Twas pure coincidence that as I was writing Mondays story onthe local spook/defence/media industries having little faith in Australia but lots of self-interest in promoting Sinophobia, journalists at the ABC andAustralian Financial Reviewwere belting their keyboards over another alleged Chinese spying outrage.

Chinas hybrid war: Beijings mass surveillance of Australia and the world for secrets and scandalheadlined the ABC.

The_AFR_went at it every which way, from Chinas social media warfare database lists key Australians to providing a sample 120 names listed under the tease headline_Are you in Chinas social warfare database_? a sort of random not-particularly-Rich-List, complete with a photograph of someone from the_AFR_s Young Rich List.

The irony of this in a publication big on compiling databases of people seems to have been lost.

The story boils down to a Chinese company, Zhenhua Data, combing the internet to build a database of 2.4 million peoples personal information, including some 35,000 Australians which means it is a wee fraction of the width and depth of the Google and Facebook databases, never mind what the US National Security Agency holds.

Heavens, eventhe old ASIO is alleged to have opened files on more than half a million Australians.

Bernard Keane, someone known to not take the local security establishment at face value, ran a story in_Crikey_onthe double standards on displayand nailed this tweet:

The Zhenhua Data story is so fascinating not for the story itself, rather how pretty much every mainstream journalist who has covered it has failed to apply the simplest scepticism and context to it, preferring instead OMG WHAT ARE THE INSCRUTABLE CHINESE UP TO NOW?!

Bernard Keane (@BernardKeane)September 14, 2020

Jeremy Kirk, Information Security Media Group executive editor, did applyperspective in analysing the storyin his blog and posting the following on Twitter: The China database is causing a fair amount of stir in Australia, but before we get too spun up about China-spying-targeting-etc., there are a few important points to keep in mind.

A big one: this data was sitting on an unsecured elasticsearch cluster for ages. Hundreds of gigabytes. For anyone to download. Including me in January.

I only have small parts of the dataset since its gigantic, but nothing Ive seen so far indicates that any of it is necessarily sensitive. If you put it on social media and your privacy settings are open, well, youve been warned for ages that this was a bad idea.

Zhenhua Data sold access to this information, just like many other companies that specialise in this kind of intelligence. You could subscribe then log in, as seen in the screenshot below. It wasnt trying to hide. And it wasnt very good at protecting its own data.

The discovery of large amounts of aggregated data even if its public data often causes a stir. Add China and it gets even more frenzied.

I understand Zhenhau uses some worrisome words such as hybrid warfare. Marketing puffery, if you ask me. Keep perspective.

This doesnt compare in any sense with what professional intelligence agencies do. Dont panic. They couldnt even secure an elasticsearch cluster right.

But that doesnt sound like much of a story when its an easy matter to round up the obvious local Sinophobes to harrumph and froth.

My favourite line in the coverage was: A Five Eyes intelligence officer, who uses the pseudonym Aeneas, has pored over the data

Aeneas was a hero of ancient Troy. I suppose youre meant to trust a Trojan.

Bernard Keane had another.

Also “Cambridge Analytica on steroids”. Erm I think whoever said that doesn’t actually have any idea what “Cambridge Analytica” was.

Bernard Keane (@BernardKeane)September 14, 2020

Funny thing is that China like every other major country inevitably has a rich database full of information on people who might be of interest to it. (Heck, little ol Australia used to bug the Indonesian Presidents wifes phone for any interesting titbits.)

But Zhenhau Data isnt it.