Tag: Justice Department

Justice Dept. Investigating TikTok’s Owner Over Possible Spying on Journalists

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justice dept investigating tiktoks owner over possible spying on journalists

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating the surveillance of American citizens, including several journalists who cover the tech industry, by the Chinese company that owns TikTok, according to three people familiar with the matter. The investigation, which began late last year, appears to be tied to the admission in December by the company, ByteDance, that its employees had inappropriately obtained the data of American TikTok users, including that of two reporters and a few of their associates. The department’s criminal division, the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the…

TikTok Could Be a Hard Sell to Potential Buyers

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tiktok could be a hard sell to potential buyers

TikTok has what many Silicon Valley companies lust after: A culture-making machine beloved by 100 million Americans and deep-pocketed advertisers. That doesn’t mean they will line up to buy it. TikTok said on Wednesday that the Biden administration was pushing the company’s Chinese owners to sell the app or face a possible ban. But there are probably few companies, in the tech industry or elsewhere, willing or able to buy it, analysts and experts say. At a price of $50 billion or more — the value some analysts said TikTok…

Can a Police Officer Accused of Spying for China Ever Clear His Name?

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can a police officer accused of spying for china ever clear his name

Now that he is no longer accused of being a secret agent for China, Baimadajie Angwang can start asking hard questions. The hardest: How could he — a naturalized U.S. citizen, New York City police officer and Marine Corps veteran — have been jailed for months over what he says were misunderstood phone calls and classified evidence that not even his lawyer could see in full? When federal authorities arrested Officer Angwang in September 2020, they accused him of reporting on other Tibetans to a handler at the Chinese consulate…

U.S. Drops Case Against Police Officer It Had Called an ‘Insider Threat’

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u s drops case against police officer it had called an insider threat

In September 2020, when federal authorities charged Baimadajie Angwang, a Marine Corps veteran and New York Police Department officer, with acting as an illegal agent of China, the head of New York’s F.B.I. office called him “the definition of an insider threat.” The government has quietly changed its mind. On Thursday, in a brief and subdued hearing in a Brooklyn courtroom, a federal judge granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss the charges against Officer Angwang. The swift unraveling of the case — which had been hailed as a signature example of…

Justice Dept. Charges 2 Chinese Citizens With Spying for Huawei

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justice dept charges 2 chinese citizens with spying for huawei

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced on Monday that it had indicted two Chinese intelligence officials who are believed to have unsuccessfully tried to obtain inside information about a federal investigation into a Chinese telecommunications company accused of stealing trade secrets, which people familiar with the situation later identified as Huawei Technologies. The Chinese intelligence officials, Guochun He and Zheng Wang, paid bribes to an official with access to sensitive details of the investigation into Huawei by the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, according to charging…

Your Friday Briefing: U.S. to Unseal Trump Warrant

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your friday briefing u s to unseal trump warrant

Good morning. We’re covering moves by the U.S. to unseal the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, Russia’s preparation for possible show trials and Taiwan’s undeterred diplomacy. U.S. to unseal the Trump warrant Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general, moved to unseal the warrant authorizing the F.B.I. search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s residence in Florida. Garland said he personally approved the decision to seek the warrant. Garland’s statement followed revelations that Trump received a subpoena for documents this spring, months before the F.B.I. search on Monday. It also came a…

Justice Dept. to End Trump-Era Initiative to Deter Chinese Threats

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ARLINGTON, Va. — The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it was ending a contentious Trump-era effort to fight Chinese national security threats that critics said unfairly targeted professors of Asian descent. A top Justice Department official, Matthew G. Olsen, said in remarks at George Mason University’s National Security Institute that the agency would instead introduce a broader strategy meant to counter threats from hostile nations, which would extend beyond China to include countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea. “By grouping cases under the China Initiative rubric,” Mr. Olsen…

Justice Dept. Is Set to Modify Trump-Era Program Aimed at Fighting Chinese Threats

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Such losses often fuel the Chinese propaganda machine and hurt U.S. interests. “Every case that goes south, especially one that concerns a minority community, discredits the Justice Department in the minds of the American people,” said David H. Laufman, an official in the department’s national security division during the Obama administration. In announcing changes to the China Initiative, Mr. Olsen is expected to say that the Justice Department will treat some grant fraud cases as civil matters going forward, reserving criminal prosecution for the most egregious instances of deception, according…

How the Huawei Case Raised Fears of ‘Hostage Diplomacy’ by China

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how the huawei case raised fears of hostage diplomacy by china

WASHINGTON — The talks between the Justice Department and a top executive from Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications giant, had stretched over more than 12 months and two presidential administrations, and boiled down to one overarching dispute: whether Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei’s founder, would admit to any wrongdoing. Since her arrest in 2018, Ms. Meng had refused to admit that she had misled the global banking conglomerate HSBC about Huawei’s dealings with Iran a decade ago, even though that was the key to her release from detention in Canada,…

U.S. Reaches Agreement to Release Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou

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u s reaches agreement to release huaweis meng wanzhou

For its part, the Chinese government has underwritten the cost of installing Huawei gear, in an effort to dominate networks from Latin America to the Middle East. Ms. Meng came to personify that effort. Her determination to wire up Tehran, at a time in which the West was seeking to contain Iran’s nuclear program, attracted protests among American officials. For that reason, some China hard-liners objected on Friday to news that the charges were being dropped. “It sends the wrong message to Chinese business executives around the world that it’s…