He said US spies have also hacked the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing – home to one of six “network backbones” that route all of mainland China’s Internet traffic – and the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which operates one of the Asia-Pacific region’s largest fibre-optic networks.
“These, along with previous allegations, are clearly troubling signs,” Xinhua said in a commentary.
“They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age,” it said.
Prior to Snowden fleeing Hong Kong, Xinhua noted that Washington had set the extradition process in train.
“But for other countries, Washington should come clean about its record first. It owes too an explanation to China and other countries it has allegedly spied on. It has to share with the world the range, extent and intent of its clandestine hacking programmes,” it said.
Abandoning his well-paid job as an intelligence technician in Hawaii, Snowden came to Hong Kong with a cache of documents detailing the reach of NSA operations around the world.
“The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data,” Snowden said in the Post interview, which the newspaper said was conducted on June 12 and released after it had scrutinised and clarified his claims.
His claims about Pacnet followed a Guardian report in which he claimed the British government’s electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ had gained secret access to fibre-optic cables carrying global Internet traffic and telephone calls, and was sharing the information with the NSA.
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