Tag: United States

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Apple To More Widely Encrypt iCloud Data

Photo by Kartikey Das on Pexels.com

Apple has announced it will begin rolling out new data security protections for Americans by end of 2022, and the rest of the world in 2023. This is a big deal.

One of the biggest, and most serious, gaping holes in the protections that Apple has provided to its users is linked to iCloud. Specifically, while a subset of information has been encrypted such that Apple couldn’t access or disclose the plaintext of communications or content (e.g., Health information, encrypted Apple Notes, etc) the company did not encrypt device backups, message backups, notes generally, iCloud contents, Photos, and more. The result is that third-parties could either compel Apple to disclose information (e.g., by way of warrant) or otherwise subvert Apple’s protections to access stored data (e.g., targeted attacks). Apple’s new security protections will expand the categories of protected data from 141 to 23.

I am very supportive of Apple’s decision and frankly congratulate them on the very real courage that it takes to implement something like this. It is:

  • courageous technically, insofar as this is a challenging thing to pull off at the scale at which Apple operates
  • courageous from a business perspective, insofar as it raises the prospect of unhappy customers should they lose access to their data and Apple unable to assist them
  • courageous legally, insofar as it’s going to inspire a lot of frustration and upset by law enforcement and government agencies around the world

It’ll be absolutely critical to observe how quickly, and how broadly, Apple extends its new security capacities and whether countries are able to pressure Apple to either not deploy them for their residents or roll them back in certain situations. Either way, Apple routinely sets the standard on consumer privacy protections; others in the industry will now be inevitably compared to Apple as either meeting the new standard or failing their own customers in one way or another.

From a Canadian, Australia, or British government point of view, I suspect that Apple’s decision will infuriate law enforcement and security agencies who had placed their hopes on CLOUD Act bilateral agreements to get access to corporate data, such as that held by Apple. Under a CLOUD bilateral British authorities could, as an example, directly serve a judicially authorised order to Apple about a British resident, to get Apple to disclose information back to the British authorities without having to deal with American authorities. It promised to substantially improve the speed at which countries with bilateral agreements could obtain electronic evidence. Now, it would seem, Apple will largely be unable to assist law enforcement and security agencies when it comes to Apple users who have voluntarily enabled heightened data protections. Apple’s decision will, almost certainly, further inspire governments around the world to double down on their efforts to advance anti-encryption legislation and pass such legislation into law.

Notwithstanding the inevitable government gnashing of teeth, Apple’s approach will represent one of the biggest (voluntary) increases in privacy protection for global users since WhatsApp adopted Signal’s underlying encryption protocols. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people who enable the new data protection will be much safer and more secure in how their data is stored while simultaneously restricting who can access that data without individuals’ own knowledge.

In a world where ‘high-profile’ targets are just people who are social influencers on social media, there are a lot of people who stand to benefit from Apple’s courageous move. I only hope that other companies, such as Google, are courageous enough to follow Apple at some point in the near future.

  1. really, 13, given the issue of iMessage backups being accessible to Apple ↩︎
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Generalist Policing Models Remain Problematic

From the New York Time’s opinion section, this piece on“Why the F.B.I. Is so far behind on cybercrime?” reinforces the position that American law enforcement is stymied in investigating cybercrimes because:

…it lacks enough agents with advanced computer skills. It has not recruited as many of these people as it needs, and those it has hired often don’t stay long. Its deeply ingrained cultural standards, some dating to the bureau’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, have prevented it from getting the right talent.

Emblematic of an organization stuck in the past is the F.B.I.’s longstanding expectation that agents should be able to do “any job, anywhere.” While other global law enforcement agencies have snatched up computer scientists, the F.B.I. tried to turn existing agents with no computer backgrounds into digital specialists, clinging to the “any job” mantra. It may be possible to turn an agent whose background is in accounting into a first-rate gang investigator, but it’s a lot harder to turn that same agent into a top-flight computer scientist.

