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Confirmed: U.S. Spies On European Corporations
FrankW writes "Former United States Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey confirmed in Washington this week that the U.S. steals
economic secrets 'with espionage, with communications [intelligence], with reconnaissance satellites,' and that there was now 'some increased emphasis' on economic intelligence.
He claimed that economic spying was justified because European companies had a 'national culture' of bribery and were the 'principle
offenders from the point of view of paying bribes in major international contracts in the world.'"
And he says the U.S. government doesn't deliver corporate secrets to U.S. companies - unless it would benefit them. How reassuring. The source is
Heise Online
(the publishers of c't). The
full article
is available in English. See also the recent European report
Interception Capabilities 2000
(summary), which the former director said was "intellectually honest."
Remember, your mothers and fathers were the scum of Europe which were sent to America around 200 years ago.
AND NOW YOU DARE TO SPY ONTO YOUR CREATORS ???
THAT'S RIDICULOUS !!!
PLEASE DIE YOU ALL AMERICAN SUCKERS !!!
I'd vote for one of those alternative parties - but unfortunately they are all polar idiocy except for the reform party which is in shambles and can't decide what its platform is at all.
This whole brooha is about applying pressue on the UK to be more a part of Europe than a part of the anglo alliance. The whole echelon debate isnt about the fact that spying goes on, but about who is spying on who, and for whose benefits. The UKUSA agreement means that the UK essentialy serves as a base for US intelligence operations, as do Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
For the emergent EU, is it a serious issue if the UK is spying or assisting the US to spy on its fellow member states. It would be like having the state of Louisiana or the city of Montreal allowing the French to set up enormous listening posts next to major telecommunications hubs.
Issue such as this one will come up again and again over the next few decades, as the EU and the US struggle to define a new power relationship. This particular issue is a public relations excersise designed to put the US and UK on the defensive. Im sure that absolutely _no_ spymasters are in any way surprised by any of this news.
"Do your homework you ignorant FUCK! If you don't like it in the US, LEAVE!"
Perhaps YOU need to do your homework or leave. The United States is supposed to respond to the needs of citizens. If someone doesn't like it in America they are supposed to be able to try and change what they don't like. Not that it actually works like that unless you are rich or a big corporation.
Yelling at people that they should leave just because their beliefs are different from your own shows what a fascist pig you actually are. You give Americans a bad name. No wonder the rest of the world hates the US so much. Most Americans have your disgusting attitude that America is the greatest thing in history, guess what, It's just as fucked up as the rest of the world. It's probably even MORE fucked up.
If they are too stupid to understand that the kind of ignorent, knee-jerk, red-neck rants that you are replying too are a major cause of this, then why bother?
It's much better to just sit back and smile grimly with the certain knowledge that one day, their luck is going to run out.
When that day comes, there will be no shortage of other nations lining up to put daggers in their backs.
In this respect, Americans are incredibly nieve. They don't think about history, or the fact that some people will hold a grudge for centuries before they get an oportunity for pay-back ( can you say Bosnia? ).
It's best to just sit back and enjoy the show. They'll eventually get what's comming to them. The beauty of it is - it's more than likely that they they will completely screw themselves before any of the rest of us have the satisfaction of screwing them over.
In the mean time, the smart thing to do is to keep as much distance from them as you can. After all, do you really want to be standing next to an American when they stick their finger in the light socket?
Be carefull what you wish for - you might get it.
You think corporations CARE about America? Why should we spy for them? All they do is try to maximize profits. They don't serve people, they aren't trying to make the world a better place. They just want to increase profits. So many of them can't even be called "American" corporations anymore either. They are transnational, they are more powerful than most countries. Corporations get away with so many crimes, they rape the planet, they exploit the third-world, they rip off consumers anytime they can get away with it. There is no such thing as corporate justice. Why should the American people pay for their industrial espionage? They don't care about us. They only care about money.
Yes they do, surprise surprise. The governments of many countries are not above using any means to keep their businesses on track with US businesses. I don't think it's right, but you can't condemn the US government for doing the same.
Incidentally, this is what makes me laugh at those "Keep Trade with China Open" commercials. I'm not sure if anyone else in the USA has seen them, but they're really funny. They imply that keeping trade with China open will "make China play by the rules" and "expose China to our democratic values." It's a riot.
-AC and loving it
calculus
Newton ( English ) and Leibonitz(sp?) ( French ).
TV Largely P. T. Farnsworth, an American, but one who has all but been written out of the history of his own country.
nuclear fission First artificial fission reaction was carried out by Rutherford ( a New Zealander ) in 1919 ( transformation of nitrogen to oxygen by alpha-particle bombardment ).
First artificial fussion reaction by Cockcroft and Walton in 1932 ( lithium and protonic hydrogen ). Cockcroft I'm not sure about. Walton was American ( he died recently ).
The manhatten project made it a workable technology, but it can be argued that this was largely due to the European scientists who had fled from Europe to avoid the Nazis blatent hatred of intellectualism.
Science is a colabrative international effort. My point here is simply that the free exchange of information that is central to science is in direct opposition to the American Corporate ethos of information hoarding and monopoly.
The problem for those Americans who stand against this information hoarding is that they regularly get screwed ( as in the case of inventors like Tucker or Farnsworth ).
Gubmint spies protecting corporate interests abroad, while they still can't protect their citizens from corporate interests... Kinda makes you hate life, eh?
how about a great big DUUUUUUUHHHHH! for the authors of this article? C'mon you actually thought we weren't? Quit being so naive..
Yes - my friend's father was heavily involved in the CIA awhile ago, when he went to Paris his hotel room was bugged, brief case was stolen... hmmm
Wow these are the first two intelegent posts regarding the US goverment i have ever read. Normally its nothing but bleading hearts who whine about the goverment doing things its not supposed too. When your the most powerful military and economic power in the world you have to take steaps to guard yourself against the inevitable enemys that you will develop. Its the job of the goverment to protect are intrests if I might point out the vast majority of the countrys important industrys are not multi-national, the defence/ areo-space (boeing, lockhead martin), communications (cisco, lucent), computing hardware (sun, sgi, dell etc*), software worth paying for (oracle). The goverments of most other countrys are corrupt beyond even the wildest imagination of most americans it happens anywhere there is the slightest amount of socialism, france, britan, CANADA, japan in most of these countrys there are few or no laws for fair procurment.
First of all, any non US company has a long way to go before it can even attempt to deal with the US government because of a whole bunch of regulations (which makes sense in more sensitive cases). This means that they have higher costs and so can hardly be compatitive to you. if they are then they simply do BETTER or US government people can be bribed so much that they can actually spend much more money... which still means the US government has a problem, not the rest of the world. and then I don't even mention the simple fact that US presidents have huge obligations to the companies who payed their campeigns.. talk about bribary!
Sorry, but I (living in a European country and working for a high tech company which deals with the US government) find this rather silly to say the least. If US politics is interested in doing something about bribary then the USA is one of their major places to start. fix yourself before attempting to fix someone else please.
Personally if my standard of living and my ability to be secure in the world is made better than I don't really mind too much. You can call me biased if you want but I am sure if you talk to the French, English, Spanish, Germans, Finns, (insert European country here) you will find that and the end of the say what really matters is being comfortable.
Well... no. being comfortable is dull and is a rather mind killing thing. Every human needs a certain level of tention in order to function fully, and before you can enjoy you'll have to function fully.
I'm not surprised at all about this news, this has been known for as long as world war 2 is over. Spying to obtain technology is understandable tho not a fair thing to do.
If the USA with their mouth full of democracy, law, freedom and such cannot even respect rules of fair conduct then they can never expect to be able to tell someone else to do so.
Tho that may be regarded a flame, but I consider your comment selfish and short sighted, sorry to say.
Situation A: 2 companies in US. Secret stolen from X by Y. Lawsuit ensues. Federal law can be brought to bear.
Situation B: 2 nations. Corporation X from Country 1 steals secret from Corporation Y of Country 2. Country 1 justifies it as protecting the interests of the nation. No law can be brought to bear.
So if it's illegal inside these fair borders, as it destroys competition and the ideal of capitalism, why is it legal and even MORAL internationally?
Hold up! America always prides itself on being "the good guy" and moralises incessently to other countries (I'm not saying that this is completely a bad thing. I think that it is very hippocritical then to say "well the other guys aren't playing fair so we won't either". If corporations in other countries use bribes to their advantage then introduce sanctions against them - don't sink to their level. I think that the whole bribery thing is just a lame excuse to spy on the biggest trading block in the world and pass on secrets that help American industry (like no American corporation has ever bribed anyone). Maybe espionage had a place when there were millions of pissed off Russians pointing nukes at you. It doesn't have a place in todays world.
Jesus. If this were vice versa we'd have a nuclear war.
Make a web search for COINTELPRO for one specific case where the U.S. did all that against its people.
And remeber JFK? Or Martin Luther King? Who do you think shot them?
Daniel
Yes bribery is a bad thing, however the part about " European companies had a 'national culture' of bribery" is highly questionable. In my own experience (mostly from scandinavia adn the US, the american culture is the one that stands out as corrupt when compared with countries like Sweden and Norway. Probably because the american culture is very money oriented. /mike
I think the whole issue here, for the Europeans, is related to encryption. We've insisted that they use encryption schemes that we can crack, so we can handle terrorists, etc, etc. They've expressed misgivings about this, fearing that we would eavesdrop on them for purposes of industrial espionage, etc, etc. We've assured them that we would never use our power for those purposes, and so they have forsaken strong encryption for the most part. But now everything will change. We obviously cannot be trusted. Therfore, strong encryption is coming, and all our screaming and shouting won't make any difference.
Like the civel wars in the USA's backyard are all under controll eh?
Why Europe continues to ignore the Balkan crisis is a testament to their inability to accomplish anything real.
I agree they are incapable of handling it.. just like the US have been incapable of handling se asia. handling fanatics is kinda tricky... Europe just doesn't act like they can handle it, they know they cant.. thats a matter of realism that the USA has still to learn.
Almost all of your industries and markets are dominated by American or Asian companies, or their subsidiaries.
Last time I was in the USA people still prefered a European car over both american and asian cars, esp. Volvo and Mercedes did quite good.. they do so all over the world btw. Phillips is quite a big company, and more then half of the supermarkets in the USA is owned by European companies.. I don't know what you have been smoking, but I wan't some of that stuff!! ;-)
You'll probably get moderated down for this, but that's only because you're a little bit Too Close to the Truth .. Slashdot readers and moderators have indicated, time after time, that they have no desire for the Truth, and would rather see the content here toe the liberal/secular humanist party line of "multiculturalism" and "tolerance." Part of that worldview involves exaggerating the importance of other parts of the world .. Europe, in this case. Children are being taught in schools that foreign countries and their citizens are equally valuable as America and American citizens. This is preposterous, of course, but ask any child: They've already been indoctrinated into this viewpoint.
The notion that we consider most of these backward, cough-lozenge-sized nation-states "friends" of ours speaks volumes about our collective morality. Why does our current government not speak out about Europe's crimes against humanity? When you've got homosexuals running around everywhere, apparently unleashed, it's a problem. When you've got socialists scattered everywhere you look, it's a problem. Their laughable adherence to the "metric" system is another offense. When you've got church attendance declining and strict adherence to fundamental Christian principles nowhere to be found, it's no wonder that Europe is in such bad shape! This is precisely why America leads the world; we've got Christ leading us!
You're right about nothing good ever having come out of Europe. And unless Europe changes, nothing ever will. There are signs that things are getting worse. The countries are banding together to form a "European Union" that will better allow them to coordinate their full frontal assault on morals, decency, and the United States. The European Union is a threat to America, and it is a threat to the world. We may as well call it what it is: The European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And we must deal with the threat now -- swiftly, decisively, and with extreme prejudice. A few megatons delivered to each of Europe's main cities (centers of sin, actually) ought to do the trick.
That's a pretty interesting definition of "Swedish"
Oh give me a break, if you even try to suggest that Euro's (*cough* the French *cough*) are not arrogant, I think I'm going to puke. This is a pure supposition, but the Americans that do dislike Europeans, I believe dislike them because they feel that the Europeans are
:].
i) Condescending
ii) Imposing
iii) Ungrateful
I personally don't care about them one way or the other. Anyway, the more interesting part of you post is the implication, everyone who is smart comes to America, that means the rest of the world is stupid by default. You said it, I didn't
That is just complete bullshit. We pull about everything imaginable outside our borders, but inside, its all good. Over throwing government, supportting facisim, supportering murderrers, spreading propoganda, spying, etc.. all occur outside. But inside, none of them occur if any. I have never seen the government overthrow a state (civil war excluded) goverment with a secret militar coup. Or drop propoganda pamphlets by plane in New jersey. Or spy on the legislature in CA. That is all just ridiculous
This dualism has been around for at least the past 80+ years, and so far, so good. Whether its ethical or not is anothe rquestion.
The goverments of most other countrys are corrupt beyond even the wildest imagination [...] How naive... you think the US government is less corrupt? Even after all this recent bs about DMCA and UCITA and allllll that? Sorry, now, I'll be back in a few days when I've finished laughing. I'd just like to add that the first correspondant has no inkling of the level of double standards that the US applies to it's internal and external markets- worldwide the US is considered very protectionist of it's internal markets (especially military ones), yet at the same time the US government brings tremendous pressure to bear on ensuring that US companies have favourable or indeed advantageous terms against the domestic companies in any particular national or world market (especially military ones). Outside observers of the Microsoft trial can easily draw a parallel between the anticompetive overtly agressive behaviour of Microsoft, and the approach of the US government/US corporate partnership to attempting to dominate other countries national markets. Corporate America, especially the military-industrial bit, whenever faced with any kind of competition (never mind fair) calls in the U.S. government to interfere in foreign domestic markets. Most other countries seem to expect their companies to compete in their own merits in international, foreign or domestic markets.
ROTFLMAO! hahahha
Actually, the French are notorious for their tenacious protection of their own internal markets (especially the military ones), and resorting at nearly anything to do so. This gives them a somewhat unfair advantage in the French domestic market. The similar level of aggressiveness they persue in international markets, just about lets them compete with the U.S. companies (in military markets, anyway). See earlier Anonymous Coward post in bold.
He claimed that economic spying was justified because European companies had a "national culture" of bribery and were the "principle offenders from the point of view of paying bribes in major international contracts in the world".
... American industry is technologically the world leader". [...] There are some areas of technology where American industry is behind those of companies in other countries. [But] by and large American companies have no need nor interest in stealing foreign technology in order to stay ahead".
...
.. if you leave your briefcase when you go to dinner, if you're a businessman and there's anything sensitive in it, you should have your head examined".
Hmm... Either this is some kind of hoax or this man is a complete idiot, or he is making a statement that may be true of only a few European countries. Certainly, this generalisation is not warranted.
The country I personally live in is Denmark. I've never heard of anyone Danish ever bribing anyone in my life. Not that it doesn't happen, I'm sure it does, just like it probably does too in the USA, but it's uncommon enough that I've never heard of it.
He claimed that the US had little need of high-tech espionage because "in a number of areas
If it really isn't needed that bad, then why do they corrupt their morals and do it?
"Would [...] somebody do a technological analysis of something from a friendly country, which had no importance, other than a commercial use, and then let it sit on the shelf because it couldn't be given to the American company? I think that would be a misuse of the [intelligence] community's resources. I don't think it would be done."
If this is not happening, then why are he commenting on it in this way? If it is happening, then what he's actually saying is a confirmation. Draw your own conclusions.
Whether economic or military, most US intelligence data came from open sources, he said. But "five percent is essentially secrets that we steal. We steal secrets with espionage, with communications, with reconnaissance satellites."
Say I'm a thief and am stealing things from people. Say I steal for 5% of the day. When I get caught and go to trail, I don't really think anyone will care that for 95% of the time, I wasn't stealing...
"Some of our old friends and allies are in this business as well, not only by putting microphones in the head rests of their airliners which cross the Atlantic, in first class seats, but in other ways as well
Microphones in the head rests! I think all american planes should be searched upon entering any European airport, and if something like this is found, the plane should be sold to be the higest bidder, or just demolished. This is completely unacceptable. Of course this probably won't happen, especially considering that this person migth just be making this up, to divert attention from the places where the real microphones are.
There are European countries where
In the USA, if you are carrying around the crown jewels of your company in a briefcase (!), and you leave it alone somewhere (!!!), you should have your head examined.
So surprising! So appaling! So schocking! So obvious!
"We have spied on that in the past. I hope, although I have no immediate verification, that the United States government continues to spy on bribery."
More power to that. But how do you exactly know who to spy on for bribing, when the porpuse of the spying is finding out who is bribing and how much they are paying? What do you do when you find out you are spying on someone who has been ligitimate all the way? (remember what he said about it being misuse of resources not to leak information vital to the success of american corporations)
"But whether it does or not, it seems to me that it should be understandable to anyone who reads the [European Parliament] report, to anyone who thinks at all about whether American corporations need to steal technological secrets from foreign corporations, and anyone who is at all sophisticated about the way international trade and commerce works, that bribery is - or should be in any case - and certainly was in my time at the heart of U.S. intelligence's need to collect secret intelligence regarding foreign corporations and foreign governments' assistance to them".
I don't think it is obvious at all that this spying is only about bribery, actually, I think he contradicts himself (see above).
It's illegal for U.S. companies to commit bribery in the U.S. or abroad. European governments have not made it illegal for European companies to bribe officials in other countries. This of course puts U.S. companies at a disadvantage in some parts of the world.
It is a little off topic but isn't it weird that when it comes to US bashing europeans, it tends to become US bashing France... Correct me if I am wrong but isn't France the only major European country US has never been at war with? (US has been at war with Spain, Germany, Britain, Italy, even Russia (coldly, though)). In fact, they seem to help each other pretty well in every war. As for spying, Americans should be proud that them spying makes everyone angry... This means that everyone holds US in such an esteem that they think US should not allow that kind of unethical behaviour.
It's sometimes hard to see where the UK fits into place, it's stuck between the old colonial era with the responsibility of the Commonwealth, the US-UK agreement and the EU.
From the European prospective it seems as if this is out of balance, the Echelon network is carried out by the US-UK agreement and the old colonial countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, there used to be a listening post in Hong Kong for intelligence on China and also posts in Delhi, there's also listening posts in Gibraltar (still under British rule).
Also, you might be asking yourself how is the US able to carry out this extensive monitoring on Europe? You only have to take a look at the RAF Menworth Hill in Yorkshire (England) to work that out.
I know the US is a fairly extensive nation, but when it comes to listening stations on former colonies on offshore lands, this is where the UK places it's part, this is essentially the base of the US-UK agreement.
--
``Without ethics, there is no quality.
Without quality, there is no credibility. Without credibility, there is no future.''
> Whether it's Napolean or Hitler, it's been proven time and time again that Europe is too weak to defend itself against even just one of its own countries.
Erm.... Napolean got beat, and no the US had nothing to do with it (actually IIRC we were fighting the US and Napolean at the same time....)
Why is this moderated up to 1?
This is just bullshit. Bribery is illegal in many states, in Scandinavia, Germany, etc.
There may be a lot of bribery in Brussels, within the EU administration, but then, it's probably even worse in Washington (at least the last EU commission was forced to back down because of bribery scandals; when does this happen in the US)
So, for heavens sake, get over your nationalistic arrogance and moderate this down...
