The rancher declined.
This is not an unusual event for border ranchers. Human trafficking from countries unfriendly to the USA has been the Southern border’s dirty little secret for years.
This is a vast global network. If countries such as China will go to lengths to exploit vulnerabilities in our cyber firewalls, why would they not spend comparable resources to exploit the vulnerabilities in our Southern border?
Chris Burgard
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Tips & Feedback
29 Comments
It is a good thing that our Overseas Contingency Operations are working so well, otherwise we might have to worry that someone whom means us real harm might just come across our southern boarders.
Hell, she'll be voting in the next elections, once in Chinese, once in English, and twice in Chicago !
We had Clinton and Loral giving them satellite secrets to bump their technology years ahead of where they were. Our own Navy showing them everything we had in the arsenal, in an effort to scare them. They went back to their underground sub pen and finished it even quicker. They have seeded our energy grid with a software destruction network that we apparently can't get rid of, and if we did it would be on the front page of the NYT next to the names of the guys that wrote the program to cure the problem. And then Hilary tells them we can skip talking about human rights in the future, because after all those folks don't vote in the US anyway. And the girl from China on the ranch in South Texas, 50% odds that she's military.
In my opinion, it is already too late. There is no doubt people already here (sleeper cells) just waiting to do us harm.
Helping someone escape their country to join their family elsewhere wouldn't qualify as "human trafficking" to me. There is no selling of humans involved — which is what the term implies. They and their labor are still their own to dispense. The border holes are concern enough without adding hyperbole to the problem.
The plight of the unfortunate has many sad storys indeed, been this way through time and memorial, but h/t to the rancher who put principles before schekels. One less cook dishing out the moo goo gai pan at the Happy chans restaurant at 10th & Main.
I share the same view as you. At this point, I just want there to be some damage control.
When I was undercover for the FBI working a Chinese organized crime syndicate/cartel/group whatever you want to call it, I was offered up to $75,000 to help smuggle in Chinese nationals (and no we didn't bring any in). It is certainly a lucrative business for those willing to engage in criminal acts. Thanks Chris for your insights.
The Bush Administration was pretty bad on border security, but Obama's is completely clueless. Thank God for the ranchers standing up for America.
Human trafficking is moving humans for money, Christy, and touchy-feelyness doesn't come into play in the reality of the horrors of the border and the slow, methodical destruction of America's sovereignty. The sheer numbers of people coming here illegally from around the world are a threat to our unity, hence a threat to our survival. We need more stories like this one to put into perspective that this an international assault on our borders and wrest the dialogue from ethno-centric Hispanic organizations who've hypocritically railed against "profiling" while using that same specious tactic to hold hostage illegal immigration as a one-race racial problem. It is a legal issue and must be treated as such. The heart-string pulling can only go so far, as the U.S. cannot take in everyone from around the world capable of presenting a sad-eyed sympathetic image to the press.
If her family could actually afford $20,000 she probably wouldn't be going through Mexico. If the offer for money was real then that rancher probably just saved her from becoming a sex slave somewhere.
$300 Billion and no cybersecurity worth a squatootie to protect the plans…. Hummm… I think there is a problem with this picture… Let's appoint another Czar!! Yeah that's the ticket… I hope this time it's someone who actually understands computer technology. The last appointments weren't so good… I am waiting….
A robust PrivateNet would block attempts and alert to the attack in realtime. Corporations like IBM never have this issue because their networks are extremely well protected and proactively detect hacking attempts. You will never hear about IBM loosing trade secrets to hackers.
So I can't figure out why the DoD is that stupid….
DARPA needs a brain in this area….
It's WAY past time to recognize China for the ENEMY that they have been, are now, and will continue to be. Total effort should be made to create a Chinese revolution from the inside. An over throw of the Communist Party from the new connsumer class. That's why the leadership fears the internet, information is the commie's enemy. Exposure to new ideas and new freedoms can topple the old men in Beijing. Let's start NOW!
What could we possibly have done to deserve th episs poor leadership of the last fifty years? With an exception for Reagan – and even he allowed the 1986 amnesty plan, which was a gross error – we have had nothing but incompetence, arrogance, power mongering, and lies. At this point, we may as well surrender to the Chinese – it's either that or start praying five times a day in the direction of Mecca.
Better start talking to your grandparents, folks and find out how to make it being poor, because that's where this is all headed.
"HATE AND AVOID THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA"
I have a suspicion that the answer is three words: "Roe vs. Wade."
It chills to think that Janet Napolitano, a past governor, a past state attorney general, a united states attorney, an attorney representing Anita Hill, true believing liberal democrat who's reportedly been working border violations and legal issues for over 14 years, is the Secretary of Homeland Security. Having failed to protect the country for years, while casting aspersions on vets, she sits at the head of the one mega-bureaucracy that is supposed to protect our borders. Another 'unifying' choice by Pres Obama. Thank God for the Minutemen and organizations like them.
Good point
Maybe no one is bothering to steal them. IB who?
Hackers have attempting to get into IBM's network literally 100's of thousands of times and never made it even once. How do I know? I helped design and implement their cybersecurity in the 1980's. Even today IBM stands head and shoulders above any other government or corporation ( Including SUN, Microsoft and Apple) when it comes to bulletproofing network security. Never in the history of computing has IBM ever been compromised. Also, the DoJ has been a partner in arresting and prosecuting those who tried.
During a recent interview on CNN DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said, "crossing the border is not a crime per se."
I just love it when jughead Janet says stuff like that. Proves my point that Obama only appoints the incompetent that he can control. So illegal aliens are not criminals? Just undocumented? How about when they work, use a phony SSN and don't pay taxes? Still not criminals? Anyone get a reading from the IRS?
Janet Napolitano is starting to make me miss Janet Reno…
Yeah and cheating on your taxes is not a crime per se, as long as you're a member of the Obama Administration.
180 pounds of pure Reno…..
"shut up! you're lying!"
"I like that song, play it again!"
"stop giving condoms to kids!"
anymore good SNL(will farrel) Janet Reno lines?
Can't wait for the Somali pirates to go on border crossing vacation in the USA.
[...] IMMIGRATION Cyber Attacks and Our Southern Border [...]
You must be logged in to post a comment.