The “any job” mantra also hinders recruitment. People who have spent years becoming computer experts may have little interest in pivoting to another assignment. Many may lack the aptitude for — or feel uneasy with — traditional law enforcement expectations, such as being in top physical fitness, handling a deadly force scenario or even interacting with the public.

This very same issue plagues the RCMP, which also has a generalist model that discourages or hinders specialization. While we do see better business practices in, say, France, with an increasing LEA capacity to pursue cybercrime, we’re not yet seeing North American federal governments overhaul their own policing services.1

Similarly, the FBI is suffering from an ‘arrest’ culture:

The F.B.I.’s emphasis on arrests, which are especially hard to come by in ransomware cases, similarly reflects its outdated approach to cybercrime. In the bureau, prestige often springs from being a successful trial agent, working on cases that result in indictments and convictions that make the news. But ransomware cases, by their nature, are long and complex, with a low likelihood of arrest. Even when suspects are identified, arresting them is nearly impossible if they’re located in countries that don’t have extradition agreements with the United States.

In the Canadian context, not only is pursuing to arrest a problem due to jurisdiction, the complexity of cases can mean an officer spends huge amounts of time on a computer, and not out in the field ‘doing the work’ of their colleagues who are not cyber-focused. This perception of just ‘playing games’ or ‘surfing social media’ can sometimes lead to challenges between cyber investigators and older-school leaders.2 And, making things even more challenging is that the resources to train to detect and pursue Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) are relatively plentiful, whereas economic and non-CSAM investigations tend to be severely under resourced.

Though there is some hope coming for Canadian investigators, by way of CLOUD agreements between the Canadian and American governments, and the updates to the Cybercrime Convention, both will require updates to criminal law as well as potentially provincial privacy laws to empower LEAs with expanded powers. And, even with access to more American data that enables investigations this will not solve the arrest challenges when criminals are operating out of non-extradition countries.

It remains to be seen whether an expanded capacity to issue warrants to American providers will reduce some of the Canadian need for specialized training to investigate more rudimentary cyber-related crimes or if, instead, it will have a minimum effect overall.

  1. This is also generally true to provincial and municipal services as well. ↩︎
  2. Fortunately this is a less common issue, today, than a decade ago. ↩︎
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National Security Means What, Again?

There have been any number of concerns about Elon Musk’s behaviour, and especially in the recent weeks and months. This has led some commentators to warn that his purchase of Twitter may raise national security risks. Gill and Lehrich try to make this argument in their article, “Elon Musk Owning Twitter is A National Security Threat.” They give three reasons:

First, Musk is allegedly in communication with foreign actors – including senior officials in the Kremlin and Chinese Communist Party – who could use his acquisition of Twitter to undermine American national security.

…

Will Musk’s foreign investors have influence over Twitter’s content moderation policies? Will the Chinese exploit their significant leverage over Musk to demand he censor criticism of the CCP, or turn the dials up for posts that sow distrust in democracy?

…

Finally, it’s not just America’s information ecosystem that’s at stake, it’s also the private data of American citizens.

It’s worth noting that at no point do the authors provide a definition for ‘national security’, which causes the reader to have to guess what they likely mean. More broadly, in journalistic and opinion circle communities there is a curious–and increasingly common–conjoining of national security and information security. The authors themselves make this link in the kicker paragraph of their article, when they write

It is imperative that American leaders fully understand Musk’s motives, financing, and loyalties amidst his bid to acquire Twitter – especially given the high-stakes geopolitical reality we are living in now. The fate of American national security and our information ecosystem hang in the balance.1

Information security, generally, is focused on dangers which are associated with true or false information being disseminated across a population. It is distinguished from cyber security, and which is typically focused on the digital security protocols and practices that are designed to reduce technical computer vulnerabilities. Whereas the former focuses on a public’s mind the latter attends to how their digital and physical systems are hardened from being technically exploited.