First of all, any non US company has a long way to go before it can even attempt to deal with the US government because of a whole bunch of regulations (which makes sense in more sensitive cases). This means that they have higher costs and so can hardly be compatitive to you. if they are then they simply do BETTER or US government people can be bribed so much that they can actually spend much more money... [some deletia] It's surprising how loudly that American companies should "Foul" or "Bribary" and then immediately cause the U.S. Gov. to wheel out the big guns (the Pres. Etc.) when some country attempts to apply the same rules for "sensitive" areas as the U.S. does, and there are U.S. companies competing for the same contract (and also the number of "meetings" that representatives of U.S. Defense companies attempt to hold on long yacht trips, in Bermuda or on expensive golf courses). Sorry, but I (living in a European country and working for a high tech company which deals with the US government) find this rather silly to say the least. ... [An aside] I used to work for a UK company that manufactured radiation hard integrated circuits that were for military/space applications (mostly space, too radiation hard and too expensive for the military!). Our major customer was a US satellite firm. On the rare occasion that there was a problem, we would want to get the devices back to our own labs. However they were considered restricted technology by the U.S. Export Controls fellas, and the customer was forbidden from Exporting the chips back to the original manufacturer!
It was Germany and France that sold Khaddafy and Hussein the industrial ingredients for bio and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
Oh please, you're believing the US govt. propaganda. The US supported Hussein too, because at the time they had a little spat with Iran. Do you know who helped install Ghadaffi in power ?? The US. Then you wonder why he gets pissed when you try and kill him!!
Incidently, I know a few people who have worked in various arab countries, and have said the Libya was the only one they'd go back to. The reality was far different from the UK/US propaganda.
You may like to do some research on the Iranian airliner the US Navy shot down - it was shot down from within Iranian territorial waters, was broadcasting its commercial airliner squawk, was NOT hailed directly, was climbing slowly (not decending as was claimed), and to cap it all off, the US "nicked" the flight recorders to cover up the embarassing cock-up they made.
They then award the captain a medal of honour, and blame the Iranians for the airliner being shot down.
BTW This is not meant to be anti-US, just that some of the posts indicate some people need to get out and travel. The reality is all countries are spying on each other.
When you see and hear what some people talk/read about in open/public places, you wonder why we even need spies!
"unfair" tactics in this case, seems to be attempting to gain the same protection of their domestic markets as the U.S. always applies to it's own.
The U.S. is a leader in many of todays valuable technologies, but by no means all. You would be surprised how many technologies that you take for granted as American are actually jointly owned, or wholely own by European, Japanese, etc. companies.
Wake up people, every industrialized country engages in industrial espionage. The level of government/corporate collusion in the U.S. is a lot lower than some of its allies like France or Japan. Even the Israelis spy on the U.S.
I'd be disappointed if the Americans were stupid enough not to do it. What a disadvantage they'd be at then.
and at the rate everyone on this planet is going we should all share the same culture in the next 50 - 100 years. I love seeing pictures of aboriginal people out in the jungles of Paupau New Guinea driving down a river a dug-out wooden canoe with an Evinrude motor, wearing a Coke t-shirt, smoking Marlboros, and wearing a baseball cap... now THAT'S AMERICAN!
Exactly... It is pure bollocks to see the U.S. and its puppet (the U.K.) attempting to justify its various actions through convincing people that they have the moral highround. That they have some altruistic motive that can be trusted. That 'they know what is best', that they know 'what is fair'. Money and guns. That is what it boils down to in most cases. Who has the most of both? For my part, I am ashamed that my country, New Zealand, is apart of the Echelon network. I can only guess that it is a result of ten years of unfettered conservatism that has blighted it. -Dan Che Vive.
Sounds just like what happened to the AVRO.
I only have one comment to your innane ditribe since you are obviously sucking on Jerry Falwells dick to stupid lowlife fucker.... grow up.
By the way virtually every country on the planet uses the metric system -- THE STANDARD. Last I check the US at one point did try to convert but was unable to because to may people didn't understand the "new math" and the cost ofcourse.
Unfortuantely for some in the US, "ignorance is bliss" is not a cliched statement but a way of life, especially the Christian right. Too bad for the rest of the level headed people there that you cant keep your bug fat fucking mouth shut, maybe most countries wouldn't have the impression they do of Americans.
It does happen, and for good reason. Do you seriously think that everything can be nice and fair right here right now? It can't, it should, but it can't.
It all comes down to whether you are willing to take a cut in your lifestyle for the sake of "justice" or whatever the favorite buzzword people are throwing around is. I will bet that if you were asked to give up the comfortable lifestyle you now enjoy so that everyone can be on equal footing, you wouldn't. I know I wouldn't. I am not proud of that fact, but it is reality.
The US is in a position that is precarious at best. They use everything they have to stay there. Sometimes these tools are used in a way that seems offensive to people, and perhaps they shouldn't be used that way again. That fact of the matter is though, that right or wrong the citizen has the responsibility to stand behind the country. This doesn't mean they need approve, in fact they should change it. Merely waving around a fist and crying out that the US goverment is the monolithic root of all evil doesn't accomplish anything.
Face it, the whole rebellion against authority thing is childish. Most people figure out it doesn't do anything sometime in their late teens or early twenties. People need to stop hitting college and deciding they need a cause. The only members of movements I respect are those who actually try and do something about whatever upsets them. Simply having a T-Shirt that says "stop the sanctions against *insert sanctioned country here*" doesn't count.
If they'd had a woman in charge back in Sir Francis Drake's time . .
I appreciate the humour in this but given the "quality" of reponses
Well, at least somebody got it. Honestly, that's enough for me -- that and knowing that the others didn't get it
--80md
small nitpick:
Jonathan Pollard was not doing industrial espionage for Israel. He was passing on secrets of a national security nature (that is, how good and how our satellites work, CIA assets in the region, electronic intelligence capabilities, etc.). He betrayed his country as throughly as any person could.
Nobody's holding you in this country...Find the first flight out if you want out so bad.
The only way to put these socialist baboons in their place is to scatter them all the hell over the stratosphere, in very small and fiercely radioactive pieces.
You've got tens of thousands of American college students going over there every year, catching God knows what kind of venereal diseases, and coming back home to spread the contagion.
You've got their "European Congress" squatting in a cave in Brussels or The Hague (I ask you, what in the Hell kind of a name for a town is "The Hague", what's with that, huh?), eating raw flesh with their fingers and squatting around an open fire -- these troglodytes have the temerity to send "diplomats" to Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States of America, just as if they were a real country like us!
I think we've all had just about enough of these offenses, and we both know there've been many more. Maurice Chevalier's worth ten megatons, and Edith Piaf's worth twenty more. Jacques Brel? That man alone deserves 50% of our entire nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenal right up his effeminate ass, oooookay? And how about Benny Hill? Snoop Doggy Dogg is a Benny Hill fan, but he's the only one known to modern science. Margaret Thatcher? Only a weak nation would let a woman rule them. If they'd had a woman in charge back in Sir Francis Drake's time, we'd all be speaking French now! Perish the thought . . .
The crimes of Europe boggle the mind. Their culture is utterly corrupt. We must atomize them now.
I would be interesting to see this discussion if the boot was on the other foot, there is some weird ethic I've seen which basically classes everything un-American as "communist" and the US has a god given right to spy on them.
How would the US like it if Europe openly spied on you ?
Sorry but "(the french have been doing this for a while now)." is going a little too far a little too fast, the only place I've seen this kind of remark is to justify the way the american spying machine is used to give unfair competitive advantage to american corpos. I rest convinced that the french HAVEN'T been doing this.
C'mon now kiddies... all of you are missing the point here. After all, we all know information wants to be free. Only a complete hypocrite would denigrate the USA (or Japan, or the KGB, or anyone, for that matter) for attempting to free the oppressed information of the world.
*yawn*
Here's a question for you: would you rather the espionage, which is going to be performed regardless, be performed by the NSA and the CIA, or by the Intelligence division of General Motors? Which organization do you think will be most ethical in their selection of targets, methods of acquisition, etc? I personally feel a lot safer knowing that the party employing Mr. Bond is acting at least partially in my best interest.
I'm sure that there are other countries doing this besides the US, why doesn't everybody get mad when other countries do this?
I guess this is true for Chinese' intelligence services too then.
It's time for Americans (and I am one) and generally citizens of the world to realize that govt, corporation, and media are quickly fusing into a single engine. Like any complex entity there is some conflict and confusion, but on the whole it acts as an "it", not as a "they". The days of media watchdogs are passing, because the govt/corp/media exerts substantial pressure (litigation, disinformation, jail time, etc) to shut them up.
You can try to warp reality to your expectations, and expect govt, corp, and media to keep each other in check and be independent and honest, or you can adjust your expectations to reality, and realize the dirt goes very deep.
Further, "govt" is complex, in that intelligence agencies have independent power, as well as their own military-industrial and drug-running income sources. They do not answer to the President as the President doesn't even have nearly the security clearance required. So who's in control? Good question.
It's funny how people love to dismiss 'conspiracies' and keep on being dutiful believers. This to me is the greater mystery.
The Matrix indeed. Wake up Neo!
You want the truth, HUH ?
YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH !!!
apologies to Jack Nicolson
So others behaving like jerks is an excuse to behave like a jerk too to you ?
But okay, after all what else was to be expected from God's own country.
Sigh.... this is getting sad. I can't even tell who's joking and who's serious. As much as I'd like to believe that this post is just a satire, I'm sure someone out there is going "Hell yeah! Right on!"
People discussing these themes can do it safelier from the sid="moderation" thread.
This is a very slippery slope, where is the line? Whats the difference between stealing a corporations info and sinking an oil tanker or burning down a company HQ, its all destroying other peoples wealth for your own gain, and should be unacceptable, its the equivalent of "might is right", and that is the mentality that kills our humanity, while it exists we will never be free.
There are many lessons to be learned from this spy story. One that benefits the Linux community is that software producers can only be trusted up to a point. LotusNotes and Microsoft, and doubtless other lesser companies, open the computer systems of their clients up to the NSA (see the Campbell report). LotusNotes is used in ministries and big businesses in many countries. Just think what a wonderful time for spies! Burglaries aren't necessary anymore. Remember also the furor over the NSA key in Windows some weeks ago. The "normal" hacker isn't the only possible intruder in our computers. I think Linux and the open source community should be our guard against software backdoors or unwanted meddling in our data. Being international it doesn't carry the torch for any government and being open knowledgable people anywhere can check out the integrity of the code. Linux advocates should emphasise this.
How do you eat soup in the matrix...?
:)
Depends if its Stone Soup
Not only that, but we have piranha like press that are not afraid of exposing anyone in the government doing underhanded deals etc. There have been a few cases, like the "cash for questions" debacle and the whole Jeffery Archer scandal that show that the press and the people are not willing to put up with corruption and sleaze in the UK, thats why I like living here, the US is much more scary, I might get arrested and be held without trial, or convicted without evidence, etc etc, although the government is still trying to do some stupid things like make encryption illegal, but we will stop them, because the people count here and no UK government can afford to forget that.
I dont suppose anyone has that MPEGed or RealVideoed perchance?
Espèce de gros connard ! tu sais ce qu'ils te disent les Français ? Tu es au courant q'Airbus vend plus d'avions que Boeing ? Qu'Ariane lance plus de satellites qu'Atlas ? Continue à rêver, nous on se réveille !
De Gaulle en 1970 à dit NON à l'entrée de l'angleterre dans la CEE. Il était fort bien inspiré !.. Peut être se rappelait il que Eisenhower et Churchill ont tenté de le tuer, que la perfide albion a brulé Jeanne D'Arc, et empoisonné Napoléon ! Les anglais ont clairement choisi de ne pas entrer dans l'Europe, qu'ils en sortent !!!
From most of the comments Americans do here, I get the following "logic":
America only does what everybody else does. Everybody else does it because they don't have morals. America is forced to do the same so that it may keep ahead. It needs to keep ahead in order to be able to defend its bastion of (non-applied) high ideals and morals against its foes.
Now somebody just explain to me where the moral in "I'll ram my knife in your back before you notice me because there is a chance you might be an insane killer and do the same to me if I didn't, and then I, as a compassionate peace-loving citizen, might vanish from the face of the Earth". comes in.
It is one thing what the U.S. does. It is another that they actually seem proud and justified in doing what they utterly condemn in others to a degree to feel morally superior.
everyone knows time is tight with cia. that article contains much disinformation.
The same people that let your grandfathers in.
Or are you a native american?
Look, as long as they don't spy on Americans, what's the problem? We've got to realize this is a dog-eat-dog world. I'm in favor of learning that little extra tidbit of information from the CIA about some European company. Why? Simply because businesses are a part of the country. The success of Dell, GM, Delta Airlines, General Mills, Universal Studios etc has a direct bearing upon the quality of life in this nation. Why shouldn't we spy on foreign corporations? And don't act as if these European corporations are sitting there with a thumb up their butt innocently, they would do the same thing if they could. We are only allies with Germany and other nations in the political sense- in the economic capitalist sense, we are at war as a people with everyone. Final point- corporations engage in industrial espionage, is this not just a further extension of that act on a broader, worldwide stage?
I found your post (the initial one) to be offensive, as well as misinformed and naive.
We will return to this little gem in good time.
it just proves the ruthlessness of the Japanese, even towards their own countrymen
And we are to presume that Americans aren't? I have previously worked for two American multi-national companies ( both in the computer industries ). They were both so corrupt it made me sick.
In the case of one of them, the CEO was finally removed because the head of the accounting department had threatened to blow the whistle to the local equivelent of the IRS. He was replaced by an equally corrupt head kicker. Buisness as usual.
In the second case, the CEO of that company wound up holding an empty bag as a result of a power play back in the American main office. He was replaced with - you guessed it, another corrupt head kicker.
In the early 80s, ... ( varoius claims concerning industrial espionage ).
*Yawn*. It was called the 'cold war', remember? Back in those days, the USA supported the Shah of Iran, Somosa in Nicuragua and Marcos in the Philipines. About the only mass murdering dictator of note that wasn't supported by the USA was Idi Amin ( you can blame the Brits for him ).
Being able to prove that the kettle is black does not make the pot squeaky clean. All nation states have their skeletons in the closet, and jumping up and down and screaming "we are morally superior to everyone else! we only kill people who deserve it!" doesn't do anything except convince everyone that your an idiot.
Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
Well granma, your certainly good at that. What a pity that your knowledge of world history during the last half of the 20th century doesn't match your egg-sucking capabilities.
And don't comment on something you are obviously so ignorant about, without doing all your homework.
As I have already pointed out, your phenomenal abilities at egg-sucking seems to have been at the expense of your knowledge of world history.
Less egg-sucking and more history grandma.
Waikarimas?
Aha! I think I am begining to understand. Like so many other members of your generation grandma, you are stuck in the past. Doubtless if you forget to take your prozac, you spin out and think that your back in the 1940's.
This no doubt explains your obsession with the Japanese.
Be careful what you wish for - you might get it.
What about Al Gore and his petroleum buddies??
Three words....
Synthetic
Aperture
Radar
Canada wants to launch a satellite that has
GREAT ground resolution.
Apparently this technology is 'TOO GOOD'
for lowly canada. The Canadian government is being pressured by the U.S. not to launch this satellite.
If the U.S. government isn't careful it will alienate everyone. They can always get the french or the russians to launch it for them.
All this is pretty common U.S. sabre rattling shit.
Hehehehehehehe. they are just plain silly.
To my experience the US government has a policy that if they can get something in the USA, no matter what the cost, they get it there... only if they can't make it themselves they will buy it from someone else.. now for defense I can understand why a country would do that, but don't whine about other countries doing the same indeed.
You encapsulate the very americano f*cked up fascist, self-cantered views that make your country look so stupid to the rest of the world.
If you truly believe all that gumph you can came out with you're certainly even more inward looking than I could possibly imagine.
Hey, I think it's only fair. If it works, so what?
But history is written by the winners. There is no _real_ history, except what you choose to believe. Claiming that there can be an objective form of history is plainly un-scientific, and is not supported by the available facts. There is far too much dis-information in the mix for that to be possible.
As a consequence of that, first hand personel experience counts for more than a library of history books.
Blood is the only price Freedom honors, unfortunately.
No. Wit, intelligence and strength are the price of freedom. Blood is provided by those who can't pass the test of Darwinian selection. There is a difference between reality and 'noble' rhetoric which is churned out by the media propaganda machines to convince people to march of and fight and die in a war which profits the rulling elite.
We have paid a price for what we did to Iraq with higher oil prices
Finally. About time that we reached the real issue of the Gulf war - cheap gasoline for American consumers. That's what it's really about, and no amount of rhetoric will change it. Brave Americans fought and died so that the oil companies can maintain their effective monopoly on portable energy production. It's nice to see that you understand this at least at one level, even though your obviously fighting tooth and nail to face the logical conclusion that it implies.
go ask a Kuwaiti survivor of the Iraqi atrocities how 'unjust' the war was...for that matter, go ask a Kurd
Yes, and go and ask people in places like Iran ( The Shah ), Nicuragua ( Somosa ) and the Philipines ( Marcos ) what they have to say about living under an American backed dictatorship. If your selective enough in terms of the data that you choose to pay attention to, you can prove just about anything.
This doesn't prove anything except that while you accept some data as valid, you also reject large quantities of other data simply because it does not conform to your existing world view.
This kind of selective reasoning is acceptable in a child. It's far from acceptable in an Adult and it is utterly criminal in the case of a government institution.
Bottom line, I was responding to an attack on _my_ country by an obviously misinformed and incompletely prepared individual...as you are misinformed and unprepared.
Ho hum, the usual "my country, right or wrong". I would have thought that the human race would have started to outgrow that phase by now, but some of you still seem to have rather a long way to go in terms of the evolution of intelligence. Hey, wait a minute. You don't live in Kansas do you? That would explain a lot, especially your inability to evolve.
Go do your homework, kid. Its time for the grownups to talk. If you want us to take you seriously here, sign your posts.
And go take your prozak grandma. Your obviously about to spin of into a time warp again. If that happens, youl start ranting about the Japanese again. Try not to set such a bad example for the grandkids, ok? Your supposed to set a dignified example for the upcoming generation.
Otherwise you really _are_ a coward. Oh! Can't sign? Afraid your government will track you or your relatives down? Don't you wish you lived here where we are _FREE_ to sign our names and proud?
Oh but I can sign ( if I wanted to ). I'm not concerned about my government. There fairly layed back and don't make problems for the citizens because it lowers their chances of being re-elected.
The reason why I post AC is very simple. I'm tired of inbred, retarded red-necks like yourself who have nothing better to do with your time except to download WaReZ for the purpose of making pests of themselves.
Americans have this totally psycho attitude to "the right to bear arms". Unfortunatly, far too many of you seem to think that this applies on-line ( especially when your dealing with people who express attitudes that you don't like ).
Being too mentally defficient to provide logical refutation, you therefore pervert the tools that were developed by others for your own questionable purposes.
That's the reason why so many foreign nationals are annonymouse on the net. Were just tired of American psychos.
Is this a mistake? AFAIK, the Comanche helicopters won't be used by the US military until 2006 so I don't see how Turkey can be using them now. Maybe you meant the Apache.
Mills. Enhanced agriculture. Printing press (ok, ok, but the Chinese kept it to themselves). Law. Rationalism. The nation state. Cars. Flight. Rockets.
New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, South Carolina, Florida, Nebraska, 1770's to 1950's.
Gunpowder
Delaware. 1796.
America.
And how could Europe have invented America, pray tell?
The hypocrisy here astounds me. How much does this report talk about the industrial espionage Europe, and in particular France itself is doing? Typical French arrogance, everything should be THEIR way or no way. They are just mad that someone is successfully spying on them and they have been doing on others for years! Amazing.
And, Euroboy, you are a perfect example of why your entire continent and its people are such a waste. You make me sick.
This just confirms what the left wing politicians ...
... He want's it all by himself. ...
in europe has been telling us for years
Creedy big brother USA don't want a slice of the cake
I can't wait until somebody finaly cuts him of with the nukegun to his head
Wanna know whats wrong with the world today ? Just look towards the USA.
