Is China Building A Database On Americans?

Washington Post: With a series of major hacks, China builds a database on Americans

China is building massive databases of Americans’ personal information by hacking government agencies and U.S. health-care companies, using a high-tech tactic to achieve an age-old goal of espionage: recruiting spies or gaining more information on an adversary, U.S. officials and analysts say.

Groups of hackers working for the Chinese government have compromised the networks of the Office of Personnel Management, which holds data on millions of current and former federal employees, as well as the health insurance giant Anthem, among other targets, the officials and researchers said.

“They’re definitely going after quite a bit of personnel information,” said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer of ThreatConnect, a Northern Virginia cybersecurity firm. “We suspect they’re using it to understand more about who to target [for espionage], whether electronically or via human ­recruitment.”

WNU Editor: This Washington Post analysis is spot on. If the American government believes that it is important to have a database on Americans (with restrictions of course) .... it would not surprise if the Chinese are thinking the same way (but without the restrictions that the U.S. government has). The advantages to China's intelligence agencies in terms of recruitment or gaining intel on key Americans are too numerous to mention.