Western governments have historically resisted authoritarian governments attempts to link the concepts of information security and cyber security. The reason is that authoritarian governments want to establish international principles and norms, whereby it becomes appropriate for governments to control the information which is made available to their publics under the guise of promoting ‘cyber security’. Democratic countries that emphasise the importance of intellectual freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and other core rights have historically been opposed to promoting information security norms.

At the same time, misinformation and disinformation have become increasingly popular areas of study and commentary, especially following Donald Trump’s election as POTUS. And, in countries like the United States, Trump’s adoption of lies and misinformation was often cast as a national security issue: correct information should be communicated, and efforts to intentionally communicate false information should be blocked, prohibited, or prevented from massively circulating.

Obviously Trump’s language, actions, and behaviours were incredibly destabilising and abominable for an American president. And his presence on the world stage arguably emboldened many authoritarians around the world. But there is a real risk in using terms like ‘national security’ without definition, especially when the application of ‘national security’ starts to stray into the domain of what could be considered information security. Specifically, as everything becomes ‘national security’ it is possible for authoritarian governments to adopt the language of Western governments and intellectuals, and assert that they too are focused on ‘national security’ whereas, in fact, these authoritarian governments are using the term to justify their own censorious activities.

Now, does this mean that if we are more careful in the West about our use of language that authoritarian governments will become less censorious? No. But being more careful and thoughtful in our language, public argumentation, and positioning of our policy statements we may at least prevent those authoritarian governments from using our discourse as a justification for their own activities. We should, then, be careful and precise in what we say to avoid giving a fig leaf of cover to authoritarian activities.

And that will start by parties who use terms like ‘national security’ clearly defining what they mean, such that it is clear how national security is different from informational security. Unless, of course, authors and thinkers are in fact leaning into the conceptual apparatus of repressive governments in an effort to save democratic governance. For any author who thinks such a move is wise, however, I must admit that I harbour strong doubts of the efficacy or utility of such attempts.

  1. Emphasis not in original. ↩︎
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Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX)

CISA has a neat bit of work they recently published, entitled “Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) – Status Justifications” (warning: opens to .pdf.).1 Product security teams that adopt VEX could assert the status of specific vulnerabilities in their products. As a result, clients’ security staff could allocate time to remediate actionable vulnerabilities instead of burning time on potential vulnerabilities that product security teams have already closed off or mitigated.

There are a number of different machine-readable status types that are envisioned, including:

  • Component_not_present
  • Vulnerable_code_not_present
  • Vulnerable_code_cannot_be_controlled_by_adversary
  • Vulnerable_code_not_in_execute_path
  • Inline_mitigations_already_exist

CISA’s publication spells out what each status entails in more depth and includes diagrams to help readers understand what is envisioned. However, those same readers need to pay attention to a key caveat, namely, “[t]his document will not address chained attacks involving future or unknown risks as it will be considered out of scope.” Put another way, VEX is used to assess known vulnerabilities and attacks. It should not be relied upon to predict potential threats based on not-yet-public attacks nor new ways of chaining known vulnerabilities. Thus, while it would be useful to ascertain if a product is vulnerable to EternalBlue, today, it would not be useful to predict or assess the exploited vulnerabilities prior to EternalBlue having been made public nor new or novel ways of exploiting the vulnerabilities underlying EternalBlue. In effect, then, VEX is meant to address the known risks associated with N-Days as opposed to risks linked with 0-Days or novel ways of exploiting N-Days.2

For VEX to best work there should be some kind of surrounding policy requirements, such as when/if a supplier falsely (as opposed to incorrectly) asserts the security properties of its product there should be some disciplinary response. This can take many forms and perhaps the easiest relies on economics and not criminal sanction: federal governments or major companies will decline to do business with a vendor found to have issued a deceptive VEX, and may have financial recourse based on contactual terms with the product’s vendor. When or if this economic solution fails then it might be time to turn to legal venues and, if existent approaches prove insufficient, potentially even introduce new legislation designed to further discipline bad actors. However, as should be apparent, there isn’t a demonstrable requirement to introduce legislation to make VEX actionable.