If you're referring to me, I'm not even European
And so finally, you show your real colors. Gone is all of the rhetoric ( and fairly empty it was ) of nobility and freedom.
At last you stand revealed for what you are - a bully and a thug who cannot tolerate critisism or contradiction. A narrow minded fool who resorts to threats of violence when your ( highly limited ) witt is all too quickly exhausted.
And you can't understand why so many are critical of the USA when you typify it's most repulsive attributes?
I just love people like you. One single, ranting obviously half-wit American like yourself does far more to destroy the credibility of the American people before the entire on-line global community then anything that I could ever say.
Everything else you said was out of context, as usual with you cowardly US bashers.
The famous American proclivity for only examining the facts that agree with their point of view. I'm sure it impresses the folks back home, but out here it really doesn't cut it.
It's late, I'm tired. Tomorrow for you.
And doubtless, you will make just as much of a fool of yourself tomorrow as you did today. Keep up the good work - the anti-america society is very appreciative of your efforts. Keep up the good work agent 008-124508-347! At this rate, we will be able to bring down America within the next few years!
> If the information is sensitive, it should be > encrypted and/or routed over hard line. Boy are you naive. If what you say is true, then any thief that breaks into your house and stills your property is no guilty of theft. After all, your door lock was weak enough for him to break in, so it's your fault. Grow up.
Frankly, if I ran any of these European countries, you'd bet your ass that I'd immediately condemn this spying as a hostile act of aggression, and work out treaties with other nations explicitly naming any further spying as an act of war, and military alliances to give the treaties TEETH.
Oh. Really. And how do you justify this if you've been doing the exact same thing the whole time? Read the other comments here -- the US isn't the only country that can do wrong, you know. The entire world is at each other's throats the whole time, really, the only difference is that it occasionally makes the news for everyone who wasn't clued in already.
From an independent stand point, it's interesting to see the hostilities which exist between the new and old world, correct me if I'm wrong but a large majority of the US population is made up from people who originated from Europe?
I understand there are native American people, but doesn't the entire white/latin population originate from Europe?
Secondly - everyone is doing it, so go and tell your kids telling lies is okay. Hey, everyone is doing it after all.
Thirdly - moral is such a nice thing to have, better got a second one, just in case, right ?
Fourthly - I am, too, pretty pissed off by the amount of double standards and arrogance shown here by quite a lot of people. Just stop complaining since as long as you are either not willing or not capable to apply your own standards to others, whether people or countries, you do have no right at all to expect those standards applied to yourself and I pretty much do not care about where you are from.
When pointing ones finger at someone else, four fingers are pointing back at you.
Yeah, whatever. I know your little secrets. You're still a total waste. Go back to your little Euro-hovel and stop bothering those of us who actually matter.
Yeah, our country can't complete on an even field so we cheat and steal ideas in stead! What a honourable and honest country! You do sound as if you know a lot of secrets, I can tell, in fact you sound like such a clever chap as a whole.
I think you'd make a good spy too! I mean, you'd stand out like a saw (dumb) thumb, but at least you'd be something for the stupid Europeans to laugh at.
One interesting note, if it wasn't for those stupid Europeans inventing the web at CERN we couldn't even be having this discussion!
Yeah, USA, USA. USA!
p.s. "chant with me" ? oh please.
is not realizing that the sole purpose of all this is just to get a rise out of those impulsive enough to dash off a quick response. (What's really amusing is when two people with that same goal start responding to each other....)
At least the USA didn't OUTLAW foreign-language entertainment, like they did in France (with official statements like, "we cannot allow the language of Balzac to become subordinate to that of the barbarians") Plus, I've been to Chicago, and New York, and live in California, where the service is perhaps the worst in the US, but I just came from a vacation in French Polynesia (love those stock options), and those air-wenches on the French plane were definately far more rude. Behavior like that towards a paying customer in the states would get you fired. I do have to say that the Tahitians, though native French speakers, were FAR more pleasant to be served by, and often spoke much better Anglais.
C|N>K
>The first thing the Europeans did on arriving is
>export genocide, and wipe out native
>civilizations.
>Their explorers (DeSoto, Pizarro, etc.) were in
>fact just a bunch of butchering theives.
Quite like the founding forefathers turned out to be. And they were very successful at it, so very successful that it is much more probable you are their offspring than that of the butchered.
The current American culture has European roots, not American. And where it has veered off, it is definitely not due to the influence of the former native inhabitants. Deal with it. Your ancestors killed America, and started "fresh" with European standards and blood. Of course by now differences have ensued.
Ive never remembered a "garcon" in france. I tend not to be served by a "boy"
Yeah, you have to credit the UK for the computer, public key crypto, packet switching (basis of the net), television the telephone and creation of the web, industial revolution etc.
Of cource, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Japan for the wacky and zany inventions they've come up with over the years, hmm, I wonder if this is why the US don't spy on Japan ?
So what you're saying is that the U.S. must be right on this since everyone else in the world is complaining mainly about the U.S.. That's some perception of democracy you have there.[dumb]
Because then the French make their own little revenge move, and then there's a counter-revenge move from the other side, etc., and all of a sudden nobody's happy.
No, that's exactly what a "Free Market" is. The law of the jungle.
What an incredible arrogance. What makes you think that European and Canadian governments are any more corrupt than the American. My guess is that you haven't even been abroad so you can't know anything about this. Anyway, govts spying on each other is normal but when the govt of one country spies on the indoustry of another to give intelligence to the countries own corporations something is seriously wrong, escpecially when it's such a a country like USA who shouldn't need to do that at all.
US is not in war with any of the countries involved, they actually are allies in NATO, so there is no defense-related justification either
Oh. And this really stopped the US's NATO allies from spying on it during the Cold War for the same reasons, didn't it? Face it, the US is playing by the exact same set of rules as everyone else, and happens to be no better or no worse, and speaks from no higher and no lower a moral standpoint. If the US wasn't doing this, US companies would be torn to pieces by companies from countries that did do this, and vice versa. So unless there's an ENFORCABLE end put to this for everyone SIMULTANEOUSLY, I don't see this stopping anytime soon.
At my company, memos have been issued to all business travellers warning us about these practices. We've been warned not to speak of confidential company business ANYWHERE on an airplane, especially international flights, or in public places or unsecured environments, and confidential or NDA documents are all supposed to be kept under lock and key at all times, or at least digitally secured (which is a laugh, because our IT considers a laptop running NT workstation with NTFS with password protection and domain security to be enough).
Really... I am...I swear...
I work for MI6. My watch has a laser.
"He claimed that the US had little need of high-tech espionage because "in a number of areas ... American industry is technologically the world leader"."
Completely beside the point! This sort of spying isn't just limited to technical information, knowing a company's fanical status, personnel information or how much they will go for a contract is often as important as the technical information itself.
Beside, if you don't peep, how do you what the other guy got! Even if a company is currently at the top of its field, it sure like to know what others are currently working on, which may level the playing field in the near future. This is like the US suddenly saying that we will leave Iraq allow because we got much bigger guns than they ;-)
Also does that mean they are spying on US companies too? Just to make sure they are not briding anyone to gain advantages over other US companies.
Anti-Cookies != Anonymous Coward
I don't suppose that the previous court orders on bundling IE and 95, or tampering with Java being shot down by the courts had anything to do with Bill Gates' influence in the US Govt. Do you?
I'm not european but you need to lay off the patriotism and think with your brain a little.
I only speak the truth. Sadly, very few people listen.
If they wouldn't have shipped people here there would probably be some natives sitting where your house stands, smoking grass or something.
Oh, you mean what would be going on in France and Germany right now if it weren't for the US? Is this some kind of joke? The US never needed Europe. If Europe had never existed, we'd be doing far better right now that we are or ever have been in the past. And all those people they shipped here are simply dragging down the economy. Them and the Mexicans.
Stop posting flamebaits
Your post has incited me to flame you, so I think you should take a little of your own advice.
Please read what Woolsey actually said, rather than somebody's spin on somebody else's out-of-context spin on what he said. He acknowledged that, in something on the order of two cases, spying had been done against international *bribery*. He made one remark (for which the context has been removed), hypothetically positing that economic intelligence, if it were compiled, might be given to a US corporation. He specifically excluded economic espionage, defined as "espionage for the direct benefit of an industry". What we do *not* have, explicitly or implicitly, is anything related to a program of massive economic espionage on behalf of US industry. I've heard any number of US intel types whine about how "the Europeans do it for their government-owned businesses and we're not allowed to do it for ours". Clearly at least some of them would like to do it, based upon this perception of an un-level playing field. But as it stands, it does not appear that the US is doing any such thing.
Well, even within the united states themselves, there has been a movement to counter this; where they have banned satellite TV providers from providing programming over local TV stations, so that the local TV stations can still get their advertising revenue, play their network programming, but most importantly, be financially able to provide local news service. Otherwise, the US "Southern dialect" (as well as others) would probably disappear in roughly 20 years, and we'd all speak Californian (yeesh!). (I've also noticed that the term "hella" pops up now and then in conversation with people from the Bay Area, but not people in Southern California, unless they're wired folk)
Buddy, this guy is a troll. He's not saying what he believes; he's saying what he thinks will make you mad.
I normally wouldn't get sucked in, but this discussion is more sensitive than some, and I don't like seeing it pissed in.
Recent proposition on California ballot: Add a "none of the above" item for elections, to improve voter turnout. Dissatisfied California voters can now vote for "none of the above" if none of the listed candidates are acceptable. I did my senior debate on this topic in High School, and I never thought I'd see the day where such an off the wall anti-establishment idea would ever appear in mainstream thought, let alone REAL legislation in America. It got a grin out of me (and a YES vote!!)
Volvo is owned by Ford you bonehead.
Volvo is from Sweden you motherfucking shit-eating imbecile.
Quite honestly, I gave up when all the discussions I didn't want to see pissed in got trolled anyway, and the trolls quickly sunk down to -1 where only those who wanted to read them anyway were going to read them. Give it a break.
Sorry but "(the french have been doing this for a while now)." is going a little too far a little too fast, the only place I've seen this kind of remark is to justify the way the american spying machine is used to give unfair competitive advantage to american corpos. I rest convinced that the french HAVEN'T been doing this.
Oh please. When our (non US) company tried to move into france we would have had to provide the french government with ALL decryption keys to the encryption software we used with no garuantee that it would not be used to decrypt our data to provide an advantage to French companies.
Very very hyprcritical coming from a French person. If you make such a statement you should also mention how the French etat spies on American businesses, otherwise you sound ignorant. No one doubts that the French spy agencies actively spy on Amercian businesses - they have been doing it for decades.
I hope.
I really do.
I mean, I've been trolling this thread for quite a while, but I hope you're trolling too.
Is there anyone else here who thinks that this type of flame does not good at all? Your hateful attitude exposes that you are the truly uncivilized one. Average Americans are hard working people just like you, not "dumb American fucks". Just because we live in a powerful country is no reason foor you to resort to such offensive tactics. Looking at the animosity displayed on this board makes it very clear why our government feels it needs to protect its interests in any way possible.
All we need is some more foriegners hating us Americans, more embassies with their flags being burnt, etc.
To everyone outside the US: sure, a few people in our government are jackasses, but that doesn't make us bad as a people.
campaign contributions aren't neccesarily the same things as bribes. Making the people who already have the power the monopoly supplier of campaign dollars is a good recipe for fascism. Plus it doesn't even get rid of the real bribery (see german example).
I'm glad we do this. I for one am all for helping the U.S. keep it's competitive and economic edge over other countries. Lower unemployment & lower inflation for my country is a good thing. Keep up the good work.
I am moved to great, bellowing peals of earthy laughter by your absurd claims.
The toothless, filthy, degraded, superstitious, diseased, illiterate swarms of Europe are no more capable of inventing computers than they are of using computers, or for that matter using an inclined plane.
Europe is a devastated Socialistic wasteland, scarred by famine, plague, and the endless fratricidal wars of petty local despots. This has been true for two thousand years. I expect no change in the near future. It is an undeniable fact that the Europeans eat with their fingers, and dine upon raw dog in filthy caves.
Something imporant supposed to have happened in 1776 ? Let me guess, er... first MacDonalds open ? Duct tape invented ? Come on OPEC. Keep hiking the prices. We want to see some fun :)
Let's face it. WHat is : Democracy Maths Physics Astronomy and believe it or not America Compared to FORD TRUCKS!
Oh, you mean what would be going on in France and Germany right now if it weren't for the US?
And what does that mean ? You need to get over all the delusional flag-waving shit you are force fed under the great (ahem) American education system.
... and guns so that the rest of the world can snigger at the weekly playground shootouts on the news.
After they built the bomb for you, prick ?
...a bunch of butchering theives[sic]
Very little has changed in all that time.
Err. What?
Some years ago (can't quite remember when) there was a big affair about a swedish country exporting some rather big guns (read canons) to India and they bribed some peoble there. The story didn't die for years and I believe that Sweden had to give official appoligies and so on. I'm not sure if they lost the order because of this. So I'm pretty sure that neither accept or legal here.
What makes you think we weren't at it years ago?
4th USASAFS
You encapsulate the very americano f*cked up fascist, self-cantered views that make your country look so stupid to the rest of the world.
Ha. One day we're going to yank our benevolent handouts and watch you foreign assholes starve. A country can only succeed economically if the US lets it. You really need to get a grip.
The EU and most of NATO are just extensions of the ancient art of European bullshit aristocracy. You dipshits complain that the US is policing the world, but who else is going to? The oppressed in Bosnia didn't get any help from the rest of Europe, so they came to the US.
NATO is nothing without the US. You'll learn that the hard way, one day.
Whether it's Napolean or Hitler, it's been proven time and time again that Europe is too weak to defend itself against even just one of its own countries.
I wish the USSR had swallowed up you European buttfucks and taught you what power really is.
The rest of the world? Latin America, Africa, and Asia are mostly cesspools of barbaric living. The only existing civilization comes from European influence. America is the new European juggernaut, much stronger than the rest of Europe combined. So pretty much you come to us for business.
Every center of technology in Asia, Africa, and Latin America is either the remant of a Euro-American colony, or part of a Euro-American sanctioned rebuilding process after we kicked your ass in some war.
The US needs some stronger leaders though. Someone who won't put up with that India-nuke bullshit. The Indians want to build nukes? Fine. We'll just stop giving you dirty assholes money and other contributions, and watch how fast you fall back into your disgusting wallowing filth. The reason the US public debt is so high is because we're paying for half of the world's food, education, medical care, et cetera.
The next time you assholes want to diss the US, remember that without us, you'd be living in a hut eating garbage like the rest of your sad, left-behind country. You should be thankful for our generosity. Not everyone would feel so sorry for you poor, uneducated savages.
Also, you are contradicting the PR statement when you say "industrial espionage is illegal, and it does not happen". After all, Wooley says himself that if the data that is being gathered could be helpful to certain industries, it will be passed along. Which is exactly what IE is all about.
People should stop getting so uptight about this stuff. The US is just as bad as any other country when it comes to preservation of national interests.
And then Americans are surprised at finding themselves the laughingstock of the entire world. I hope for your safety's sake that you don't travel outside of your beloved borders, lest your ignorance get you into a whole lot of trouble.
Then again, maybe a little time in an "uncivilized" country could be a valuable lesson to dumb American fucks like you.
And the Babylonians all drove round in Rolls Royces, right ? Ok, how about... the calculus, TV, nuclear fission, radio, Linux, ... and... Taco Bell, WWF, baseball, crack
Who needs defectors when we have the Yeltsin government give away thousands of recent, unedited documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination and likely containing a lot of information compromising people active during that time.
I agree with all of this!
Apparently, no one in the US gives a damn about rape either, as Bill Clinton has gotten away with it on many occasions.
Free Mumia.
Geez aint that nice to know. Innocent until proven guitly. Wait you might already be guilty so we better spy to make sure you are!!!
Oh and I bet that info never makes it to US corporations. "Wink Wink nudge nudge say no more say no more"
I love the new age Christians... anything is justifiable as long as it serves our version of morality. Killing "heathens" fine their sinners anyway.
Spy on foreign corporations, hey why not, their governments are corrupt ofcourse. I mean who can trust those dirty germans, 2 world wars and all. And those smug French we know their up to no good, Nothing more dirty than a Frenchman. Unless ofcourse it's his wife. Yup, spy on the French too. Hey while we're at it all of europe. They're all just a bit shifty if you ask me.
Oh ya and worst of all. Them Canadians. Why they'd stab their grandmother in the back with a hockey stick just for fun, I tell you. I'm mean they're obviously corrupt, who the hell eats back bacon anyway.
Need anymore help justifing spying? At least when you have to spy on your own people you need to get a court order right? Well no actually all you do is hire CSIS, or MI5, foreign legion etc. Get around those pesky anti domestic spying laws huh?
It's good to know that big brother is alive and well and living in the USA.
And what of America? No American corporation has ever sold vital technologies to dangerous governments? The American government has never given weapons to dangerous people? Do you forget that Hussein used to be allies with the US? That while he was gassing thousands of civilians in his own nation, he was best friends with the US and the CIA? That America did not speak out against him for his genocide until later when it served a strategic purpose (motivate Americans to support an unjust war). There is no good for evil, it is not America the good and all others the evil. They are all evil. They all are willing to sell their souls if it benefits them.
Um lets see when you've been around a little longer than a few hundred years as a nation then fine but europe is not exactly a newborn.
Perhaps they're not arrogant at all, remember to some degree the idea of a class system still exists in europe and we're all just bloody colonists
You think that makes it right? Just because they do it, we are justified in sinking to their level? Just because other governments serve corporations before their people doesn't mean OUR country should.
What really pisses me off about this is not that the CIA engages in economic espionage, it's about time they played the same game France, Israel, China and others play... it's that they do this for large companies only and my small business doesn't benefit. That's truly unfair.
I have a relative who is currently living in Deutschland doing eConomIc work As the main assignment. He/She had to go through intensive language training in order to become fluent for the job requirements.
She/He is very tight-lipped about details, but I have tried to put together the bits and pieces that have slipped out.
Our government is very concerned about another economic revolution in Europe. Specifically, a technological revolution. The place where this would start is European corporations.
In effect, they are trying to forecast the future economy of the world based on what is happening in Europe. Why? This is because Europe is a major economic hub of the world, and a dramatic increase in their technological ability could be very important to the United States. How? I am not sure, but I imagine it has something to do with efficiency, just like upgrading a major network router will increase the speed of the entire network.
What they do just to get insignificant little details is amazing, but I suppose once they put it all together, it comes out to something coherent and valuable.
I know that Bill Clinton is going over there to Germany in May, and they are all getting worked up over it, all of my relative's coworkers and superiors. He/She is currently putting in long hours just for his visit. I don't know why, but it will be something to keep a look-out for.
The economy of the world is a fragile thing, and I am glad they are taking these measures, just to be informed. I do not believe they are misusing the information in any way.
Either you aren't a US citizen
I am not.
, or you slept through your Civics classes. A corporation is a "legal person", but they do not have all the "rights" a real person has.In the law, a corporation can sign contracts, own property, and perform a few other acts that only a "person" can perform, but a corporation cannot receive Social Security when it turns 65, it cannot vote, it cannot run for office (nor can it donate money directly to canditate ("hard money") in excess of $1000), etc.
AFAIK, companies originally weren't allowed to participate in political process at all -- now they legally can, and in fact _only_ they are capable of doing it, thus turning more or less democratic process into something completely different. I assume, if such blasphemy to the ideas of freedom and human rights as UCITA and DMCA get passed, it won't be hard to pass a law that will turn companies into complete "persons" with the only exception that they can't be imprisoned or executed. If that will happen, the conversion of US into an oppressive dictatorship of big business will be complete.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Off-topic:
It upsets me when people talks directly to moderators. On Slashdot, you are supposed to be writing for us readers or previous posters. Moderators just are special readers that happen to moderate. But it seems that for lots of people they are a faceless kind of thought police. Moderators are there to help, not as external super-egoes.
