By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--August 11, 2015
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China's cyber spies have accessed the private emails of "many" top Obama administration officials, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official and a top secret document obtained by NBC News, and have been doing so since at least April 2010. The email grab -- first codenamed "Dancing Panda" by U.S. officials, and then "Legion Amethyst" -- was detected in April 2010, according to a top secret NSA briefing from 2014. The intrusion into personal emails was still active at the time of the briefing and, according to the senior official, is still going on.
In 2011, Google disclosed that the private gmail accounts of some U.S. officials had been compromised, but the briefing shows that private email accounts from other providers were compromised as well. The senior official says the private emails of "all top national security and trade officials" were targeted.According to the briefing, the time period during which these hacks were taking place overlaps the time when Hillary was serving as Secretary of State. So far, the NSA has refused to release a list of effected individuals, but you can bet that "all top national security and trade officials" would include Obama's top diplomat. So, while we sit around wondering what was contained in the massive wad of 30,000 "personal" emails Hillary erased, it's entirely possible that the Chinese government is sitting around reading them. Hey, NBC News, what would have happened if Hillary had just used her government account?
The government email accounts assigned to the officials, however, were not hacked because they are more secure, says the senior U.S. intelligence official.Oh. OK. Good to know.
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