For China activists, hacking attacks a fact of life
Even working on her laptop in Amnesty International's London headquarters or talking on her mobile phone going around the city, Corinna-Barbara Francis suspects Chinese authorities are listening in. At a time when authorities in Beijing are carrying out the most serious crackdown on dissent since Tiananmen Square, the human rights group's China researcher says she simply assumes all her electronic data is already compromised.
Whether or not she is right is almost impossible to know. Beijing angrily denies any suggestions of official complicity in a string of recent high-profile computer hacks including Internet giant Google, which said it traced an attempt illicitly to access accounts of activists and others to China.
"We get dozens of attempts every day -- viruses and worms -- trying to attack our systems," Francis told Reuters, saying many appear to originate in China though proving it was much harder. "I simply assume that everything is being read. I would not keep the name of a particularly sensitive contact on my laptop, send it by e-mail or discuss it by phone."