I like moderation, and consider an honor when I am allowed to moderate, but this behaviour is too intrusive. It breaks the illusion of a conversation.
And the worst is that by labelling this as off-topic, I am yielding to fear of the moderators
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Reading that article fired up the patriot within me!
U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! (chant with me!)
We live in such a great nation! We created the internet and everyone else uses it so we can spy on them! And we have the best satellites for digging up international dirt and if you're military is standing in the way of our economic interests - BAAM!!!
I want to be one of those spies who steals secrets from those stupid europeans! I'd be good at it, I know lots of secrets!
Anyone for a game of Quake?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
*I* will be elected President before Buchanan,
fear not. He only gets attention because he makes
it easy to lampoon brainless nativists.
I was born in a communist country. Are these fucks going to ship my ass when Buchanan gets elected?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
"...Proud to be the laughingstock of every thinking person in the world..."
}}Nope, proud to sign my name and leave an email address, unlike you, you _COWARD_! As to the boy remark, email me and we'll arrange to work that out in meat space.{{
Everything else you sent was out of context, as usual with you cowardly US bashers.
It's late, I'm tired. Tomorrow for you.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
"No American corporation has ever sold vital technologies to dangerous governments?
}}Didn't say that. Said French, German, etc. did, and that, when _their_ economies/safety were threatened (Cold War, Gulf War, Anti-terrorist war) we put our _most precious treasure_ (young American lives) in harms' way for them...read some _real_ history for a change!{{
"The American government has never given weapons to dangerous people?"
}}When it suited our purposes, yes...but, then I was replying to someone who was bashing the US as evil. Don't you want _your_ country to continue to exist? How are _your_ rights protected? By whose blood? Blood is the only price Freedom honors, unfortunately. Ask Gandhi.{{
That America did not speak out against him for his genocide until later when it served a strategic purpose
}}Hussein was a foil the _entire_ West used to counter the threat Iran posed to Saudi Arabia. We have paid a price for what we did to Iraq with higher oil prices, the early nineties economic collapses/recessions and 249 dead young American soldiers. If Hussein gasses his own people, that's the Iraqi's business, in accordance to UN directive.{{
motivate Americans to support an unjust war
}}Don't get me started......short answer: go ask a Kuwaiti survivor of the Iraqi atrocities how 'unjust' the war was...for that matter, go ask a Kurd.{{
Bottom line, I was responding to an attack on _my_ country by an obviously misinformed and incompletely prepared individual...as you are misinformed and unprepared.
Go do your homework, kid. Its time for the grownups to talk. If you want us to take you seriously here, sign your posts. Otherwise you really _are_ a coward. Oh! Can't sign? Afraid your government will track you or your relatives down? Don't you wish you lived here where we are _FREE_ to sign our names and proud?
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Some of our old friends and allies: ie: France (the airliners) and the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Belgium and Switzerland (the briefcase).
Lest we forget, it was a Japanese company (a maker of machine tools) that sold the Russians milling and lathing tools to enable them to work titanium and quiet their subs. This enabled the Russians to get _much closer_ (try closer than 12 miles) with their missle subs, and put the US, Europe and_JAPAN_ at greater risk from _very_ inaccurate (at distance) sub-launched ICBMs.
It was Germany and France that sold Khaddafy and Hussein the industrial ingredients for bio and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
Thank God (in this case) for the CIA/NSA.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
...or is it 'Charles'?
According to the original Echelon docs, the Canadians and Canadian businesses are benefitting as much if not more! Go to the Aussie site or the UCS site for more info.
Hypocrite!
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
The infamous Bilderberger meetings that take place with the worlds most powerful people. Did you hear that during his deposition John Huang pleaded the 5th ammendment like 2000 times? Thats right, two thousand. Clinton himself is a socialist. He rallied for it while in england, and dodging the vietnam war.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well Europeans invented television for Americans to get fat in front of, computers to annoy European slashdotters and cars to pollute as much of the world as they can (not that Europe is any better in that respect). I dont know why I replied to this, as its obviously a joke, but Ive got nothing better to do.
BTW Tipper gives great head.....
So does Bill Bradley. Oops, I mean... uhhh, nevermind.
(When he said he was giving me his full support, he wasn't kidding! I hope that visual ruined your night...)
God Bless,
Al Gore
Inventor of the Internet
God Bless,
Al Gore
Inventor of the Internet
Father of our Country
I made you what you are, AL. You should be kissing my ass.
BTW Tipper gives great head.....
This sig will bend over for a dollar!
From the NY Times, regarding a political satire event in NY that was attended by Rudy (who participated) and Hillary:
ROFLMAO!!!
I am the Lord.
I am the Lord.
God Hates Moderators.
I am Canadian. I worked with the NSA since the early 70's. Since I'm still under restrictions due to secrecy (hence the AC) I'm gonna tell you a few things. I'm also going to spel sum things wrong, in an attempt to get past the cens#rs.
No secrets, however, so get that out of your mind. Mostly because I don't think anyone here could handle them, but also because even here, there is no such thing as secrecy. Call me paranoid? I believe I have the right, and the informed opinion to be.
Canadian business gets ZIP benefit from any intellece gathered in Canada. The int gathered here is mostly on third parties, and that benefits CS I S. Some is on businesses, but only on Canadian based and overseas offices located within it's borders. The juicy stuff goes right back to the states.
Every time I see a story on this type of subject I laugh. If only you knew what is really out there, you'd give up your computers and go and live in a cave. That way, you'd have the privacy you wanted.
And that would be the only way.
A chinese friend of mine has and interestinglife - her granparents were killed by the communists because they were rich, her family became poor, now they're very well off thanks to the American-style economy.
But still they have to deal with bribery on a day to day basis. Fortunately her family knows high-ranking Chinese officials so they have their way most of the time. BUT, my point is bribery is embedded in Chinese culture.
Same thing in India(some regions are especially well known for smooth-talking bribery). My Indian friends laugh at the bribery which is a part of their national heritage. They've been doing it for _years_. Most Indians who want to secure their assets have bodyguards, and all are very familiar with bribery. Similar thing in many African nations(not all). Sure the U.S. is not immune - witness campaign financing. But we're not half as bad as China and India, trust you me.
In having lived in Europe I don't see that bribery is a major problem there, certainly _nothing_ like the bribery which goes on in the rest of the world. I believe the CIA will have its hands full as U.S. business expands into China and India.
>There will always be somebody trying to screw us.
>We should always do whatever we can to screw
>others before they screw us.
Street robber morals. Worse even than the military "preventive retaliation" lies in that you attack persons without even pretending that it might be they who could theoretically be doing the same to you, but anybody else.
Hmm. I thought the USA was on a war against drugs... some really powerfull stuff must still be coming through... I can;t magine any other way someone could have such flawed thoughts about this.
TYhe USA has fuly legalized bribing the entire poltical system. (they call this donations for campeigns... if any european political party would ever accept money in that way they are exit... look at what is happening in Germany right now)
Also, US companies are very good at holding dolars in someones face to make them decide for them... I have seen so repeatedly. If you believe they wouldn't do that because the law says they can't... here is a clue: people sometimes ignore the law.
A quick point, the u.s.a. is the ONLY country were bribery to gain an international contract is against the law. In all other countries it's not against the law. Thus american companies are at a great disadvantage when bidding on international contracts. Until the EU gets their act together to make bribery illegal I don't see why the USA should stop spying to learn 'the bribe of the week'. The French have no moral guilt in this regard. It's part of their business culture. The US government should help American companies to avoid them losing contracts to others due to bribes.
No. Bill Clinton would first say, "No that's not shit." Then, when called on that, he'd say "No, it depends on what the word 'full' means." Then, when finally called, he'd just blame all the shit in the world on the Republicans.
If countries were people and we all went to school, America would be that stupid fat kid that nobody liked, who went around robing your homework and stealing your lunch money. Most of your brains come from people leaving their native countries to go and live in America. Why is it that so many 2nd, 3rd (and so on) generation americans are so inward looking and arrogant.
And during WWII, Henry Ford sold the Nazis the vehicales they used to assist in killing thousands of US soldiers - drafted citizens. Corporations are, more often than not, run in such a fashion that they will happily endager or kill people on a grand scale for a few bucks, all the while chanting the mantra of maximising shareholder returns. It's hardly related to the nationality of the corporation.
For that matter, US alphabet soup agencies are hardly squeeky clean. Ever hear of arms for hostages f'rinstance?
Many moons ago (at the time First World War), the ancestor of the FBI arose in the US. It was intended, in the panic of war and the subsequent Russian Revolution and rise of Communism in Eastern Europe, to stamp out any chance of the emergence of Communist and Socialist groups in the US, with the main risk allegedly being foreigners importing their ideas. We'll gloss over the question of whether the US government has any business supervising the political beliefs of its own citizens for a moment.
The Bureau of Investigation of the Justice department did such a fine job of stamping out the danger of undersirable political thought and enforcing the recently minted Mann act (aimed at the White Slave trade) that it had a problem byu the 1920's - too little to do within the brief it was formed under. So it began expanding, using organised crime and interstate commerce to justify a widening scope into what would eventually become the FBI - which subsequently gained notoriety for spying on US citizens, carrying out dubious covert operations in Latin America, opposing the Civil Rights movement (hey, once you're sanctioned to decide what it is acceptable for US citizens to believe in, whi stop at Communism?).
Spy agencies are like any other hierarchical organisation, private or public. They attract people who wish to exercise power within the context of the organisation, and who wish the organisation to grow in scope and size, to increase their own power. The FBI is a good case study of a relatively narrow-focus group ballooning out of control (not an exaggeration - oversight of the FBI by elected representitives was a joke until after the death of Hoover). The CIA is seeking to expand its brief? Hardly surprising - you're not likely to see the CIA declare, "Hey, the Cold War is over, and we've been grossly incompetant in maintaining US interests in the posr-Cold War world, just disestablish us and set up a new agency!" No, one is seeing the CIA try to justify its size and still expand further by expanding the terms of its mission. And, like the FBI, one should be wary of lending a jingoistic support. I'm sure plenty of people who were happy to see the FBI frame immigrants for selling secrets, oops, catching Communist traitors, were less happy to hear of the FBI blackmailing Martin Luther King, or waste tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money spying on dangerous revolutionaries like Kris Kristofferson.
And that's even before considering the morality of it all...
wow, that's new. Let's say how much the US sucks... all together.
In its relatively short history by now US outsucked most of countries that existed for many centuries more -- and most of other countries were severely criticized by their citizens all the time in the process. OTOH, most of US citizens just *LOVE* their country, so definitely criticism/suckage ratio is still low.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Stephan
Which? Heavier than air was developed in US and Australia. A lot of people think it is likely that hot air ballons were used in India and China long before Europe.
*Powered* Flight was developed in the US. Heavier than air, but unpowered, was Otto Lilienthal, near Berlin, Germany.
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
I don't care how much you try to make these agencies seem like faceless and evil entities, real people work hard to try and make the US safe from terrorism. Obviously not all of their activities are used to track terrorism, but your statement is still a ludicrous exaggeration. The fact that these organizations have such a strict and enforced veil of secrecy means that ANYTHING could be happening, and secrecy means little oversight and easy abuse of power. These people that worked so hard to protect the US from terrorism certainly didn't affect the bombing in Oklahoma or those embassies in Africa did it? If America and its rougue organizations (government, individual or corporate) quit making an obnoxious ass of themselves, fewer maligned people would want to bomb us in the first place. Face it, the world has good reason to hate the actions of those in America, although they do unfairly put those that are in absolutely no position to know what is going on with those that are possibly violating laws.
Maybe if the US didn't throw its weight around quite so much, there would be fewer groups with grudges against it, and it would have less to worry about in the way of terrorism.
That's not strictly true. There are a number of crimes that Britons overseas can be tried for in Britain (and a number of crimes which occur to Britons overseas which theoretically the criminals can be tried for in Britain, if they ever manage to get hold of them). Similarly, I understand from American friends (forgive me if I get this wrong, this is from a drunken pub discussion) that Americans living overseas can be tried for in America including, bizarrely enough, not paying your taxes. ?
-- At rest in the information super layby.
You're right.
It's A-OK to buy a country (with media budgets) but it's plainly wrong to buy a deal.
Sure.
You're right.
You have just got to keep an eye on such buggers, don't cha.
Who knows? They just might get a clue and buy a government. Worse. They might just buy *your* government. Or have they done so already?
As for all those who say, "it happens--get over it," let me inform you that it is our responsibility as citizens to maintain constant vigilance over government. If things like this didn't happen, we wouldn't need to follow their actions. Corporatism is very nasty and we must be as ruthless in fighting it as we are in fighting infringements on our Constitutional rights. Actually, our record on protecting our rights isn't that good either but that's another issue.
And it's rotten to the core. I certainly hope you don't think we went through all that business in 1776 just to end up with a paternalistic business-government.
News for Nerds? Screw that. If you were really into this type of thing and a nerd, your questions would be how do they do this? What kind of equipment do they use? Can I do this? How do I stop this? In a nutshell, give me more technical information. What is the state of the art of the technology? Okay, the spooky dudes probably have better stuff. What could they use?
Okay, I'll start this discussion. Is the CIA using local bugging devices? This would require the limited range transmission of the recording to a localized receiver (just like the Russian diplomat sitting on a park bench outside the State Department). Nah, they would use satellites to intercpet international communications. I guess one must just focus the receiving antenna at the fixed transmitting attenna and retransmit back another receiver. Land-lines? Need a tap somewhere. Hmmm, how much American telephone switches are in place. What would it take to tap a few lines. Data storage and transmission? Backdoor entrances?
According to a recent book, the US tapped a Soviet communication link by placing a recording pod attached to an undersea cable. Farradays' Law I guess.
Sorry for this rambling discourse. I'm in a foul mood due to work and I don't expect sympathy from this crowd.:-) You could pour hot grits down my pants right now and I wouldn't notice a pertified statue right next to me.
I'll send you some links to more of this as you seem interested in this subject. Once again, thank you. At least there is someone else that wants to expand their mind instead of posting flamebait material.
Wonderful amount of acceptance, and even praise, for the US government being sleazy!
Ironic, though, that there is endless wailing and gnashing of teeth whenever it's revealed that the government does just as much spying on its own people.
Hey, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Whatever the government does outside its borders, it does the same thing inside. s'fact.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
i think it's pretty much known that the "internet" started out as a United States run wide area network. that gave them plenty of time to learn how to sniff, snoop, and eavesdrop. it's in their best interest to do as much snooping as possible. it's not good to be on the end that gets snooped, but i'd rather the US snoop than some other volatile country just looking for a reason.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I seem to recall something about IBM in Argentina a while ago. Or no?
I'm not completely sure but AFAIK French troops fought against hispanic Mexicans in Mexico (an adventure that has not left much in History, but is still remembered in the French military tradition as the first war fought by the Foreign Legion).
I've never heard about French canadians fighting against US people. French settlers in canada have fought against british settlers before canada was a country.
Ironically, you failed to mention the only episode when French troops actually engaged American troops, that is, the invasion of North Africa in 1942. The engagement was very minor, since the strongly anti-Gaulist US army negociated with the Vichy administration that the latter would be kept in charge of Algeria. The occupying Americans even neglected to ask the Vichy administration to drop Vichy's anti-jews laws, which happened only after de Gaulle took over the French North Africa's administration a few months later.
Boeing is massively subsided through military research credits. It was saved by those credits in the 70s.
If there was no political will from France and Germany, there would be only one aircraft manufacturer in the world. I wonder how you slashdotters who are often quick to stand for diversity and competition in IT technology would take that.
The American aerospace industry has been founded on government funding, be it the WWII industrial developpement (which _made_ boeing), or the Apollo program.
Airlines don't choose randomly. Airbus planes are competitive, and generaly more innovative that their Seattle counterparts. In less than 20 years they have conquered a 50% marketshare.
Oh yeah, the article I read (maybe it was heard; I know this casts great doubt on my reliability, but sorry!) said that in some countries bribary of foreign government officials was actually tax deductable! (how are you supposed to get a receipt for that?)
Easy. A small bribe is "representation". Maybe you pay a trip to your country for that official so he can sign papers. He want a two week trip, brings his family etc. In reality a paid vacation.
You get a receipt for bigger bribes. It don't say "bribe" for sure. It claims to be some sort of obscure tax. Taxes paid in foreign countries are usually deductible, and it is hard to check that it is a "real" tax. The guy may officially be in a position to issue local taxes - pocketing it is a crime committed by him, not the corporation.
Or he can simply increase the price of some service you pay for. A company official can do that - the fact that he's collecting for himself and not his company is again a matter between he and his company.
Well, just to chip in, I have read that that's true (Newsweek or something, about 4 years ago). Doesn't mean that it's actually true, but it at least backs it up. The claim is not that bribery is legal in other countries (I sure hope not), but that for instance it is illegal for Americans to bribe Brazilian customs officers. It's illegal for American's to bribe OTHER country's officials.
Of course, this is never, ever enforced, and it happens all the time, even with people/companies that have strong moral stances against bribery, becuase they often cannot get anything done without bribary. This is partially as a result of some governments paying below-poverty-line salaries to such officials expecting that the bribes will make up the difference. There are NGOs working to increase the salaries of these people to try to reduce the amount of bribary necesssary to transact international business.
I don't believe the US making foreign bribery illegal has much impact, since it's never enforced, but I just thought I'd back up the facts of the first guy. Oh yeah, the article I read (maybe it was heard; I know this casts great doubt on my reliability, but sorry!) said that in some countries bribary of foreign government officials was actually tax deductable! (how are you supposed to get a receipt for that?)
I agree with you. They want to look like victims, but they are just playing politics for the hometown yokels.
photosMy Photostream
Am I the only one who finds our government being a tad ethnocentric here? It's also very noble . . .
More surprising is that the openly admit their own bigotry. Wow. I'm proud to be in this country. Go Uncle Sam!
-Leo
Bribery may be rampant throughout the world. But the nations where it is endemic are far less successful than those where it is rare.
I have lived in Stockholm the last five years in a culture where bribery is rare and treated as a crime (surf here). Despite the horrible tax rates and small population here, this society is one of the richest on earth.
Previous to this I lived in Honduras, which is listed as the sixth most corrupt nations in the world. Bribes in Honduras suck the country dry of any usable capital and hamstring the entire economy. The trickle down effect of bribes, feeding bribes, feeding bribes waters down any real value without producing anything (any good or service)!
I think the countries Woolsey is referring to most are Germany and France. While living in Central America, these guys played very fast and loose with all of the countries' natural resources there via a variety of NGO's and official aid agencies. Bribery was their modus operandi and I knew personally several Honduran officials on their 'payroll'. I also met a couple scientists who had first hand knowledge of German bribery funding Teak deforestation via an NGO in Indonesia.
For what it's worth, in my experience the countries that participate in this game always lose in the long run - and that includes both the bribers and bribees. Evesdropping may provide some short-term benefits in specific circumstances for more honest countries, but in the long run honesty pays off in direct, tangible benefits such as a vibrant economy and real wealth creation.
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
whats its culture or ideals that make it different?
The point here is that American popular culture has been very much adopted by the rest of the world - American culture is not different because everyone copies it and incorporates it into their own culture. Many countries have had to introduce various laws to try to protect their own cultures from being overwhelmed by this phenomena. Radio and TV stations have to play local music, theatres must show locally produced films and so on. American English has become the Lingua Franca. The Internet is almost totally English, and in most civilized countries the ability to speak fluent English has become a requisite to finding a good job.
