As snoop-tastic as China's regime is, it's tempting to gloat a bit when the country suffers a massive data breach of its own that dwarfs the leaks it inflicts on other countries. But regular Chinese citizens have been compromised, not just the government officials who spy on their own people and hack into foreign databases. More remarkably, this is only one of many incidents that illustrate the dangers of the surveillance state's appetite for gathering and hoarding sensitive information under any flag.
"A massive online database apparently containing the personal information of up to one billion Chinese citizens was left unsecured and publicly accessible for more than a year – until an anonymous user in a hacker forum offered to sell the data and brought it to wider attention last week," CNN reported July 5.
