George Clooney: The New Ethics of Satellite Surveillance

George Clooney believes that he has found evidence of the Sudanese government murdering its own citizens.

Using images from space satellites, the Hollywood actor, with help from the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), documented crimes against humanity taking place in sub-Saharan Africa.

"It is absolutely without question a war crime that we saw firsthand," the actor told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while presenting his findings on Wednesday.

While Clooney's efforts are patently good, are they ethical?

No project like this has ever been done before, and so Clooney and his partners are making the rules as they go, albeit rules within the strictures of international law.

SSP is a collaboration between the non-profit Enough Project, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and DigitalGlobe Inc. (NYSE: DG), a publicly-traded space imagery company. The whole enterprise is funded by Clooney and his Not on Our Watch organization.

"This is a collaboration that in itself is revolutionary. No one could do it alone," said Nathaniel Raymond, the Director of Operations for the SSP.

Using field reporting from the Enough Project and DigitalGlobe's satellite images, which are directed and interpreted by Harvard, SSP monitors what it sees as an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan that started with the Second Civil War in 1983, bred the genocide in Darfur and essentially continued uninterrupted as it developed into the ethnic conflict surrounding South Sudan's independence.

Google Warning Gmail users on China Spying Attempts

Google is using automated warnings to alert users of its GMAIL messaging service about wide spread attempts to access personal mail accounts that may indicate wholesale spying by the Chinese government. The victims include one leading privacy activist.

Warnings began appearing when users logged onto GMAIL on Thursday, according to Twitter posts from scores of GMAIL users. Upon accessing their accounts, users encountered a red banner reading "Your account was recently accessed from China," and providing a list of IP addresses used to access the account.

Users were then encouraged to change their password immediately. Based on Twitter posts, there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the accounts that were accessed, though one target is a prominent privacy rights activist in the UK who has spoken out against the Chinese government's censorship of its citizens.

Alexander Hanff of Privacy International in the UK said he saw the warning when he accessed a GMAIL account this morning. Hanff set up the personal account, which Hanff created in 2005 when he operated the Torrent Web site DVDR-Core, an early target of the Motion Picture Association of America in its battle to stop copyright piracy.

Hanff said he immediately changed the password, at Google's suggestion, and said the attempts to access his account from China were recent - occurring within the past couple months.

He only rarely accesses the account and does not use it for e-mail related to his work for Privacy International. Still, he said the account is easily discoverable online for those looking to contact him via e-mail, which might have made it a target.

However, a survey of other GMAIL users who were warned suggests that the China-based attacks were widespread and lacked a clear pattern. Andrew Turnbull, editor of The Extraordinary Marketing Blog and a recent business school graduate from Alberta, Canada was one.

Others included media consultants, doctors and gamers from the U.S., Canada, Columbia and countries in Europe - most without any clear personal or professional connection to China. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hanff, of Privacy International, said he believed the attack on his account was random, not targeted at him as a privacy rights advocate. Those who accessed his account wouldn't have had access to any sensitive information related to his work for Privacy International, but would have found "a hell of a lot of spam," Hanff said.

However, he acknowledges that he may have come to the attention of the Chinese Government after a speech he gave at a EU-China Human Rights Network seminar that was attended by high level Chinese government officials. Hanff said he spoke about issues such as freedom of speech, differences between Europe and China and China's record of suppressing free speech.

Google and its GMAIL messaging system, along with the networks of other high profile U.S. and European firms, were known to have been compromised by attackers believed to be affiliated with the Chinese Military.

Those attacks, code named "Aurora" temporarily caused a rift in relations between the search giant and the Chinese government, with Google suspending all filtering of its search results in China. Recently, experts have warned that a new round of attacks similar to the original Aurora attacks had been detected, though its unclear if the e-mail hacking is related to that wave of activity.

Aston Martin DB5 for sale: One careful spy

The 1964 Aston Martin DB5 which was driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger and Thunderball, and which is expected to make around £3.5 million when it is sold at auction in October

China: Ramps up Cyberwar against USA

A US government report warned Thursday that China is sharply stepping up espionage against the United States as the rising Asian power invests in cyber warfare and grows more sophisticated in recruiting spies.

"China is changing the way that espionage is being done," said Carolyn Bartholomew, the chair of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

In its wide-ranging annual report to Congress, the commission reported a steep rise in the disruption and infiltration of websites of the US government and perceived Beijing rivals such as Tibet's exiled leader the Dalai Lama.

Colonel Gary McAlum, a senior military officer, told the commission the US Defense Department detected 54,640 malicious cyber incidents to its systems in 2008, a 20 percent rise from a year earlier. The figure is on track to jump another 60 percent this year.

While the attacks came from around the world, the commission said China was the largest culprit. Some Chinese "patriotic hackers" may not receive official support, but the report said the government likely planned to deploy them in a conflict to disrupt a foreign adversary's computers.

The bipartisan commission found that China was the most aggressive nation in spying on the United States and was trying to recruit more American spies.

While China historically tried to tap Chinese Americans -- believing, often incorrectly, that they would be sympathetic -- it was now turning to the Soviet model of seeking to bribe informants with cash and gifts, the report said.

It said the Chinese were expanding "false flag" operations, in which sources are deceived into thinking they are providing information elsewhere.

It pointed to the case of Tai Shen Kuo, a furniture salesman in New Orleans arrested last year after persuading two retired US military officials to give sensitive information by telling them it was headed to Taiwan, not mainland China.

The commission also found that China has launched an effort to influence US think-tanks and academia by rewarding scholars with access and depriving visas to more critical voices.

"It becomes self-censorship. If you're in graduate school and want to become a China scholar, you need to go to China. And if you criticize the Chinese government on certain things, you won't get in," said Bartholomew, a former top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"What it means is that we have a generation of China analysts who are being created who don't necessarily have the freedom or the ability to think through a broader range of questions," she said.

The commission also criticized China on its trade policy, recommending that the United States press Beijing to make its yuan more flexible and to turn to the World Trade Organization to fight what it termed predatory trade practices.

Shortly after the release of the report, two lawmakers called for an investigation into China's "currency manipulation," which would set the stage for slapping import duties on Chinese goods.

President Barack Obama this week paid his first visit to China, which is now the top holder of the ballooning US debt. His administration has sought cooperation with China on battling the global slowdown.

The commission paid a field trip to Rochester in upstate New York, where it said core industries such as machine tools, auto parts and optoelectronics were struggling against Chinese competition that often enjoys state support.

"For 20 years we have watched China policy be controlled really by a handful of large multinational corporations. They're the ones who determine the interests," Bartholomew said.

"But there are a lot of constituency interests out there -- particularly small and medium-sized enterprises -- that are being hurt by the current US-China policy," she said.

Separately, the report recommended that the United States "continue to work with Taiwan to modernize its armed forces," saying China was rapidly expanding its military advantage despite easing tensions with the island.

The Obama administration has yet to decide on Taiwan's requests to buy arms, including F-16 jet fighters. Such a step would almost certainly anger China, which considers the island its territory.