我也湊熱鬧!
Saturday, 22 June, 2013, 3:48am Reuters in New York
When Chen Guangcheng arrived in the United States in May last year he was given a pile of gifts from supporters, including smartphones and an iPad.
But at least two of the gadgets given to Chen may not have been what they seemed.According to Jerome Cohen, an New York University professor who has been Chen's mentor, and another source familiar with the episode, they included software intended to spy on the blind dissident.
The devices - an iPad and at least one smartphone - were found by NYU technicians to have been loaded with software that made it possible to track the dissident's movements and communications, they said.Among the first visitors to the New York apartment Chen moved into with his family after a dramatic escape from house arrest in China was Heidi Cai, the wife of activist Bob Fu.
She took an iPad and an iPhone as gifts."These people supposedly were out to help him and they give him a kind of Trojan horse that would have enabled them to monitor his communications secretly," said Cohen.
Asked about the gadgets, Fu said his wife gave two Apple devices to Chen shortly after he settled in New York.
Fu runs a Christian group called ChinaAid that supports underground churches and victims of forced abortions."This is the first time I've heard of spyware," said Fu, who was in southeast Asia when his wife delivered the devices. He called the allegations "ridiculous" and "like a 007 thing".
Fu said he consulted ChinaAid's computer technician on Thursday and "my staffer is 100 per cent sure that the only thing he added on the iPad was a Skype account."
But NYU technicians examining the iPhone and iPad found software that allowed a third party to secretly connect to an inbuilt global positioning system, essentially turning them into tracking devices, said the second source.
The technicians also found hidden, password-protected software that backed up the contents to a remote server, the source added.
Chen could not be reached for comment.