I think that VEX continues work under the current American administration to advance a number of good policies that are meant to better secure products and systems. VEX works hand-in-hand with SBOMs and, also, may be supported by US Executive Orders around cybersecurity.

While Canada may be ‘behind’ the United States we can see that things are potentially shifting. There is currently a consultation underway to regenerate Canada’s cybersecurity strategy and infrastructure security legislation was introduced just prior to Parliament rising for its summer break. Perhaps, in a year’s time, we’ll see stronger and bolder efforts by the Canadian government to enhance infrastructure security with some small element of that recommending the adoption of VEXes. At the very least the government won’t be able to say they lack the legislative tools or strategic direction to do so.

  1. You can access a locally hosted version if the CISA link fails. ↩︎
  2. For a nice discussion of why N-days are regularly more dangerous then 0-Days, see: “N-Days: The Overlooked Cyber Threat for Utilities.” ↩︎
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A Brief Unpacking of a Declaration on the Future of the Internet

Cameron F. Kerry has a helpful piece in Brookings that unpacks the recently published ‘Declaration on the Future of the Internet.’ As he explains, the Declaration was signed by 60 States and is meant, in part, to rebut a China-Russia joint statement. Those countries’ statement would support their positions on ‘securing’ domestic Internet spaces and removing Internet governance from multi-stakeholder forums to State-centric ones.

So far, so good. However, baked into the Kerry’s article is language suggesting that either he misunderstands, or understates, some of the security-related elements of the Declaration. He writes:

There are additional steps the U.S. government can take that are more within its control than the actions and policies of foreign states or international organizations. The future of the Internet declaration contains a series of supporting principles and measures on freedom and human rights, Internet governance and access, and trust in use of digital network technology. The latter—trust in the use of network technology— is included to “ensure that government and relevant authorities’ access to personal data is based in law and conducted in accordance with international human rights law” and to “protect individuals’ privacy, their personal data, the confidentiality of electronic communications and information on end-users’ electronic devices, consistent with the protection of public safety and applicable domestic and international law.” These lay down a pair of markers for the U.S. to redeem.

I read this, against the 2019 Ministerial and recent Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention updates, and see that a vast swathe of new law enforcement and security agency powers would be entirely permissible based on Kerry’s assessment of the Declaration and States involved in signing it. While these new powers have either been agreed to, or advanced by, signatory States they have simultaneously been directly opposed by civil and human rights campaigners, as well as some national courts. Specifically, there are live discussions around the following powers:

  • the availability of strong encryption;
  • the guarantee that the content of communications sent using end-to-end encrypted devices cannot be accessed or analyzed by third-parties (include by on-device surveillance);
  • the requirement of prior judicial authorization to obtain subscriber information; and
  • the oversight of preservation and production powers by relevant national judicial bodies.

Laws can be passed that see law enforcement interests supersede individuals’ or communities’ rights in safeguarding their devices, data, and communications from the State. When or if such a situation occurs, the signatories of the Declaration can hold fast in their flowery language around protecting rights while, at the same time, individuals and communities experience heightened surveillance of, and intrusions into, their daily lives.

In effect, a lot of international policy and legal infrastructure has been built to facilitate sweeping new investigatory powers and reforms to how data is, and can be, secured. It has taken years to build this infrastructure and as we leave the current stage of the global pandemic it is apparent that governments have continued to press ahead with their efforts to expand the powers which could be provided to law enforcement and security agencies, notwithstanding the efforts of civil and human rights campaigners around the world.

The next stage of things will be to asses how, and in what ways, international agreements and legal infrastructure will be brought into national legal systems and to determine where to strategically oppose the worst of the over reaches. While it’s possible that some successes are achieved in resisting the expansions of state powers not everything will be resisted. The consequence will be both to enhance state intrusions into private lives as well as to weaken the security provided to devices and data, with the resultant effect of better enabling criminals to illicitly access or manipulate our personal information.

The new world of enhanced surveillance and intrusions is wholly consistent with the ‘Declaration on the Future of the Internet.’ And that’s a big, glaring, and serious problem with the Declaration.

