Americans, your calls and texts can be monitored by Chinese spies

Last week, the Chinese hacking and spying operation known as “Salt Typhoon” was revealed to have targeted former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, as well as staffers for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and for Congress. The Post has reported that the hackers were able to collect audio and text messages from their targets in a wide-ranging espionage operation, which likely began several months ago.

But what is less well understood, according to six current and former senior U.S. officials I spoke with from both parties, all of whom were briefed by the U.S. intelligence community on the operation, is that the threat is much broader. The Chinese hackers, who the United States believes are linked to Beijing’s Ministry of State Security, have burrowed inside the private wiretapping and surveillance system that American telecom companies built for the exclusive use of U.S. federal law enforcement agencies — and the U.S. government believes they likely continue to have access to the system. Millions of mobile-phone users on the networks of at least three major U.S. carriers could thus be ongoingly vulnerable to Chinese government surveillance.

The U.S. government and the telecom companies that are dealing with the breach have said very little publicly about it since it was first detected in August, leaving the public to rely on details trickling out through leaks. If millions of Americans are vulnerable to Chinese surveillance, they have a right to know now. More information needs to be shared, despite the sensitivity of the issue, the close timing to the election and what remains unknown.

The officials I spoke with, most of whom were not allowed to speak on the record because the hack is being investigated by an interagency team, described a scramble inside the U.S. government to respond to the breach. Several officials told me that targets identified by the intelligence community also include senior U.S. government officials and top business leaders.

https://wapo.st/48xLIhU