Well, it seems that China has fallen foul of its own censorship policies.
There are various reports in the news, including on the BBC News website, about a probe into the age of Chinese competitors in the women’s Olympic gymnastics team, members of which received a collective gold as well as individual medals in various events.
An Olympic competitor must be 16 in the Olympic year but speculation is that some of the Chinese women competitors were only 14. While doubts were raised even before the games began, a hacker under the name of Stryde Hax has uncovered documents on the Internet that indicate that the competitors could be as much as two years under the age stated on their official documents.
When the concerns were raised, many online sources of information were purged, according to reports, such as that on UK IT news source, The Register.
Out of what he referred to as “intellectual curiosity, Hax went looking for some answers. Goggle China turned up nothing but the irony is that cached documents on Baidu, the Chinese domestic search engine, revealed registration documents from 2004 competitions that showed competitors ages and this supported the concerns for age.
The delicious situation that emerges then is that the censored Google was clean and free of all incriminating, or even ambiguous references, while the domestic organ was not so thoroughly censored; rich indeed. I bet somewhere there is an admin that is sweating.
Another delicious instance of egg on face comes from the American Department of Homeland Security. Once again, on the ball news hounds at The Register have reported that phone phreakers were able to find a hole in the PABX telephone system through which they were able to gain access to the telephone system, racking up an impressive $12,000 in call charges to numbers in the Middle East and Asia.
Now, in both of these instances, the groups involved, are well known for their restrictive practices in the name of security and protection. How reassured do people feel when instances such as these two pop up? Not very I’m afraid.
From a technology perspective, it just goes to show that when one sets oneself in the line of fire, one must check that the back door is locked. Phone Phreaking is one of the oldest hacks in the book, and almost obsolete as IP telephony takes over. And as for information censorship, it seems that even those who use such practises seem not to understand the fact that once something has appeared on the Web, it is almost impossible to erase all trace of it.
Neither of the organisations with egg on their faces here would have been unaware of the possibility of such incidents. Therefore one can only assume, and it is an assumption as the full facts of either case are far from clear, that there were lapses that led to the incidents.
In the case of Homeland Security incident, an outside contractor is reported to have left open a hole in the telephone system after maintenance that allowed that attack. One would imagine that a security agency would be more careful about whom it employs to work on its systems.
In the case of the Chinese missing documents, one might assume that the lapse occurred due to a presumption that the ubiquity of such practises would ensure that a domestic organisation would have exercised due diligence.
My wry smile stems from the consequences of the presumptions. If one presumes something was done right, well, Murphy’s Law may strike. If, on the one hand a supposed paragon of security is shown to be sadly lacking in that very area, it is a great irony. If on the other hand, a questionable practise is revealed in all its ‘questionableness’ by its own lapse, well that’s irony even a Alanis Morissette can’t fail to grasp.
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