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Chinese Spies Accused of Using Huawei in Secret Australia Telecom Hack

Bloomberg has an article that discusses how Chinese spies were allegedly involved in deploying implants on Huawei equipment which was operated in Australia and the United States. The key parts of the story include:

At the core of the case, those officials said, was a software update from Huawei that was installed on the network of a major Australian telecommunications company. The update appeared legitimate, but it contained malicious code that worked much like a digital wiretap, reprogramming the infected equipment to record all the communications passing through it before sending the data to China, they said. After a few days, that code deleted itself, the result of a clever self-destruct mechanism embedded in the update, they said. Ultimately, Australia’s intelligence agencies determined that China’s spy services were behind the breach, having infiltrated the ranks of Huawei technicians who helped maintain the equipment and pushed the update to the telecom’s systems. 

Guided by Australia’s tip, American intelligence agencies that year confirmed a similar attack from China using Huawei equipment located in the U.S., six of the former officials said, declining to provide further detail.

The details from the story are all circa 2012. The fact that Huawei equipment was successfully being targeted by these operations, in combination with the large volume of serious vulnerabilities in Huawei equipment, contributed to the United States’ efforts to bar Huawei equipment from American networks and the networks of their closest allies.1

Analysis

We can derive a number of conclusions from the Bloomberg article, as well as see links between activities allegedly undertaken by the Chinese government and those of Western intelligence agencies.

To begin, it’s worth noting that the very premise of the article–that the Chinese government needed to infiltrate the ranks of Huawei technicians–suggests that circa 2012 Huawei was not controlled by, operated by, or necessarily unduly influenced by the Chinese government. Why? Because if the government needed to impersonate technicians to deploy implants, and do so without the knowledge of Huawei’s executive staff, then it’s very challenging to say that the company writ large (or its executive staff) were complicit in intelligence operations.

Second, the Bloomberg article makes clear that a human intelligence (HUMINT) operation had to be conducted in order to deploy the implants in telecommunications networks, with data then being sent back to servers that were presumably operated by Chinese intelligence and security agencies. These kinds of HUMINT operations can be high-risk insofar because if operatives are caught then the whole operation (and its surrounding infrastructure) can be detected and burned down. Building legends for assets is never easy, nor is developing assets if they are being run from a distance as opposed to spies themselves deploying implants.2

Third, the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) has conducted similar if not identical operations when its staff interdicted equipment while it was being shipped, in order to implant the equipment before sending it along to its final destination. Similarly, the CIA worked for decades to deliberately provide cryptographically-sabotaged equipment to diplomatic facilities around the world. All of which is to say that multiple agencies have been involved in using spies or assets to deliberately compromise hardware, including Western agencies.

Fourth, the Canadian Communications Security Establish Act (‘CSE Act’), which was passed into law in 2019, includes language which authorizes the CSE to do, “anything that is reasonably necessary to maintain the covert nature of the [foreign intelligence] activity” (26(2)(c)). The language in the CSE Act, at a minimum, raises the prospect that the CSE could undertake operations which parallel those of the NSA and, in theory, the Chinese government and its intelligence and security services.3

Of course, the fact that the NSA and other Western agencies have historically tampered with telecommunications hardware to facilitate intelligence collection doesn’t take away from the seriousness of the allegations that the Chinese government targeted Huawei equipment so as to carry out intelligence operations in Australia and the United States. Moreover, the reporting in Bloomberg covers a time around 2012 and it remains unclear whether the relationship(s) between the Chinese government and Huawei have changed since then; it is possible, though credible open source evidence is not forthcoming to date, that Huawei has since been captured by the Chinese state.