Is American culture different from other cultures? How could it be, since most other cultures have been subsumed by it to a large degree.
does that mean we can get the new handy dandy hair remover system that has been in the works in europe for years?
seriously though, as Douglas Adams said, "if its been in use in high rank salons in europe for years why did it take so long to get here?"
It never ceases to surprise me how many of those "open source-", "freedom of speech-", and whatsoever-lovers get militant as soon as the topic involves the relationship between different nations. Then it is "our" corporations, "our" economy versus "the other's" economy.
This is a mindset that that shows that the average IQ on this site is not really higher than on the rest of the net.
To call oneself "nerd" or a "geek" is obviously only just another way of saying one is "better" than others, just as in "I'm american and the others suck" or "I'm european and the others suck".
I am so very much disappointed about the oftentimes quite primitive niveau of these discussions.
You have made a very,very important point.
This shows how the public is being controlled by
the mainstream-media. Even in a free medium like
the Internet most people will not get information
that is "inappropriate" for them because they have
no idea how to get it.
But what I find is the saddest part is that 50%
of the people living over here in Europe will not
learn about it either. America is just to nice
a projection plane for any hopes and desires. And
the commercial media takes advantage of that.
The laws of a country apply only on that country's soil. If you break them, that country prosecutes you by their laws. Simple.
Simply wrong. Many states choose to exercise their jurisdiction over their citizens when they are abroad. For example, in England, we have laws that have been used successfully to prosecute 'sex tourists' who have sexually abused minors whilst on holiday in Thailand.
And who says a country shouldn't be able to break laws if it is willing to accept the penalties when caught? I break the law every day, speeding to work, and am willing to pay the ticket when caught.
I rather fail to see the parallel. Many countries have the doctrine of 'act of state', wherein the foreign policy actions of the government are not susceptible to any form of judicial review. There is no 'penalty' for 'breaking the rules', as such.
On the other hand, it does weaken the democratic mandate of a government which is alleged to operate constitutionally under the rule of law.
I expect my government to heed the principle that it, too, operates under the rule of law; including being contained by the boundaries that the legislature has set for it: anything else is an executive usurption of the role of the legislature, and a violation of the core notion of the separation of powers.
I bet you wouldn't speed to work every day if you thought that the traffic cop that stopped you might decide to put a bullet in your brain rather than give you a ticket...
-- O improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
I have to disagree. If someone broadcasts sensitive information and it gets intercepted, I wouldn't call that theft. If the information is sensitive, it should be encrypted and/or routed over hard line.
So, by analogy, if you're so lax as to leave your bike unsecured, I should be entitled to steal it?
Moreover, given that the NSA (etc.) doesn't make it common knowledge exactly what its capabilities actually are in the field of cryptanalysis, what level of paranoia should companies (or, indeed, individuals) be forced to adopt in order to secure themselves?
-- O improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
Collecting economic intelligence is completely understandable - after all, economic crises are an incredible threat to the U.S. Collecting economic intelligence makes perfect sense; it can help us prepare for and manage economic catastrophe long before it happens.
It think the part of this that people find disturbing is not so much that economic intelligence is gathered, but that it is subsequently divulged for what appears to be commercial gain, rather than in the interests of national security.
And on that basis:
Keep in mind that most of the information is OSINT (open source intelligence), and not intelligence obtained by spying. To quote the article: "Whether economic or military, most US intelligence data came from open sources, [Woolsey] said. But 'five percent is essentially secrets that we steal. We steal secrets with espionage, with communications, with reconnaissance satellites.'
Even if it is the case that 95% of intelligence is gathered from open sources (and I've no reason to doubt that), the fact still remains that it has been collated, assessed for reliability, digested and disseminated with money that is supposed to be spent on providing national security.
Market intelligence is a tremendously valuable commodity; there are certainly companies the livelihoods of which depend on selling it. To provide it 'free of charge' is a tremendous boon to the companies involved, and a subsidy which effectively comes out of a large (and largely opaquely accounted) intelligence gathering budget.
-- O improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
Meanwhile, on a far more important note, I spent several minutes trying to figure out your Latin .sig line. Google brought me to the Aeneid in Latin (no translation), but - get this - it also brought me to several Slashdot articles you've written. (Same with Yahoo and Find.com.) In the end, the best I could come up with was from the Perseus Project, a line about how Dido never dreamed that love like that she shared with Aeneas could ever die. Is that about right?
The quotation is, indeed, from the Aeneid; Book IV to be precise... I'm not sure where the translation you've got has come from, but it doesn't seem to be from quite the right part of the book...
As I remember it, Williams' translation goes something like: O relentless love, to what mad courses may not mortal hearts by thee be driven!. It refers in main to the panic into which Dido is thrown when Aeneas begins his preparations to depart from Carthage, having been informed by the gods that he is abandoning his fated purpose by lingering their with Dido.
PS. I would've emailed this, but you don't appear to have an email address on file...
-- O improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
Greed. Plain and simple. This kind of stuff gets me mad too. I can't respect corporations or governments that behave this way. Although in many ways this kind of thing is the least offensive form of corruption that goes on in government... but don't get me started...
And pray tell who let them in? They didn't evolve here don't you know. There's documented evidence of the "native americans" moving down from the bearing straight pushing the previously "native americans" down north america, into south america and then they were gone.
Wait a minute, what is unethical about spying? How is corruption and ethics rearing its head in this matter? If America was to disband all espionage it would be like disbanding our entire military. How would abandoning national security and endangering American lives be unethical?
There are many governments and other social bodies that consider America their enemy. We need operatives in these organizations. When war broke out in Iraq I am sure that we had many spies in their army and government. And remember, we were helping them only a decade earlier in their war against Iran (making them our allies). We cannot just but spies in place after they are our enemy. We need spies everywhere just in case we have problems in that area of the world. If war suddenly broke out in Egypt, for instance, we better have spies over there feeding us intel that our satellites cannot find.
It annoys me when people talk from their high ethical purches and try to give the world a lesson in morality. Espionage is not unethical, and it isnt even a nessessary evil. It isnt an evil at all. It is simply one more extensive of a government doing its job.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Well, first off Microsoft doesn't need the government's help on obtaining some magical code that is hurting it. MS has enough of its own resources to either destroy the owners, buy it, or create a reproduction and try to capitalize the market through its extremely broad channels. Microsoft has only been hurt by fighting a ghost, an enemy it cannot see or hurt - a damn idea. Its happened in the past, and it doesn't have to be morally better then the existing structure, just has a good ring to it. The Pope recently asked for forgiveness due to massive crimes towards Jews, women, minorities, and human rights. Religion is a good example of this ideology, which governments cannot kill (many attacks on Jews, way before 20th century). Are these ideas the best? No, but they've got some good stuff in them, enough that its worth paying attention to. (personally, I think Open Source is a good idea, just not "free software")
/. enemies.. ugh.. I hate this lemmings crap. Slashdot is pretty awful by itself, really, by pushing half-truths in such causes against "enemies." I consider Microsoft a competitor in any software field, the MPAA as being short sighted towards reality due to its member's goals, and John Johnson to be nothing of a hero. He's lied, twisted facts to make him look morally superior, and the only reason I see him gaining any support towards legal costs is because his father shouldn't be stuck with a bill. That's just my beliefs, just as I actually read the offending Corel license that /. screamed about, saw nothing illegal about it, and was told by people like Bruce Perens that they don't give a fuck whether Corel did anything wrong. Its about scaring the fuck out of anyone who may even think twice about fucking with you. RMS's recent reply to amazon seems pretty dumb considering Amazon did not fire the first shot, but was continuing a long give-and-take battle (Apple and MS did this).
The industrial espinauge is, as they claim, only for extreme cases where it is pretty vital. China finally made a more advanced rocket for missles, then for national security the US is damn well going out how. China and others have done so to the US. The US isn't known for being morally superior or horribly reched. Any relatively successful country will do this, legally or not. Its life.
Oh, and for the sick bit about the
Get your own fucking ideas. Linus isn't god, RMS isn't some old hack who wants credit for Linux, "free software" isn't morally better than proprietary software, ESR isn't some grand philosophy (but he's damn quiet once he gets paid off), Marx contributed vastly to society intellectually, AI machines will make mankind slaves by 2021 is riduculous, and because whatever the latest game looks kinda cool doesn't mean you've just gotta get into computer science. There's a fucking world out there with more important stuff and you don't need to believe this all of this propiganda dribble.
Go to a real college, take sociology and humanities classes, and don't do CS because your to lazy and think its easy money. You can learn something in life, or just be a damn wothless lemming.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
The DGSE killed ONE Greenpeace photographer who was onboard the Rainbow Warrior while it was docked in harbour in New Zealand. A very half-arsed job they did too, a got caught.
And to think the US corporations never use bribery (campaign funds in the US, bribes through third parties overseas, or "pressure" from the US govt. if you are looking at buying from overseas)!
All governments do it, but to claim the moral high ground is a bit rich.
the French are notorious for their tenacious protection of their own internal market
......
Replace "French" with "US" in above.
How many non-US built arms/aircraft etc. does the US have ?? How many US airlines run Airbus jets ??
Perhaps many US slashdotter hate the French, because they look too much like yourselves
Heavier than air flight - it was being developed in a number of places, I take it you are referring to powered, heavier than air flight. First controlled powered flight is accredited to the US (Wright brothers), but Richard Pierce (NZ) may have been a year or so earlier.
There is some evidence that the Koreans were using what looked like a cross between a hang-glider and a kite in the 1600's
Thanks for the info re: NWA
Boeing get their assistance through less direct means.
It's has been proved that NSA infiltrated Microsoft to introduce backdoors in Windows.
Do we need to check all Linux or BSD programmer ?
Make they sign a certification "I'm not working for a intelligence agency...
That would instaure a real paranoid. X code contains a Buffer Overflow... is he one of them ?
sunk the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of GreenPeace in the South Pacific, killing two anti-nuclear activists
They killed one, and by mistake since the boat was supposed to be empty. Of course the French could have sunken it when it was crusing into the French military restricted area, which would have been their legitimate right, but prefered to do it when the boat was empty. And for the dead guy, well, that's too bad, but death is a risk one must accept when violating a military area (especially when you do so with a bunch of recording equipement).
It seems the government is going public and coming clean with more and more things that are definately suspicious and generally NOT GOOD. Has anyone here seen Dante's Peak with that quote that brosman says about a pot coming to boil where he says you cook a lobster slowly so they cant feel it rather and not notice themselves cooking until its too late. Im beginning to feel the same way about the incremental changes occurring in our government. They republicans and democrats only seem to agree on one thing which is to continue to take away our rights. Chipping away at the first and second amendments until its like the book animal farm and the laws mean only what the elite feels they should mean. Fuck the government! If we were to time travel from midway through the 80s to this month we would see exactly what the government is doing. This is undeniably moving towards a dictatorship, scary, very scary. I wonder in how many decades it will take for things to come to a head.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
I find this statement to be hilarious, especially given the fact that the grass-roots economy of the US is based entirely on bribery.
The various service industries of the US work on an employment policy of paying minimum wage and employees increasing their pay packet via the gaining of "tips". A tip is given by a consumer with the distinct purpose of rewarding the service provider for good service. Thus the prospect of getting a good tip encourages the service provider to give better service.
What this essentially means is that the receiver of services will give money to the giver of services to get them to serve the receiver better. In other words the receiver BRIBES the giver to get better service.
Hence for the US to spy on other companies from other countries and then justifying this by proclaiming them to be centers of bribery and corruption is unbelievably hypocritical.
But then again since when did the US government ever expect anything less than "do what I say and not what I do"???
I don't think this is anything that anyone didn't know, and I think it is the logical progression. The new unit of wealth is information, not bombs or guns, because now there are many countries that can blow up other countries with a button. Before, world governments would steal military secrets because that was might, now might is information.
<BR><BR>
--Patryn
The free worlds defender of international justice...
What else can you expect from a country where goverment agencys kill there own precident.....
Heheheh
> was typically limited to industrial spying and not commandited by
> government themselves.
Get real. China and Russia are probably doing a lot more damage to the US by stealing technology than by stealing military secrets.
The lead in for this speech / q&a session is
totally misleading. Woosley clearly states that
the CIA's only interest has been in cases of
bribery or other 'unfair' tactics by foreign
firms to win contracts, and that the information
will go to the state dept. He also says that
they dont have the resources to go on fishing
trips and that in general, the US is the leader
in most of todays valuable technologies. Please
try not to politicize everything that has 'CIA'
or 'NSA' on it.
which was, that non-u.s. intel agencies performed such actions for their own benefit (and benefit of their "patrons".
I think it's stupid that our national security services spent time and resources spying on international coorporations. They had a justified reason that I agree with, but the fact remains, if they had something they could use against those companies they still wouldn't beable to use it because they they'd have to admit they were monitoring communications. It would spawn a firestorm in the political world. Surely someone had to realize this...that even if we did get some good dirt we'd have a hard time using it against anyone, what do we pay those goons for anyway? Heh, i still think it's better that they're spying on someone besides me, can't argue with that....
Then you can't do business in Europe with that attitude, or Asia, 'coz for all practical purposes, there are no major countries which don't do industrial espionage.
The ex-Director wasn't making things up about the French bugging airplances and riffling through briefcases. That French intelligence is VERY active in corporate espionage is well-documented. The SVR has inherited its predecessor's main directives, including industrial espionage (The KGB placed a HUGE emphasis on it. It saved them utterly insane amounts of money...).
Frankly, you're naive if you think any major nation DOESN'T spy on business travelers and business interests.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
*blinks*
Spying is pretty much constant.
In addition, not all of it is just intercepting electronic communications. Human intelligence is another aspect of it.
Unless you can be SURE that not a single one of your employees is disgruntled, or EVER going to be disgruntled or otherwise corruptible, info can leak. A LOT of valuable information has, historically, been leaked by people with access to documents, a suitcase, and a weakness -- greed, vulnerability to blackmail (like, say, flying in to Moscow, and falling in with a dame who just *happened* to hit on you, and later finding out that the whole fling was orchestrated and being presented with photos), or so forth.
Kim Philby was thought pretty darn reliable at one point. Enough that, IIRC, he was considered in line to eventually head British Intelligence. The KGB must have considered Mitrokhin reliable, to let him be an archivist with so much access. And so forth.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
... that yes, I know you're not bad as a people. But to discover that fact I had to go to the US many times and make friends there. But when most people look at the US from the outside what they see is Hollywood, Disney World, wars, wars and more wars, and a lot of intervention in *their* own country. Some of this can be ascribed to pure and simple envy, because the Hollywood and Disney side of the equation leads them to believe all Americans are happy, rich and get laid every night. The other, ugly side is the real effect people feel in their lives from the interventionism. Myself, having a lot of American friends, I think they're all individually nice people, but they usually don't have a clue what their government is doing outside their borders, or they would never allow it.
> Look, as long as they don't spy on Americans...
Oh stop it! It hurts my ribs to laugh this hard!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Airbus Industrie would not exist if it weren't for European government subsidies. IMHO, the USA is pretty generous to allow Europe to finance competition for Boeing (and incidentally, put Lockheed out of the commercial aircraft business and force McDonnell-Douglas into a takeover) without claiming unfair trading practices and charging back the subsidies.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This trully is an interesting 'fact', too bad that it's not true. Bribery is illegal in many other countries (including Poland) and it is considered unethical all over the EU. Too bad that ethics seem to have no place in modern business anymore.
Jay
-- polish ccs mirror
I mean its nice to see someone admit it publically, but it comes as no suprise to me that the US intelligence community works for the benefit of US corporations - US politicians work for the benefit of US corporations as well since thats who pays for them. It takes so much cash to be elected in a modern democracy that only those with the good corporate connections can *afford* to get elected. Do you think those corporations fund candidates solely out of the kindness of their hearts?
True democracy is a myth these days. We are governed by those with the money to buy the politicians their offices. I think anyone who truly believes otherwise is living in a dream world.
(Mind you there are some exceptions, Switzerland seems to have a good democratic system from what I have read).
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Even if it is owned by Ford, it is still a swedish company!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
If 5% of my belongings were stolen, I wouldn't feel very good about myself.
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
7th Design
The quote that scares me the most is: "Some of our old friends and allies are in this business as well, not only by putting microphones in the head rests of their airliners which cross the Atlantic, in first class seats, but in other ways as well ... There are European countries where .. if you leave your briefcase when you go to dinner, if you're a businessman and there's anything sensitive in it, you should have your head examined".
I've taken that kind of flight (JAL airlines LAX to Tokyo) many many times. The thought that my own government would be spying on my activities under the guise of "protecting american interests" is apauling!
_________________________
Why, to the people who last took them to a dinner & golf outing in florida, of course!
So I suppose the NSA/CIA's job includes ripping off non-US companies, damaging the economies of other countries and creating a foreign relations nightmare for the US government. I'm sure glad my country's intelligence service isn't so "efficient".
I'm pissed off because this kind of bullshit is making life worse for everybody. So much for free trade, travel without visas and time restrictions and cooperation between companies. I hope this leads to less international cooperation with the US but it will probably just lead to an arms war of international industrial espionage.
Hollywood crap again. The 'Australia' defense was one concoted by the 'young man's ' lawyers at his trial. The real reason those two bozoids did the deed was completely for the cash, in order to buy cocaine to deal to their high school and college buddies.
Tomorrow for you too.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
...you wouldn't know a fascist if he had his boot on your neck you cowardly little sack of quivering dung!
BTW, did I ever tell you AC's what pretty little ol' mouths you had?
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
1. You don't get in to the SCI/Close-held cells because they are by nature 'NOFORN,' meaning 'no foreign nationals'. Unless the cell is 'countermarked' allowing access to Canadian nationals (normally military or GCHQ/CSIS) you don't even know the cell exists. If you have no access to the cell you don't see its methods/information/technology. Thus, you can't know what you are talking about.
2. The whole _purpose_ of a program 'like' Echelon (if Echelon exists), in my mind, would be for everyone to plead 'plausible deniability.' The CSIS, spies on the US and the CIA/NSA spies on Canada, then we swap info. Nobody violates any laws in their respective countries as to domestic collection. They rely on their 'cousins' for that. That's not what I was talking about in my previous post. I was not talking necessarily about the CSIS alone. I was also including the Canadian counterpart to the Commerce Department, who, like the US cousins (as well as the State Department) has an intelligence arm. Also, CSIS corporate types would probably be in a separate cell structure/department from yours, so you wouldn't even know they were there. This last would be especially true if you were involved with the NSA, as you allege, since you are now 'suspect.' and possibly compromised or conflicted in your loyalties.
3. I _know_ what can be known. Believe me. I too have stories of things that go "PFFFFT,' in the night. The only defense is to live a life free of secrets and to _always_ be on your guard and prepared to defend yourself by any means necessary. I don't want to live in a cave. And I make a quite nice living with computers. As long as I stay away from the security aspects of the technology, I am left alone. I believe that a gentleman in New Orleans, Louisiana put it best when he said "Three can keep a secret, if two are dead."
Finally, I would not call you a liar, except to your face. But your post is one of the 'insoluble problems' with AC's. If you are for real, then you you would not post except by AC, because of your paranoia. However, there is no way to tell if you are lying, as an AC, especially given the tone of your post and your obvious lack of a grasp of reality: ie: Canadian security personnel in the US and aimed at the US will look out for Canada first. To believe anything else is paranoid conspiracist claptrap.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Isreal, France, the UK, and the masters of this, the Russians, have all admitted the same.
