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Hong Kong's internet exchange offers snoopers rich pickings

Edward Snowden's allegations of US spying on Hong Kong's web traffic have been denied by officials, but the city has an online Achilles' heel

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Illustration: Brian Wang

There's no sign on the door of the Hong Kong Internet Exchange. The grey, bunker-like structure could easily pass for any other building on the bland-looking Sha Tin campus of Chinese University.

The exchange is fronted by a glass-panelled door covered on the inside with paper. Peeking through a crack in the door, there's little sign of life. On the ground floor, faded pink curtains hang, covering every small pane of glass.

Passers-by may not instantly realise it, but the exchange is the backbone of Hong Kong's internet infrastructure. Every e-mail, every bank transaction, every tweet or Facebook post passes through the innocuous-looking banks of machinery inside.

It's little wonder that the Chinese University would be a target for US hacking, as alleged by Edward Snowden.

Snowden said "network backbones" at the university and the mainland's Tsinghua University were among the targets of operations by the US National Security Agency.

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