Takeaway

The Bloomberg article strongly suggests that Huawei, as of 2012, didn’t appear captured by the Chinese government given the government’s reliance on HUMINT operations. Moreover, and separate from the article itself, it’s important that readers keep in mind that the activities which were allegedly carried out by the Chinese government were (and remain) similar to those also carried out by Western governments and their own security and intelligence agencies. I don’t raise this latter point as a kind of ‘whataboutism‘ but, instead, to underscore that these kinds of operations are both serious and conducted by ‘friendly’ and adversarial intelligence services alike. As such, it behooves citizens to ask whether these are the kinds of activities we want our governments to be conducting on our behalves. Furthermore, we need to keep these kinds of facts in mind and, ideally, see them in news reporting to better contextualize the operations which are undertaken by domestic and foreign intelligence agencies alike.

  1. While it’s several years past 2012, the 2021 UK HCSEC report found that it continued “to uncover issues that indicate there has been no overall improvement over the course of 2020 to meet the product software engineering and cyber security quality expected by the NCSC.” (boldface in original) ↩︎
  2. It is worth noting that, post-2012, the Chinese government has passed national security legislation which may make it easier to compel Chinese nationals to operate as intelligence assets, inclusive of technicians who have privileged access to telecommunications equipment that is being maintained outside China. That having been said, and as helpfully pointed out by Graham Webster, this case demonstrates that the national security laws were not needed in order to use human agents or assets to deploy implants. ↩︎
  3. There is a baseline question of whether the CSE Act created new powers for the CSE in this regard or if, instead, it merely codified existing secret policies or legal interpretations which had previously authorized the CSE to undertake covert activities in carrying out its foreign signals intelligence operations. ↩︎
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Mandatory Patching of Serious Vulnerabilities in Government Systems

Photo by Mati Mango on Pexels.com

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is responsible for building national capacity to defend American infrastructure and cybersecurity assets. In the past year they have been tasked with receiving information about American government agencies’ progress (or lack thereof) in implementing elements of Executive Order 14028: Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity and have been involved in responses to a number of events, including Solar Winds, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, and others. The Executive Order required that CISA first collect a large volume of information from government agencies and vendors alike to assess the threats towards government infrastructure and, subsequently, to provide guidance concerning cloud services, track the adoption of multi factor authentication and seek ways of facilitating its implementation, establish a framework to respond to security incidents, enhance CISA’s threat hunting abilities in government networks, and more.1

Today, CISA promulgated a binding operational directive that will require American government agencies to adopt more aggressive patch tempos for vulnerabilities. In addition to requiring agencies to develop formal policies for remediating vulnerabilities it establishes a requirement that vulnerabilities with a common vulnerabilities and exposure ID be remediated within 6 months, and all others with two weeks. Vulnerabilities to be patched/remediated are found in CISA’s “Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogue.”

It’s notable that while patching is obviously preferred, the CISA directive doesn’t mandate patching but that ‘remediation’ take place.2 As such, organizations may be authorized to deploy defensive measures that will prevent the vulnerability from being exploited but not actually patch the underlying vulnerability, so as to avoid a patch having unintended consequences for either the application in question or for other applications/services that currently rely on either outdated or bespoke programming interfaces.

In the Canadian context, there aren’t equivalent levels of requirements that can be placed on Canadian federal departments. While Shared Services Canada can strongly encourage departments to patch, and the Treasury Board Secretariat has published a “Patch Management Guidance” document, and Canada’s Canadian Centre for Cyber Security has a suggested patch deployment schedule,3 final decisions are still made by individual departments by their respective deputy minister under the Financial Administration Act.

The Biden administration is moving quickly to accelerate its ability to identify and remediate vulnerabilities while simultaneously lettings its threat intelligence staff track adversaries in American networks. That last element is less of an issue in the Canadian context but the first two remain pressing and serious challenges.

While its positive to see the Americans moving quickly to improve their security positions I can only hope that the Canadian federal, and provincial, governments similarly clear long-standing logjams that delegate security decisions to parties who may be ill-suited to make optimal decisions, either out of ignorance or because patching systems is seen as secondary to fulfilling a given department’s primary service mandate.