The French Surete and the DGE were caught bugging the business class of Air France airliners. MI5 and MI6 were caught in France, Germany and the US doing the same. Jonathon Pollard was doing it for Isreal, and then the Mossad was caught actively recruiting 'agents-in-place' in American high tech firms. The Russians admitted that the only thing that kept them on par with the Americans (and kept them from being militarily, the Third World country they were in reality) during the Cold War was economic espionage (second on their 'To-Do' list only to suppressing dissidents -internal and external- Read 'The KGB Papers' for more.) Let's not mention China and India (India was caught planting 'Trojan' code in American corporate software Indian companies were contracted and _paid_ to retrofit for the Y2K bug!)
The CIA and NSA are underwritten (mostly!) by my tax dollars. I _want_ them to look out for the best interests of American companies.
Additionally, isn't it odd that this guy is the same guy who is currently under investigation for gross misuse of office and various irregularities of information security that put many American agents at risk of their lives. Isn't this the same guy that now represents foreign firms in his consulting practice, after harvesting secrets from the files of the agency he directed, and then getting caught?
Two points:
1) Given the general cluelessness of Reno and the Justice Department (and the FBI! the CIA's Public Enemy #1, led by Louis 'the Clueless' Freeh), isn't it a _good thing_ to have a Cabinet-level officer (DCI) who can counter their drivel and obvious agenda with a _different_ set of facts/perceptions?
2) Since the world's economy is on the skids, and the only quasi-stable economy is that of the US, isn't it in the enlightened self interest of the rest of the world that the US do what is _plainly_ being done by the rest of the world here?
Finally, the economic/technical weapon of tomorrow is embodied in the research of today. To be informed of that potential weapon/technology is a primary tenet of the charter under which the CIA, the NSA (and, yes, even the FBI and Secret Service -although they're not too effective due to their immediate political natures/agendas/concerns/structures) operates. That some of this intelligence finds its way to the very corporations it would most benefit is a fact of life and Federal Budgets (as well as a _very_ good thing!)
Except for the DCI, almost all of the CIA employees are long-term careerists, giving this agency a view _far_ more long than the FBI. Same goes for the NSA.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Full title: The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB
p ?theisbn=0465003109
:-p
Available from FatBrain at: http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.as
From the FatBrain(TM) summary:
"-KGB's attempts to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology corporations. Their success seems to have inspired Chinese intelligence to do likewise."
The book is really very interesting, as Mitrokhin was an MI6-UK coup and not a US double. He was a commited Communist apparatchik who, by contact with the KGB archives (he was the chief archivist during the move from the Dzerzhinsky complex to the new SRV site outside Moscow,) became disillusioned and began to copy and smuggle out the entirety of the KGB historical archives. He stowed them in his dacha and took a train to the West and on to London, where they debriefed him for three years before they went public. The intelligence agencies in the UK _still_ haven't turned over _all_ the files to their 'cousins' in America, Canada, India, Ireland, Germany, France and Isreal, citing 'national security reasons.'
Among the most damaging revelations was that the Secretaries of the Treasury and State under Roosevelt, right before he died, were KGB/GRU 'sleepers' compromised in the '30's.
A _really_ amazing book.
Final, from the FatBrain(TM) summary:
"The Sword and the Shield is a work of great historical significance, which will fundamentally alter our understanding of Soviet history and modern international relations. For Russia's post-Soviet intelligence service, SVR, the publication of this book poses a real problem. No one who spied for Russia between 1917 and the final years of the Cold War can be sure anymore that his or her secrets are secure."
Any worries, Alex?
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
My bad! See http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/d eutch000209.html) and my _sincere_ apologies to former-Dirctor Woolsey. He wasn't the guy who compromised the CIA, he almost brought it down because it 'bored' him and he wanted DoD instead. See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archive/1995/950 109/950109.intelligence.html for more.
Ignored Aldrich Ames and was an authoritarian bureaucrat...consider the source.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Okay...._finally_ an interesting thread.
1. HUMINT. Thread focusses on trade craft and the tools of the trade. START. The Watergate Plumbers-type tech and how far it has come (I think your 'local bug' idea would go here.
2. SIGINT. Thread focusses on tech and countermeasures. START. ???countermeasures? methods? maybe a discussion of FreeNet/Free SWAN or the advantages/disdvantages of symmetric vs. asymmetric key systems. Or maybe one-time pad encryption or key distribution systems. TEMPEST/VanEyck?
3. ELINT. Thread focusses on tech. START. ???countermeasures. differences/values between ELINT and SIGINT.
4. MSINT. Thread focusses on this _very_ new technology. START. Maybe a definition of Multi-spectral intelligence and a discussion/thread of state of the art. Or maybe the application of quantum methods. ???countermeasures??? (THAT would be interesting, nerds discussing the theoretical uses and defenses against using quantum effects to gather intelligence!)
Nice thought experiment, CRAW, thanks!
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Slashdot Newsflash!
The US spies on EVERYTHING.
I don't think it should be surprising when we find out that we're spying on ANY country, corporation, or entity. There are reasons to have information on everything. It's for the citizens safety. If you are a US Citizen and don't like it, leave the country. If you are not a US Citizen, be jealous that we are in control of a Hell of a lot of information, and its allowing us to weild more power and make better and more informed choices. Otherwise you die like the rest.
Mike Roberto
- roberto@soul.apk.net
-- AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Have a look at www.transparency.org and tell me if the US or most european nations have a bigger problem with bribery! BTW.: Think that the NSA discovers a new technology at Airbus Inc. Whom will they give the tecnology to? MDD? Boeing? anybody else? To the biggest/strongest/weakest/friendliest Megaconcern?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Look at the american system of campaign funding and lobbiests just because. Somehow corporations financing political campaigns to the tone of millions of dollars in order to get their positions on food safety, polution control which are clearly against the public interest voted for is not bribery? Oh well
IIRC, it is the government's responsibility to ensure the market is *FAIR* for all interested, and not favouring to the "home boys".
You're sort of right. It's the US government's responsibility to ensure the market is fair in the US. As for ensuring that it is fair outside of the US... if you think there is any hope of ever achieving that, I have a nice bridge to sell you. :)
It is irrelevant whether other countries practice government-sponsored industrial espionage, it is against what the United States was created for.
It is irrelevant to consider what the US was created for. The US constitution included a means for it to be changed as needed. Times change. The US has to deal with it. Wether or not it has done so in the best way is the subject of another discussion.
P.S. Glad I'm not American. :)
I'm glad that you're not too. :)
q
"PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
Former United States Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey confirmed in Washington this week that the US steals economic secrets "with espionage, with communications [intelligence], with reconnaissance satellites", and that there was now "some increased emphasis" on economic intelligence.
When asked why Europe was being spied on James Woolsey replied that it was because he had lost a poker game to a European and because of that it was completely ethical to do whatever he damn well pleased.
I have to ask the question, Why is it ethical to spy on someone because of a history of bribes and then go and redistribute that intellegence information if it would be convenient? I can support %95 of the operations, the news paper reading and general keeping track of everything. But IMO using espionage, communications intellegence (probably wiretapping etc.) and recon satellites is just going to far for anything that is not a direct threat to *security*, not the economy. I think both sides would do well do back off. After all tit for tat is never a good policy.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
This bit on Workfactor Reduction Fields in the European Parliament report that was referred to in the article came as a blow - even though I knew it to be true already.
Just for my peace of mind, could a few technically competent individuals please reassure me once again about how secure my 4096-bit PGP key is please?
It's all the more interesting when you think that the valuation of all the internet stocks rely upon the continued growth of internet commerce, and that relies on people sending credit card information over the internet. I find it hard to believe that the current versions of the browsers do not have back doors built into them.
Salocin.com
So the Britains see only the Data they are allowed to see.
"Wie immer alle Angaben ohne Gewähr"
If I remember correctly Tim Berners-Lee was working in the CERN in Geneva (Switzerland) at that time?
And if I'm informed corectly he comes from the UK. So?
Thankyou, this is just about the first sensible comment on this subject.
People, you must be careful of your governments behaviour. Just shrugging your shoulders is irresponsible and symptomatic of taking democracy for granted.
To a corporation; they commit theft
To a government; they collect information.
Its a fine line but you can't sue a government as easily
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
US based funds hold significant positions in many European companies. If US intelligence is producing competitive advantages for companies with their HQ in US, then this will damage the property of other US citizens who have an interest in the European companies. Even more so once the barriers of entry into foreign exchanges are lifted in a couple of years.
So is it the American jobs that count or the capital/ownership?
No. The US economic prosperity is due to various factors, although being the world superpower helps.
I'm just saying that if other nations got together they might have a shot at standing up to this abusive Collossus.
I don't "plan to have a group of European nations beat up and bully the US". I just think that if they stand together they have a shot at making the US reconsider its we-are-bigger-than-you-so-we-can-do-whatever-the-h ell-we-want-mwa-ha-ha mentality.
The US gov't. (yes, I know I always rant about the US gov't., but that's because they're Eeeeeeviiiillllll) applies this mentality to other nations as well as its own citizens. Any move to challenge the invincibility of this institution would help everybody on this planet, not just people outside the US.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
This is also a pet peeve of my own. People use the expression "sorry, but it's business" to excuse any sort of method of accomplishing their goals regardless of any morals. Since when does business have to exclude any moral standards? The problem is the lowest common denominator effect, where if one company stoops to a lower level, the rest follow suit in the name of competition. The public is oblivious to this and therefore it goes unchecked. I hope that the free flow of information, the hallmark of this age, will act to turn over the "rocks" that hide the worms of business and governmental practices.
Well, I think it would be fair to say that the Intelligence community has a bias against American workers losing jobs to foreign companies. It's nice to call things "wrong," but what will happen at the end of the day if we stay away from all things "wrong?" Here's what will happen: American companies will keep on losing contracts, Americans will keep losing jobs, and American citizens will get hurt. Is that "right?" Are we to render ourselves defenseless in the face of aggression because the countermeasures are distasteful, Mr. Chamberlain?
;-) Bye!
We're not being myopic here, nor are we being xenophobic. Bad things happen to a country when companies from the outside own everything, even if the market is 'free and open.' When the people who own your country live outside of it, they don't care as much about it, somehow. This is bad for the people in your country. Somehow, I would rather the CIA spent its time protecting American jobs rather than trying to read my email.
From the economic standpoint, there's a problem with this; the problem is that when you intervene in the marketplace, you counter the factors which allow the most efficient to prevail. So the question becomes how far you go to balance out the marketplace's other unfair factors (like other nations' intelligence agencies) and how restrained you should be to keep your own companies from leaning on you like a crutch.
I find the idea of protecting our companies from bribes overseas to be a perfectly reasonable compromise between the two. Oh, and by the way, I think that this "usually no-espionage" policy is generally adhered to -- how likely is it that an intelligence official would risk their career to help out a corporation (as opposed to the perceived interests of the country)?
I've gone on too long
Why Europe continues to ignore the Balkan crisis is a testament to their inability to accomplish anything real.
Almost all of your industries and markets are dominated by American or Asian companies, or their subsidiaries.
Well I guess the CIA and No Such Agency, etc. just had too much time on their hands after the cold war ended... Actualy many of the USA's cold war alies suposedly had a long standing tradition of spying on US corperations and using the data for their own economic or defence uses. I am suprised that the US intelegence comunity did not get in on the game sooner. There has been presure in that direction for years.
America is an economy, period. Just look at it, whats its culture or ideals that make it different? Its a mix of all other countries. The best way to define America is that its an economy.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Definetly more reasonable then your first point, I actually agree with most of what you say, I was just being my friend's (Satan) advocate. Anyways, I might add that Europe is already doing exactly that, the European Union has a larger GNP and larger population than the United States. In the future I'd be more concerned with the EU when they finally get their act together.
Now that i've branded myself let's carry on.
Spying is natural. I would assume that every goverment spies.
It's a question of information - Information is power. If i spy on my neighbour, i'm getting power over him, while at the same time removing him of some of his power ( by finding out what he knows about me ). If some people do it to other people, why wouldn't goverments ( which are much more attached to power ) do it ??!
Now the next question - is the spying done on commercial subjects?
Of course it is. Let's put thing this way:
My position as an european?
Two things:
And you're quite right about multinational corporations' impressive power, and their extranational interests. In fact, that's why many of them employ spies of their own - to get a scoop on their competitors.
A. Keiper
Meanwhile, on a far more important note, I spent several minutes trying to figure out your Latin .sig line. Google brought me to the Aeneid in Latin (no translation), but - get this - it also brought me to several Slashdot articles you've written. (Same with Yahoo and Find.com.) In the end, the best I could come up with was from the Perseus Project, a line about how Dido never dreamed that love like that she shared with Aeneas could ever die. Is that about right?
A.K.
>They killed one, and by mistake since the boat
>was supposed to be empty.
This makes it perfectly OK for the military to attack a civilian target?
>Of course the French could have sunken it when it
>was crusing into the French military restricted
>area, which would have been their legitimate
>right, but prefered to do it when the boat was
>empty.
And had they done so, it would have been their right. (But it still would have, and should have, caused a major international incident.) HOWEVER, they chose to commit an act of terrorism on the soil of a foreign nation.
>And for the dead guy, well, that's too bad, but
>death is a risk one must accept when violating a
>military area (especially when you do so with a
>bunch of recording equipement).
Except for the minor detail that he wasn't violating a military area when he died.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Another disingenious attempt to whitewash America's brutal past.
.. and then
Don't you want _your_ country to continue to exist? How are _your_ rights protected? By whose blood?
More often than not in the 20th century, it was local blood that was spilled to protect people's rights against American-sponsored dictatorial regimes. Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Iran, the Philippines, just to cite a few examples you always ask of others but never quite manage to produce yourself.
If Hussein gasses his own people, that's the Iraqi's business, in accordance to UN directive.
Don't get me started......short answer: go ask a Kuwaiti survivor of the Iraqi atrocities how 'unjust' the war was...for that matter, go ask a Kurd.
Positing hypocritical double standards as the basis of one's argument is pretty weak. Why don't you go ask a Kurd about how it felt to be gassed in 1987 when Iraq was America's surest rampart against Khomeni's Iran or slaughtered by American allies in 1999, under the vigilant eye of brave American pilots patrolling the unilateraly declared no-fly zone.
Don't you wish you lived here where we are _FREE_ to sign our names and proud?
Proud to be the laughingstock of every thinking person in the world, boy?
System of a Down
check the video out on antimtv.com
If this weren't happening, the taxpayers should complain
Ahem, I beg your pardon?
No, the world's not such a nice place, but this is not what I pay my taxes for. This is THEFT. Industrial Espionage. There is no pretty word for it. And it is NOT the job of the American (or any other) Government.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Frankly, if I ran any of these European countries, you'd bet your ass that I'd immediately condemn this spying as a hostile act of aggression, and work out treaties with other nations explicitly naming any further spying as an act of war, and military alliances to give the treaties TEETH.
Unfortunately I am not in a position to say that I do run any of these Euros. However, I am a member of one (UK, to be precise). But I do immediately conden this as a host.. etc
However, declaring spying as an act of war is a bit like declaring throwing a bomb at another country as an act of war. Whether we like it or not, at any level - regional, national, continental (OT Rant:yes, I know the US sees itself as a continent AND country, but LOOK AT A GLOBE!!!), organisations are at "war" with each other. M$ and NSCP/Sun/etc are at war, US and ROTW are at war, etc. It's just varying degrees.
Whilst I'm not condoning industrial espionage between corporates, it is CERTAINLY wrong between a nation and another nations's industry.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Maybe they should spend USD 300 a year on a European newspaper subscription instead. The economics pages usually will say which company bribed which Asian/Latin American government. Just last week there was a page-long article in a dutch newspaper about how Shell (the oil company) had to spend millions of dollars in bribes to get an exploration contract in Turkmenistan.
Furthermore, in a number of countries, they're about to pass regulation that will force companies to explicitly state how much money they've spent in bribes in their yearly summaries (or whatever they're called).
It seems a bit lame to me that the American government has to get the CIA to report on this
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Mills. Enhanced agriculture. Printing press (ok, ok, but the Chinese kept it to themselves). Law. Rationalism. The nation state. Cars. Flight. Rockets.
Without the United States to leech off, those barbarians would still be fighting with swords.
Gunpowder (China, yes, but they used it for fireworks only. Europeans were smarter).
Lastly:
America.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Interesting for sure, yes... But I thought we were talking European countries being the "victims" here? I don't care if China has alot of bribes everywhere, that isn't a legitimate reason for the US to spy on European countries.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
That's called sarcasm. I was trying to point out that the US is the best place to look if you wanna find out how bribes can be allowed in public, on a grand scale.
on your second point, if you don't believe that every single country in europe or asia hasn't got a case of the bribery blues, i really suggest you visit there and try to start a business.
Here's another american thing I've seen alot, the assumtion that everyone is an american too. I dont need to visit, I live in Europe thank you very much.
every chinese immigrant i met in college bought their way out of china. EVERY SINGLE ONE. i have first hand experience with business in europe, and i can guarantee you there are many laws formed through the veil of nationalism that are simply based on bribery.
When did china relocate into Europe? Stop talking about china, the US was spying on european countries. Want me to spell that?
every time you propagate another myth that every american is a bigoted, greedy bastard, puts you right back into the most dangerous of situations. ignorant stereotyping. haven't we learned that this isn't really a wise move by now?
I haven't said anything at all about all americans.. actually I've just pointed out that american companies are buying laws and politicans pretty much out in the open. Did you bother to read my post?
Now listen:
Please do not call me an idiot for saying that China is not in Europe. Please do not back up a claim about European countries with examples from China. Thank you.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
The NSA and Echelon were set up as post war Signals Intlegence. It's an Anglophone alliance, with listening posts in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Australia. GCHQ (the British NSA) and the NSA work together at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire where the European intelignce is collected. The point is that it is ILLEGAL under the terms of the agreement to do what the NSA is doing, handing on the information. It may surprise you to know that GCHQ officers work at the US's coresponding base. But, as GCHQ is more acuontable, US commercial secrets are not passed on to British Competetors. I find it total unacceptable that the NSA should be doing this using OUR equipment on OUR land.
If God created us in his own immage, how do you explain Vanessa Feltz?
are all intertwined together. The Miliatary wants to know what the capabilities of the enemy (and ally) are. For instance building a missile requires propellant fuel, a guidance system, and a warhead. It would behove the Military to know the accuracy of the guidance system. Guidance systems require microchips. therefore the spy guys keep an eye on the microchip industry of other nations. When the military has a question about intelligence it has gathered on a new microchip (several samples would be best), they ask experts what the potontial of the chip could be. The experts they go to for advice could be industry leaders of their own country. If the design is new then they may learn something about chip design from information that they can use. If it is not something new they can assess how long it will take to reach State-of-Art and how much it would cost to acheive the design. The Military would also be interested in potential production rates of a particular item. These would be based upon resources, logistics, machine/tool capabilities and capacities etc; as well as the ecconomic state of the country in general (to know how much taxes can be squeezed out of the populace for defense.) Anyway a government's Military wants to know advancements corporations and industries are making for their potential in military uses. In doing so some of this intelligence gets passed along to a countries own corporations and industries. This ait't new, it ain't gonna stop!
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
well you maybe right, it turns out that Intel bought out some ex Elbrus Engineers, who were behing some of the innovations in the P6 & Merced cores.
Reading these comments I feel joyously reinforced in my position as an optimistic misanthrope. It's always best to focus your distaste on something that's certain to solve itself by dissolving.