  1. For a discussion of the Executive Order, see: “Initial Thoughts on Biden’s Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity” or “Everything You Need to Know About the New Executive Order on Cybersecurity.” ↩︎
  2. For more, see CISA’s “Vulnerability Remediation Requirements“. ↩︎
  3. “CCCS’s deployment schedule only suggests timelines for deployment. In actuality, an organization should take into consideration risk tolerance and exposure to a given vulnerability and associated attack vector(s) as part of a risk‑based approach to patching, while also fully considering their individual threat profile. Patch management tools continue to improve the efficiency of the process and enable organizations to hasten the deployment schedule.” Source: “Patch Management Guidance” ↩︎
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The Lawfare Dimension of Asymetrical Conflict

The past week has seen a logjam begin to clear in Canadian-Chinese-American international relations. After agreeing to the underlying facts associated with her (and Huawei’s) violation of American sanctions that have been placed on Iran, Meng Wanzhou was permitted to return to China after having been detained in Canada for several years. Simultaneously, two Canadian nationals who had been charged with national security crimes were themselves permitted to return to Canada on health-related grounds. The backstory is that these Canadians were seized shortly following the detainment of Huawei’s CFO, with the Chinese government repeatedly making clear that the Canadians were being held hostage and would only be released when the CFO was repatriated to China.

A huge amount of writing has taken place following the swap. But what I’ve found to be particular interesting in terms of offering a novel contribution to the discussions was an article by Julian Ku in Lawfare. In his article, “China’s Successful Foray Into Asymmetric Lawfare,” Ku argues that:

Although Canadians are relieved that their countrymen have returned home, the Chinese government’s use of its own weak legal system to carry out “hostage diplomacy,” combined with Meng’s exploitation of the procedural protections of the strong and independent Canadian and U.S. legal systems, may herald a new “asymmetric lawfare” strategy to counter the U.S. This strategy may prove an effective counter to the U.S. government’s efforts to use its own legal system to enforce economic sanctions, root out Chinese espionage, indict Chinese hackers, or otherwise counter the more assertive and threatening Chinese government.

I remain uncertain that this baseline premise, which undergirds the rest of his argument, holds true. In particular, his angle of analysis seems to set to the side, or not fully engage with, the following:

  1. China’s hostage taking has further weakened the trust that foreign companies will have in the Chinese government. They must now acknowledge, and build into their risk models, the possibility that their executives or employees could be seized should the Chinese government get into a diplomatic, political, or economic dispute with the country from which they operate.
  2. China’s blatant hostage taking impairs its world standing and has led to significant parts of the world shifting their attitudes towards the Chinese government. The results of these shifts are yet to be fully seen, but to date there have been doubts about entering into trade agreements with China, an increased solidarity amongst middle powers to resist what is seen as bad behaviour by China, and a push away from China and into the embrace of liberal democratic governments. This last point, in particular, runs counter to China’s long-term efforts to showcase its own style of governance as a genuine alternative to American and European models of democracy.
  3. Despite what has been written, I think that relying on hostage diplomacy associated with its weak rule of law showcases China’s comparatively weak hand. Relying on low rule of law to undertake lawfare endangers its international strategic interests, which rely on building international markets and being treated as a respectable and reputable partner on the world stage. Resorting to kidnapping impairs the government’s ability to demonstrate compliance with international agreements and fora so as to build out its international policies.

Of course, none of the above discounts the fact that the Chinese government did, in fact, exploit this ‘law asymmetry’ between its laws and those of high rule of law countries. And the Canadian government did act under duress as a result of their nationals having been taken hostage, including becoming a quiet advocate for Chinese interests insofar as Canadian diplomats sought a way for the US government to reach a compromise with Huawei/Meng so that Canada’s nationals could be returned home. And certainly the focus on relying on high rule of law systems can delay investigations into espionage or other illicit foreign activities and operations that are launched by the Chinese government. Nevertheless, neither the Canadian or American legal systems actually buckled under the foreign and domestic pressure to set aside the rule of law in favour of quick political ‘fixes.’