Anywayz, I feel the openly treacherous ways of the descendents of perfidious Albion's waste to be a blessing in disguise. Betraying their friends and allies, and getting more and more addicted to orgies of self-congratulating nationalism, they will help us all to get ready to rid the world of these money-obsessed primitives. The best way to counter barbarians is to give them bombs. QED
Luckily, by their egocentric focus on their own non-culture, it's always possible to bypass the Anglo-Saxon thought-police:
Cetero censeo Americanam esse delendam
"The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of non-sense" - Dr Pnin
This is no surprise. Electronics are one of the easiest storage mediums to observe and capture info (privacy issues are a different thing, but will be tied to this I'm sure). I don't feel that anyone can and should expect privacy and security of data using the internet, cellular phone tech, and even copper tech (POTS). There is always such a cry when the Government or major business exploits a flaw in technology, yet a successful "crack" or "hack" is revered. This isn't meant to be "flamebait", just a comment on hypocracy.
If they can easily spy on multinational corporations for the benefit of American /. enemies are BIG multinational corporations, I'll bet privacy among
corporations, how much do you bet that they are spying on other
"economic dissedents" hampering the success of other corporations...
Namely, whoever those corporations don't like. And since the MPAA, Microsoft,
and other major
us open-sorcerers, anti-WTO'ers, DeCSS distributers, and the occaisional Anachist
is compromised whenever they feel like it. If you really think that Uncle Sam won't
give Mr. Gates a hand in economics just because of a little antitrust trial...
This
"We have spied on that in the past. I hope ... that the United States government continues to spy on bribery." why is the united states so concerned with the morals and ethics of other countries when our own country is in a pretty low state of mind. lets try to get our welfare and medicare programs improved before we pay 007 to give us unside information if the queen of england is getting a little *something* for the key to the castle. "European companies had a "national culture" of bribery..." we have a national culture of rape and suicide. does that mean we should throw everyone who has said "im going to kill myself" in a looney bin or arrest perverts and right-hand reliant, sexually deprived males? or does this mean we should all buy alot of cool surveilance equipment and start private eye buisnesses in our garages?
Think hard. How would the US be created if the european wouldn't have discovered it? I'm not european but you need to lay off the patriotism and think with your brain a little. If they wouldn't have shipped people here there would probably be some natives sitting where your house stands, smoking grass or something. Stop posting flamebaits
The path that surveillance data takes is labyrinthine at best, who collects the data sees the data first, then decides who else gets it. NSA only has say over intel collected by US-operated systems. So it works in all directions, show-me-yours; I'll show-you-mine fashion.
"Never pet a burning dog."
I really hope all this was a joke, in case it is not, I have to say some things in response to it: Why does our current government not speak out about Europe's crimes against humanity? Of course European countries have committed horrible crimes. The difference is that children are being taught about them in school to learn from mistakes maken in the past. You won't hear a lot about the crimes against native Americans or Blacks here in the US... When you've got homosexuals running around everywhere, apparently unleashed, it's a problem. When you've got socialists scattered everywhere you look, it's a problem. What the hell is wrong with that. Hello, we live in a democratic system, both Europeans and Americans and as far as I know the US constitution doesn't prohibit being gay and if I interpret the First amendment which says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" it is OK to be socialist, too. Their laughable adherence to the "metric" system is another offense. Yeah, I hate the metric system, too, it's so ... complicated: 10 mm = 1 cm , 100 cm = 1m , 1000 m = 1 km. In comparison the American system seems so much easier: 12 in = 1 f , 3 f = 1 yd , 1760 yd = 1 mi When you've got church attendance declining and strict adherence to fundamental Christian principles nowhere to be found, it's no wonder that Europe is in such bad shape! This is precisely why America leads the world; we've got Christ leading us! Right, and English is God's language! Sorry I have to quote Marx, THE Communist, now: "Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, th sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people." You're right about nothing good ever having come out of Europe. Right, it was not a European that invented the car, one of the leading rocket scientists that worked on the Apollo programm wasn't European either, the one that invented printing must have been American and your ancestors were natives....
Amen
Leibnitz = German
Aren't most governments just tools of the monied interests working to maintain the status quo in order to safeguard their power? Just think of all the bribery---er, lobbying---it took for American corporations to get the government to do their dirty work for them.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
It's one thing to use this on countries that have the money to fight back, another to use it on us smaller countries. A little collateral damadge?
Just a note, bribery is illegal, however there is nothing illegal about making a 'facilitating payment'. The difference being that you're not allowed to make a facilitating payment for something to which you're not legally entitled. However, there is nothing at all illegal about making a 'facilitating payment' to customs officials or what not to get through customs in a 3rd world country expediently.
----------------------------
Military wants to know advancements corporations and industries are making for their potential in military uses. In doing so some of this intelligence gets passed along to a countries own corporations and industries.
And what is the justification for that? Why government won't keep information from companies just like it keeps it from its citizens? If country's defense was the reason, the primary concern would be to avoid a possibility of disclosure to keep sources of information being useful in the future. In the hands of company information will be more likely to be traced back to actual act of espionage because company's actions attract enough attention to make foreign governments suspicious. Therefore in the end government risks its sources of useful for defense information to allow company to make more money -- am I the only person here who thinks that it's very wrong order of priorities?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Incidentally, this is what makes me laugh at those "Keep Trade with China Open" commercials. I'm not sure if anyone else in the USA has seen them, but they're really funny. They imply that keeping trade with China open will "make China play by the rules" and "expose China to our democratic values." It's a riot.
See above about embargo -- Chinese government steals technology for products that can't be legally imported anyway, and competes with american companies in other areas. US steals what can be bought everywhere, but "national pride" doesn't allow to keep american companies beaten by those inferior Europeans and Asians.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Chinese government steals technology for products that can't be legally imported anyway, and competes with american companies in other areas.
The fact is, not all countries play by the same set of rules. This pretty much makes for a free-for-all kind of environment in which each side seeks an advantage over the other through any means available to them. In some countries this means that they exploit people, especially children, as dirt-cheap labor. In others, a lot of bribery and blackmail takes place. In the US, we have some pretty good intelligence agencies that turn over the fruits of their spy-games and that's how some American companies compete with their foreign counterparts. I don't like it, but I don't currently see any way around it either.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That is something I feel *is* a good use of American tax dollars. It's not theft...not anymore than DeCSS is theft.
American companies are staffed by American taxpayers, and IMHO using the US Intellegence system to run both counter-intel and intel gathering operations against foreign governments that are doing the same to the US isn't wrong, it's the right thing to do.
There are several opposition parties, of which the most well-known are the Libertarians, the the Reform Party, the the Greens, and the Socialists. I myself am a Libertarian, but I would rather that you vote for any opposition party rather than voting for the regime (Democrat or Republican) or not voting at all.
Some Americans feel that it is "throwing their vote away" to vote for a candidate who is not likely to win -- and instead vote for the "lesser of two evils" among the Democrat and Republican. The problem with this is that, as you point out, the Dems and Reps really are not very different! Because of this, a vote for either a Democrat or Republican is basically a vote for their combined regime -- which, if you don't support the regime, is worse than throwing your vote away. Voting for even the tiniest of opposition parties, in contrast, registers your opposition to the Dem/Rep regime, and brings us closer to a real political debate in this country -- even if your candidate doesn't win this time.
Americans, please help bring real issues, real debate, and real differences back to our nation's political process. Give up on the Democrat/Republican regime. Vote for the opposition.
In the future I'd be more concerned with the EU when they finally get their act together.
Which, given the differences between Eurostates the EU's culture of glacial bureaucracy, and the culture of huge, inefficient socialist institutions predominant on the continent. will probably be when Hell freezes over.
Ironically, you failed to mention the only episode when French troops actually engaged American troops, that is, the invasion of North Africa in 1942
The US and Britain also sank a large part of the French fleet anchored in Algeria to stop it falling into German hands. This created serious resentment of the Allies in France at the time - compounded by careless Allied bombing of targets in France which resulted in civilian deaths.
In fact, several thousand French troops fought on the side of the Germans as members of the SS. This is rarely recorded for several reasons. The French are very embarassed about their role in WWII (French museums have exhibitions on the resistance and liberation - but ignore the massive collabaration with the occupying German forces). The men who fought in the SS are virtually all dead, having been handed over to the Free French forces by the US Army who they had surrendered to. When a French general asked why the men were wearing German uniforms, one responded asking why the general was wearing a US uniform. Consequently they were shot.
It is estimated that 250,000 people died in France as a consequence of the purge (which was largely rooted in guilt brought on by French collabaration). It should come as no surprise that the most vociferous condemnation of collabarators came from those suspected of it themselves. It is also a sad fact that those who received the worst treatment were women suspected of sleeping with German troops, while others saw it as a great opportunity to settle old scores. Meanwhile, most if not all of those responsible for colluding in things like the rounding up of Jews for liquidation went unpunished. Many became important in political life later, especially under the Gaulist administration.
It appears that German army orders to treat the French populace with respect paid off - the resistance was a tiny and ineffectual, while collabaration was endemic. As many historians and contemporary French people observed, few of those who claimed to be members of the resistance really were.
It all goes to show that no side is free of guilt when it comes to acts of inhumaity during wartime. The victors simply benefit from their ability to write history how they see fit. Occasional glimpses of a more unclouded past are provided by declassification of documents, but many will never see the light of day having been destroyed or indefinitely restricted.
Chris Wareham
Ahhhh...
Not so long ago, there were lots of furor of how the French, the Chinese, the Ruskies, the Isrealis and everybody and their cousins of the entire world were spying on the United States.
Ahhhh...
Now it is revealed that the POT who was making so much loud calls against all those kettles is him/her/itself not so angelic after all.
Ahhhh...
Who says this world isn't fun?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Let's see.... The rape pillage and plunder laws of a country apply only on that country's soil.
Is that what you are saying? Does this mean it's ok for our govt to rape pillage and plunder as long as they do it in foreign countries? (and of ocurse don't get caught)
I thought rule of law meant laws applied equally. Obviously they don't in the real world, but it's never been advocated quite so openly since Richard Nixon.
Now if you had said that US laws allow spying overseas, you might have a consistent argument. But you are saying it's ok to break our own laws, as long as we do it overseas.
--
Infuriate left and right
There are a lot of people posting here that don't understand the spy game. First, most intelligence is gathered through plain old human interaction, e.g., getting someone to talk, stealing things, etc. Encryption isn't likely to slow these types of activities down, so stop thinking it is a magic amulet that protects you against bad guys.
Second, spying is an important aspect of international affairs. The more you know, the better decisions you make. Many of the people posting here would rather have less information on which to base decisions because spying is "bad." I prefer that we have the information available to us so that we have the opportunity to make good decisions (not that we always will).
Third, everyone really is doing it. The French, in particular, have been extremely aggressive with economic spying both against the US and their other allies. I doubt that US efforts are even close to their's or China's. If you think we don't have fairly complete intelligence files on the British or anyone else, you're not very bright. They definitely have them on us.
Fourth, we often spy on industrial targets to understand production rates, output, planned growth, etc. It helps us understand what the other countries long term strategies are. The information that is passed along would most likely be used to help our industries (that are considered critical to our economy) remain competitive.
So, while it isn't exactly glamorous and exciting, it is an important part of the overall intelligence picture that we need to have. And, while it may seem unfair, it is in fact the only way to level the playing field since most other nations' intelligence agencies consider us hopelessly naive because we don't normally concentrate on economic intelligence and they do.
I recommend anyone seriously interested read Sun Tzu's remarks on spying. He grokked it.
Hi. Let me introduce myself: I'm 29, male, and European. Italian, to be exact (more on this later).
:). However there are many other fields in wich US companies are behind European or Japanese ones, or just about on par: don't you think that even knowing little data on your competitor (how many faxes he exchanged with your potential customer, or with strategic partners, for example) would be a decisive advantage?
;).
I've read a lot of the messages here, almost all written by american people. It seems to me that many of you missed a little fact about this little fuss:
1- It's about Echelon, and almost all information gathered is open, so it's not like espionage.
Yeah, right. It's WORSE. Think of data mining applied to everyday conversation. You can pick up secrets the people telling them don't know themselves. You say it's ok because these are all public data? I think that this is worse than Orwell's 1984 world: at least there you knew thye were listening.
2- American companies don't need to spy on Europeans ones
Americans companies do have a lot of knowledge in many areas, they have the lead in a lot of businesses, sometimes even if they doesn't deserve this (think Microsoft
3- Bribery is endemic to Europe
Pull your brakes, please! I do know bribery is quite common, especially in some countries (mine, for example...) but usually you don't get very far with it in the big contract area, unless you also sell a very good product: unless your're a state employed decision maker put there because you're the nephew (sp?) of some big politician, and your briber wants to grant you a workplace after, you don't go very far: someone tried (Lockheed, Agusta) and got jailed (or worse, shot itself for the shame - of being caught, I presume
The "we only do this againts bribery" excuse is just that, an excuse to do other things, exactly like UCITA and DMCA are not to protect IP rights, but to get more of YOUR money. Ask yourself which is the difference between lobbying some senator and bribing someone to buy your stuff.
And now, *grand finale* (aka UTTER FANTAPOLITIC MODE ON)
How to ruin a flourishing country
Imagine you have a 'friendly' country with a very good economic momentum. They have strong companies, good technology and *a lot of money*. Much of this success is due to they products winning greatly in the american market, where they are pervceeived as superior to the others and yet cheaper. With all this money, they start buying a lot of things (companies, buildings, paintings...) abroad and in the US in particular. Now, misteriously, this country starts to be hit by political scandals, their new investments in other countries go wrong, and after a while some big banks go bankrupt, leaving a lot of people and companies 'in it to their collars'. How can this happen? Very easily: just spyon the chats between local politicians, listen to the strategic investment plans the industries and financial corporations, move yourself well to 'aid' their competitor in the country were it hurts most, and finally banks and the whole economy will collapse, eventually with a big crush that country is big enough. And all this only listening to almost public data, the ones that go over telephones, faxes, telex and the net, that are the media by which businesses communicate.
Obvously, all this is pure speculation, and all and every resemblance with real world fact are pure coincidence.
Ciaooooo...
Rob!
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
Perhaps many US slashdotter hate the French, because they look too much like yourselves.
You have hit the nail precisely on the head.
I often hear my fellow Americans disparagingly comment about France's absurd levels of nationalism while happy to proclaim their own patriotism to this country with their next breath. It is rather clear to nearly anyone who has spend any significant time in both France and the US that the level of nationalism, or "patriotism" if you will, is very similar in both countries.
Indeed, the similarities in how the French view their military, their industry, and take pride in their country and culture, and how citizens of the United States do the same, is quite startling.
Perhaps it is our very similarities that cause so many people in one nation to dislike the other, even though their dislike is based soley on rumor and innuendo, and either the most superficial of personal experiences (e.g. "the garcon was impolite to me, f*cking rude French!"), or, more commonly, absolutely no personal experience at all.
After all, it is a rare human being indeed who can have a mirror held up to themselves, look at their flaws, and feel grateful for having them pointed out. Far more common is the irrational desire to smash the mirror and use the shards to carve up the offensive individual who had the audacity to point out that one's own culture and society is not only imperfect, but in many ways actively malignant both to themselves and the rest of humanity.
And how easily we forget the rude waiter in Chicago or New York, yet relish and relive the memory of the rude garcon in Paris years later.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Industrial espionage has been a top priority of the KGB/GRU/FSB since World War II. I've seen counter-intelligence reports that say it now gets more resources than ever before. China also places a heavy emphasis on industrial espionage.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
There is a federal law against American corporations bribing foreign officials. The company I work for gives annual business ethics briefings to all of its employees and they are told that bribery is unethical, illegal and a cause for immediate dismissal.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It's fine and good to expect something more from the US, but atleast be apprised as to the facts.
Undeniable fact of the matter is that most of our foreign competitors are FAR worse offenders. What you have to realize is that most foreign companies are run ENTIRELY different than the US. We, the United States, operate heavily on a market based system, where market valuation is the measure of success. Not true in almost every other country here, they operate on different systems. In Germany, for example, the board of directors wil commonly be comprised of bankers, unions, psuedo-government officials, and many other interests. The result of this creates a system where government plays a much much larger role. The two are very much intertwined. Furthermore, all this this results is much more static leadership. Meaning, that leadership is much more cozier with one another, and the government; if for no other reason then they've been in bed with each other since day one.
This is not true with the US. With the exception of certain government contractors (e.g., Hughes, Boeing, etc), the government is very much hands off. Leadership, though far from perfect, is far more dynamic. If you don't perform, you're going to get fired. If the board sucks, it's very likely they'll get taken over. All this, in turn, dramatically changes the relationship with other corporations and government.
The point of all this is not that US corporations are perfect, far from it. US corporations have their own very significant flaws, but let's not confuse the issues here. The corporate culture is very different, and consequently, the use and demand of such intelligence has got to be far lesser. For example, I would find it very hard to believe that a company such as J&J (not a large military government contractor) would be in bed with the CIA/NSA. Not true with many other similar large foreign corporations; there are thousands of documented cases of espionage. There is direct government interest in success of particular firms.
Though I can see the CIA supplying, say, Hughes with military/aerospace designs or knowledge, to insure that they have a fighting chance, I would very much differentiate the (the likes of Hughes and the likes of J&J and the thousands of other corporations). There is a much more direct government interest here. The government has a relatively direct interest in seeing that these aerospace firms are at the top of their game. Even though they're not directly government entities, such firms are responsible for building most warplanes, subs, etc. Given that, you can be sure, other nations' intelligence agencies are working against them, I think the CIA/NSA must do so in this case. (Not only is their a defense interest here, but they must level the playing field as foreign states are working directly against them)
That being said, I wouldn't be too suprised if some abuse of this occurred. Such as Boeing's civilian aircraft division profiting from intelligence work done for military purposes (though not actual military intelligence).
The bottom line: The US may abuse its intelligence facilities to some degree, but it's hardly pervasive. It is far far more common in other countries (e.g., France, Israel, Germany), whether or not your average slashdotter realizes it. I get tired of everyone jumping all over such things, when every country but the US has been known to do this for decades. Why haven't I seen similar outrage against France and company, before this?....
Duncan Campbell is obviously a pseudonym used by the cartel of secret-agent-men who are REALLY running the world. They're just spreading disinformation through this 'Duncan Campbell' invention to distract us from the REAL story; That William Gates III is the evil overlord who dictates our every move, and is actually merely a pawn of the small grey aliens that live at the Martian poles and shoot down our helpless little landers.
Enough of this. I'm going back to my bong now...
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Try Africa (Egypt)
Enhanced agriculture.
Asia. Particularly the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates
Printing press (ok, ok, but the Chinese kept it to themselves).
you answer yourself
Law.
code of Hammurabi - Asia
Rationalism.
Roots are in Egypt, which was the primary source for the works of Thales.
The nation state.
Sumeria.
Cars.
ok you got one right
Flight.
Which? Heavier than air was developed in US and Australia. A lot of people think it is likely that hot air ballons were used in India and China long before Europe.
Rockets.
what do you think Chinese fireworks are?
And Europe was settled from Africa. So what. If you want to draw a line in history and say this is where it all started you'd better realize that the line can be draw at 1776 just as easily as it can be drawn at 1000 BC.
I would have thought that these remarks are important enough to have been reported by someone else. There are supposed to have been enough journalists at the press conference.
Can anyone find anything on this subject which is not written by or based entirely upon the writings of Duncan Cambell?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Mills. Enhanced agriculture. Printing press (ok, ok, but the Chinese kept it to themselves). Law. Rationalism. The nation state. Cars. Flight. Rockets.
You forgot: Clones, IP over Power Grid, audio casettes, museums, the telescope, democracy, and metal knives.
-- iCEBaLM
This post used to contain a lot of information about bribery to get higher moderation points on slashdot comments, but since the american gouvernement definitly has nothing better to do, it has just removed all the bribery information that was contained in this message. Here below is what is left after the original message was stripped :
... I'm ... proud ... to be ... an ... americans !