While there will almost certainly be many years of critique in Canada and the United States about how this whole affair was managed the fact will remain that both countries demonstrated that their justice systems would remain independent from the political matters of the day. And they did so despite tremendous pressure: from Trump, during his time as the president, and despite the Canadian government being subjected to considerable pressure campaigns by numerous former government officials who were supportive, for one reason or another, of the Chinese government’s position to return Huawei’s CFO.

While it remains to be written what the actual, ultimate, effect of this swap of Huawei’s CFO for two inappropriately detained Canadians will be, some lasting legacies may include diminished political capital for the Chinese government while, at the same time, a reinforcing of the trust that can be put in the American and Canadian (and, by extension, Western democratic) systems of justice. Should these legacies hold then China’s gambit will almost certainly prove to have backfired.

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Operation Fox Hunt

(Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels.com)

ProPublica’s Sebastian Rotella and Kirsten Berg have an outstanding piece on the Chinese government’s efforts to compel individuals to return to China to face often trumped up charges. Efforts include secretly sending Chinese officials into the United States to surveil, harass, intimidate, and stalk residents of the United States, and also imprisoning or otherwise threatening residents’ family member who have remained in China.

Many of the details in the article are the result of court records, interviews, and assessments of Chinese media. It remains to be seen whether Chinese agents’ abilities to conduct ‘fox hunts’ will be impeded now that the US government is more aware of these operations. Given the attention and suspicion now cast towards citizens of China, however, there is also a risk that FBI agents may become overzealous in their investigations to the detriment of law-abiding Chinese-Americans or visitors from China.

In an ideal world there would be equivalent analyses or publications on the extent to which these operations are also undertaken in Canada. To date, however, there is no equivalent to ProPublica’s piece in the Canadian media landscape and given the Canadian media’s contraction we can’t realistically expect anything, anytime soon. However, even a short piece which assessed whether individuals from China who’ve run operations in the United States, and who are now barred from entering the US or would face charges upon crossing the US border, are similarly barred or under an extradition order in Canada would be a positive addition to what we know of how the Canadian government is responding to these kinds of Chinese operations.

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Alarmist Takes On Chinese Influence Operations Must Be Set Aside

Lotus Ruan and Gabrielle Lim have a terrific piece in Just Security ‌which strongly makes the case that, “fears of Chinese disinformation are often exaggerated by overblown assessments of the effects of China’s propaganda campaigns and casually drawn attributions.”

The two make clear that there are serious issues with how some Western policy analysts and politicians are suggesting that their governments respond to foreign influence operations that are associated with Chinese public and private parties. To begin, the very efficacy of influence operations remains mired in questions. While this is an area that is seeing more research of late, academics and policy analysts alike cannot assert with significant accuracy whether foreign influence operations have any real impact on domestic opinions or feelings. This should call for conservatism in the policies which are advanced but, instead, we often see calls for Western nations to adopt the internet ‘sovereignty’ positions championed by Russia and China themselves. These analysts and politicians are, in other words, asserting that they only way to be safe from China (and Russia) is to adopt those countries’ own policies.

Even were such (bad) policies adopted, it’s unclear that they would resolve the worst challenges facing countries such as the United States today. Anti-vaxxers, pro-coup supporters, and Big Lie advocates have all been affected by domestic influence operations that were (and are) championed by legitimately elected politicians, celebrities, and major media personalities. Building a sovereign internet ecosystem will do nothing to protect from the threats that are inside the continental United States and which are clearly having a deleterious effect on American society.

What I think I most appreciated in the piece by Ruan and Lim is that they frankly and directly called out many of the so-called solutions to disinformation and influence operations as racist. As just one example, there are those who call for ‘clean’ technologies that juxtapose Western against non-Western technologies. These kinds of arguments often directly perpetuate racist policies; they will not only do nothing to mitigate the spread of misinformation but will simultaneously cast suspicion and violence towards non-Caucasian members of society. Such proposals must be resisted and the authors are to be congratulated for directly and forcefully calling out the policies for what they are instead of carefully critiquing the proposals without actually calling them as racist as they are.