Gosh
I submitted an article (declined) a while ago regarding a French intelligence report that National Security Agency agents had installed monitoring software, "secret programs," in Microsoft software. Another good reason to keep stuff open-source, turn a blind eye for this to ever happen with Linux...
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Either you aren't a US citizen, or you slept through your Civics classes. A corporation is a "legal person", but they do not have all the "rights" a real person has. In the law, a corporation can sign contracts, own property, and perform a few other acts that only a "person" can perform, but a corporation cannot receive Social Security when it turns 65, it cannot vote, it cannot run for office (nor can it donate money directly to canditate ("hard money") in excess of $1000), etc.
This is an often misquoted part of American law, and I would suggest that you actually do some research before publicly expressing an opinion.
www.eFax.com are spammers
My country, right or wrong.
When right, to keep it right.
When wrong, to make it right.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
You can be as smart as you want to but if I still have the bombs I can take out your country any time I like and all the Shakespeare and math will not save you.
More to the point I do not completely think that the Europeans don't do a little espionage on our turf. Considering that the NSA uses people in Britian to spy on us I would think that they use a little of that "data" to aid themselves whenever they can.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
If you think about it if say a groups can conduct communications in a secure method that means that a country can quite easily force another to use brute force and grisly methods to get what they want when they could have just as easily decrypted the message.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Why would the people that the French shifted not say do a little revenge move and make them pay? Perhaps sanctions?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Well let's look at this in detail.
I am a government contractor working on a weapons system or perhaps something that I want to do for another country. Now suppose that for some reason say the Chinese or the Germans seem to be absolutely much better (read giving a little something under the table to the people involved to make the outcome better). Now this costs my company billions and so I get mad and have a little talk with the State Department and a few other people. Now magnify this several times and you understand why the US has wanted to take decisive action against this. Personally if my standard of living and my ability to be secure in the world is made better than I don't really mind too much. You can call me biased if you want but I am sure if you talk to the French, English, Spanish, Germans, Finns, (insert European country here) you will find that and the end of the say what really matters is being comfortable.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Oh please you mean that ecconomic prosperity in the United States is a direct result of the fact that there is some high level spying going on? Last I checked there wasn't a public web page that listed various secret information from other countries and allows each and every business in the USA to get it when and if they please.
Furthermore how do you plan to have a group of European nations beat up and bully the US? Strategically that would never work.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
More info here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archive/1995/950 109/950109.intelligence.html Any wonder why he has it in for his old agency?
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
French state intelligence bugged the headrests of Air France airliners (and sunk the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of GreenPeace in the South Pacific, killing two anti-nuclear activists). The UK and Germany, as well as Canada, Australia, Japan, South Africa, and India have all had members of their foreign intelligence services 'invited to leave' the United States after their efforts to suborn US high tech
workers and government bureaucrats have been compromised by the FBI, and CIA counter-intelligence.
We are only returning the favors done to us by our erstwhile 'allies!'
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Spying is a form of agressive politics, like war is. We don't just accept the fact that a country with bigger guns can wage a war against smaller countries. We should not accept espionage by the superpower as inevitable.
Espionage like war sometimes happens, and sometimes some people feel it is the right thing to do. But we should try to set up means and rules for freedom and privacy, as much as is possible.
Luckily spying is relatively easy to prevent with modern cryptographic methods. We just need to keep them free. I hope these news make the rest of EU countries understand this. Governments here in Scandinavia already take it for granted that everybody has the right to use/buy/sell whatever privacy tools they want to.
A court of law may try to force a suspect to open up secret data in a criminal case, but only after a legal process.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
That's right! What's more, is CNN and MSNBC have yet to say word *one* regarding the nefarious deeds of the Trilateral Commission!! (to say nothing of the Rosicrucians!) Astounding, isn't it?
IIRC one of the factors that led the young lad in "The Falcon & the Snowman" US spy case to sell on US secrets to the Russians was reading the CIA material on how they were helping to subvert the then Govt. in Australia, then, as now, one of the US's "erstwhile 'allies'".
Another reason why the US opposes strong encryption exports. It's not in the best interest of economic espionage to make it easy to have routine trade secret information encrypted -- it would make it too hard to steal.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
1. only a few days ago.. everyone on here was up in arms about the US government possibly invading the rights of its citzens, the second its done to overseas companies in the name of 'competition' there are far to many people on here who suddenly think its a great idea. do you really think US companies play by a different set of rules?
2. to americans who dislike europeans, just remeber where your ancestral lines spread from.. a large percentage of you will descend from europe. perhaps you should consider your family history back more than 2 generations before making rash sterotypical arguments.
3. if you still belive your government has your rights and opinons in mind when it makes it decisions, if you still belive that multinational companies actually care about what you think, perhaps you should have taken the red pill? hmm? next time your government makes a decisionor awards a contract,look a little closer.. who provides the funding for your senators campaigns?
the world sucks.. get used to it
dms0
-= we need to redifne the enemy =-
You should feel guilty if your just watching - ATR
No, I'm advocating a show of force. The US as a political entity may be childish and aggressive, but it is neither as blind nor as stupid as it looks.
"Many have pointed this out before, and I'll point it out again. European agencies routinely spy on American companies, especially the French, who do it quite blantantly."
While that may be so, France is not the most powerful nation in the world, and hasn't been ever since a certain dimminutive Emperor was defeated.
The U.S., on the other hand, is the most powerful nation in the world. We've got power, but also the duty to use that power responsibly.
We could be setting a shining example of ethical government that the world could look up to, but instead we have, in essence, chosen to tell the world that anything goes, as long as you can get away with it.
The idea of banding together for protection against a powerful bully is neither "sensationalistic" nor "ridiculous". It's what any self-respecting nation would do.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
There will always be somebody trying to screw us. We should always do whatever we can to screw others before they screw us.
Well, this is yet another incidence of the prisoners dilemma isn't it. (For those who aren't familiar with this, its explained here )
The most succesful solution to the iterated version has been shown to be tit-for-tat. i.e cooperate first, and then if you lose, do what the other player did last time. So if a country can agree with its allies that they shouldn't spy on each other, and they can each prove that they aren't, both countries win. The worst case is that the one that cooperated will be disadvantaged once. Unfortunately the stakes are a lot higher in this case, and nobody wants to risk losing the first time.
"On a more serious note, I think it's high time that people realized once and for all that U.S. spying is NOT to combat "terrorism" or whatnot, and realize that the privacy of hundreds of millions of people is being routinely violated."
I don't care how much you try to make these agencies seem like faceless and evil entities, real people work hard to try and make the US safe from terrorism. Obviously not all of their activities are used to track terrorism, but your statement is still a ludicrous exaggeration.
"Frankly, if I ran any of these European countries, you'd bet your ass that I'd immediately condemn this spying as a hostile act of aggression, and work out treaties with other nations explicitly naming any further spying as an act of war, and military alliances to give the treaties TEETH."
So you are advocating another World War and millions of casualties because some French company no longer has a secret anymore and loses a few hundred thousand francs in profit?
Many have pointed this out before, and I'll point it out again. European agencies routinely spy on American companies, especially the French, who do it quite blantantly.
Your post is totally sensationalistic and completely ridiculous.
How naive... you think the US government is less corrupt? Even after all this recent bs about DMCA and UCITA and allllll that? Sorry, now, I'll be back in a few days when I've finished laughing.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
Normally thought, spying was done on political grounds. economical ground was typically limited to industrial spying and not commandited by government themselves. And frankly the US is pretty arrogant to tell other countries what to do, especially when they show imaturity to handle their own problem. A frenchie living in the US.
WOW, here we go again, the US as THE moralistic nation thinks it has the obligation to punish other nations for their sins, and I would bet that the people that made the decision to for example sell Comanche (how ironic) helicopters to Turkey to help those guys kill some Kurs are exactly as ignorant as you are! Where did you get those infos? Rape not being a crime in Europe. What the hell are you talking about? I like the US very much, but it is those ignorant people as you that people in foreign countries hate so much and that I am so sick of. But I guess one of those guys will become president in November... Cheers George W Bush!
If this weren't happening, the taxpayers should complain. How would it look if the director of the CIA had to tell a congressional commitee "Yes, we had the information that would have saved Boeing/General Motors/Lockheed but we couldn't pass it on because it was commercial"?
It's against taxpayers' interest to support Boeing, General Motors or Lockheed -- every case where those companies lost their share in their markts increases the competition there thus making economy more healthy (or, less sick). US is not in war with any of the countries involved, they actually are allies in NATO, so there is no defense-related justification either
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Oh. And this really stopped the US's NATO allies from spying on it during the Cold War for the same reasons, didn't it?
"it" -- what? US? NATO? Allies? job?
Face it, the US is playing by the exact same set of rules as everyone else, and happens to be no better or no worse, and speaks from no higher and no lower a moral standpoint. If the US wasn't doing this, US companies would be torn to pieces by companies from countries that did do this, and vice versa.
Other governments do industrial espionage for "their" companies? That's news to me. Governments constantly do military espionage and extend it to military-meaningful technologies for themselves (say, nuclear technology that is usually controlled by government, not companies), and they do industrial espionage when subjected to embargo for some kinds of non-military technology (this can be justified because they can't just buy products from abroad), but providing this kind of "service" to companies is something where civilized countries draw the line.
(BTW, I wonder why US doesn't just elect companies for Congress and President -- they are "persons" under american laws that have "rights".)
So unless there's an ENFORCABLE end put to this for everyone SIMULTANEOUSLY, I don't see this stopping anytime soon.
Loss of credibility is enough to replace "enforcement" -- and it looks like just that can happen if US won't revise its "we rule the world, and our companies are above everything" policy. Fear, uncertainty and doubt work both ways.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
How would the US be created if the european wouldn't have discovered it?
Give me a fscking break. America had been settled for 15,000 years by Asians before the Europeans arrived.
The first thing the Europeans did on arriving is export genocide, and wipe out native civilizations. Their explorers (DeSoto, Pizarro, etc.) were in fact just a bunch of butchering theives.
British/Canadian incursions?!?
Ummm, I believe you're referring to the war of 1812.
If you will check any reliable source you'd quickly discover that it was America that invaded the Canadian colonies at that time. That was our "war of independence". Independence from America. If the white house got burned down it was hardly an "incursion" if the burning-down-type-people were trying to stop their homeland being wiped off the map by said Americans.
Also, re: French-speakers in the southern U.S. - They are the remnants of French settlement and (forced re-settlement (of the Acadians)) long pre-dating the United States. Nothing to do with French fighting a (as yet non-existent U.S.) America later acquired that territory through the Louisiana Purchase. (hint: no fighting French people involved)
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
Using taxpayers money to spy and then passing that informations on to private corporations is wrong.
Multinational companies owe no alliegance to the US they have shown over and over that they are willing to screw over the american citizens and go chase cheaper slave labor overseas. They have their own money to spend. Hell most multinationals have a greater GNP then a lot of nations.
War is necrophilia.
The French in particular are notorious for carrying on these types of operations.
Of course American corporations would never stoop to bribery, or buying politicians and of course due to their high code of ethics and morals, the government needs to help these good people out.
France has fought against the US - remember that in certain parts of the Southern United States people still speak a dialect based on French. French troops also fought against the US in the disputed regions of Mexico and Texas.
...
... something that regularily threatens to happen in the UK as well. The xenophobic jingoism of US politicians is readily apparent in the right wing of UK politics - and it's clear that nationalist bullshit ("save the pound", "no to Europe") is just short-term attempts to win political power at the expense of long-term economic stability.
French Canadians may also have fought against the US. My knowledge of the history of Canada is hazier than that of the US, so I can only recall the Canadian/British incursions into the US (which famously resulted in the burning of the Whitehouse).
Regardless, your inference that CIA spying is acceptable simply because the US has been at war with those countries in the distant past - what kind of justification is that? You sound like a George Bush Jr voter to me. This kind of xenophobic bullshit is redolent of the 1920's when the US retreated into isolationaism, leaving the League of Nations without a very important member state
This narrow view that US interests both economically and politically should take precedence over all else is dangerous. The often partisan nature of US foreign policy has resulted in tragedies like the bombing of US embassies by Islamic extremists. Unless the US adopts a more ethical worldview it is going to become a pariah nation. An economy based on espionage (and you want to look at US national debt before making assumptions about how strong it currently is) will not result in long term security. The globalisation of economics, and incredible amount of US econimic concerns that are foreign owned means that the US is only viable as long as it doesn't alienate foreign capital. Upsetting entities like the European Union, India and Russia will not help.
Many in the US like to scoff at the notion that countries like India and Russia are threats to US economic security - but in the long term these countries have more economic potential than the US. They may be 'late starters', but they can avoid the teething troubles of older high-tech economies like those in the US and UK. If they begin to realise their economic potential then the US is going to become marginalised
Chris Wareham
"A corporation is not a human being, I'm not trying to hold it to an ethical standard, I just have no respect for that kind of business"
Corporations are held to be equivalent to human beings in the eyes of the law -- why can't we hold them to an ethical standard?
There are two corrupt entities at work here -- the government that did this (yay, American democracy) and the companies who have received this intelligence willingly (yay, capitalism). Moreover, consider that the companies, having received this intelligence, reward the politicians who administer government with huge campaign contributions.
IMO, anyone who really wants to see this stopped has a few things they really, really need to do:
The parties in power have shown that their contributors are more important to them than angry constituents, unless the angry constituents compose a voting block they can't neutralize with money. We can change that, but only by performing our duties as citizens to keep government honest.
phil
I am not surprised by the fact that the US intelligence agencies perform industrial espionage. What appals me is the self-congratulating excuse that the US has to do it because European companies are not good enough to win contracts on their own merits, so they have to stoop to bribery.
I am European... I've worked and lived in the US. I've also lived and worked in Europe. I've been close enough to billion-dollar contracts to have an idea what's going on. For anyone to claim that somehow US corporations are the keepers of corporate morality in the international marketplace is ridiculous...
So, does anybody out there remember what the term "Banana Republic" actually meant before it became a clothing store? Does anyone remember what the greatful Saudis did after the end of the Gulf War? Mayhaps they went ahead and bought a buncha F-15s? didn't they also let Boeing have a huge contract of airliners for the state-owned airline?
Now, I ain't saying that somehow American companies are better or worse than British, French or Dutch ones; but to claim that they are indeed so much so more moral as to justify these actions (regardless of the fact that really everybody does it) is absurd.
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
Collecting economic intelligence is completely understandable - after all, economic crises are an incredible threat to the U.S. Collecting economic intelligence makes perfect sense; it can help us prepare for and manage economic catastrophe long before it happens.
Keep in mind that most of the information is OSINT (open source intelligence), and not intelligence obtained by spying. To quote the article: "Whether economic or military, most US intelligence data came from open sources, [Woolsey] said. But 'five percent is essentially secrets that we steal. We steal secrets with espionage, with communications, with reconnaissance satellites.'
The five percent he's talking about is the five percent of intelligence collected overall.
Let's get this straight: industrial espionage is illegal, and it does not happen. A huge part of the reason it is forbidden is that since business is international now, half the time you think you're helping an "American" business, you're actually helping a business abroad.
Illegal industrial espionage is produced for private businesses, but legal economic espionage is for policymakers. There are reasons of practice and politics and law and ethics that prohibit the U.S. from committing industrial espionge.
Meanwhile industrial espionage is committed by other countries - including Russia, China, France and Japan.
And, in case you're wondering, the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 makes industrial espionage against U.S. companies illegal. It used to be illegal in some states, but now the theft of trade secrets is illegal throughout the U.S.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
In most nations, intelligence organisations see it as their duty to act in the best interests of their nation.
So if the NSA/CIA/whoever use intelligence information to help US corporations, why does everybody get self-righteous? If the successor to the KGB was doing this nobody would be surprised. I am sure that MOSSAD pass commercial information on to Israeli companies. The French make no secret of their intelligence forces doing it. I would be surprised if information from GCHQ never makes it's way into British company's hands.
If this weren't happening, the taxpayers should complain. How would it look if the director of the CIA had to tell a congressional commitee "Yes, we had the information that would have saved Boeing/General Motors/Lockheed but we couldn't pass it on because it was commercial"?
Stop believing that the world is a nice place, and grow up.
Moderators: My apologies, I'm not trying to start a flame war, but the fact that I get irate about this might influence my writing style. Try not to damage me too thoroughly. :)
:)
It's charming, it really is, that whenever a story like this comes out, dozens of self-proclaimed realists will fire off these "It happens, grow up people" posts, as though they are the grizzled old men in Heinlein books and CIA Movies that have seen all the corruption of the world and absorbed it all into their overpowering intellect.
My take, and I openly acknowledge that it may be mine alone, is that looking for ethical behaviour in government is not utterly naive. Or moreover, that if it truly is, then our situation is a sad one, because I do not want to be represented by these people. Still, let's say for a moment that this corruption in government is inevitable, and that furthermore, the democratic process as it now stands has so much inertia that it will just plow on ahead, despite transgressions, I have another question:
Why do the companies accept this? Is that what American business is about? Are these companies so hopelessly unoriginal that they need to profit from the spoils of the intelligence war? A corporation is not a human being, I'm not trying to hold it to an ethical standard, I just have no respect for that kind of business. And it saddens me to see how pathetic american industry has become.
My apologies for the rant. It's cathartic for me, I guess.
Johnath
On a more serious note, I think it's high time that people realized once and for all that U.S. spying is NOT to combat "terrorism" or whatnot, and realize that the privacy of hundreds of millions of people is being routinely violated.
Millions of people, both in the US and abroad, should be screaming for universal encryption, instead of complacently fearing "terrorism", or whatever flavor of the week the mainstream media shove down their throats.
Frankly, if I ran any of these European countries, you'd bet your ass that I'd immediately condemn this spying as a hostile act of aggression, and work out treaties with other nations explicitly naming any further spying as an act of war, and military alliances to give the treaties TEETH.
But then again, the US is the BAMF of all nations, so it'll probably have its way, just like it always does.
It's only a matter of time till the US stops being the policeman of the world, and starts being the police state of the world.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Nothing on CNN, nothing on MSNBC. And so millions of shee^H^H^H^Hvoters will go on with their patriotic lives believing in the high ideals of American benevolence and the free market.
Quite sad indeed.
This is naturally a stance I and many others find offensive. What does it matter open info. vs. espionage, you've still got a bunch of unpleasant gov't intelligence types running around considering ways to aid American companies over British|French|Canadian|Japanese|S'African|Austral ian|Venezualan|etc. ones.
The idea of this being largely about "bribery" strikes me as the thinnest zenophobic screen, an attempt to post-rationalize cowardly behaviour in the eyes of the public by making unprovable and unfair assertions about the relative merits of other cultures. Even if its true, if bribery went, tomorrow, would they stop spying tomorrow?
The ultimate intent of the community, as evidenced by the question about a tech. breakthrough, is to aid Americans over the scary "Europeans". This disugusts me. Such a myopic, zenophobic, shallow, argument should disgust everyone.
BTW, I can't defend France, but can anyone completely defend the actions of the U.S. (or anywhere 100% of the time) in its foreign policy? America is *good*, but not perfect, and probably not that much better than most other democracies. The same goes for bribery, I suppose we're going to ignore the American Tobacco Lobby for the time being, and quite how one of its members got itself involved in Tobacco racketeering in Canada? Or, perhaps our blind eye would be better used on the campaign trail? Or in the officer schools? Or in the plethora of QUANGOs associated w/ defence? Or with the fact that defence bidding, despite being open to at least Cdn companies, was (when Cdn. co.s were big enough to matter) cleverly tilted towards american bussiness, etc etc.
I could enumerate an even greater number of good things the U.S. has done, but I'm not going too. (This post is too long and too politically dodgy already. ;-)
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He who fights and runs away,