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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."
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.
First of all, others here on /. have been saying (as you and I both did) that many countries are involved in industrial espionage. This is true, and here's a 1998 report from the National Counterintelligence Center that lists some of the countries that perform industrial or economic espionage here in the U.S.
Second, under U.S. law, no member of the U.S. intelligence community is permitted to pass secrets on to private businesses. That is not allowed. If it is happening, it must (by law) be stopped, and the people doing it must (by law) be punished.
Now, let's take a moment to consider the sources. First, the person quoted in the article is former DCI James Woolsey. He left the CIA after two years on the job (1993-95), which were remarkable because they demonstrated huge clashes with Congress - and the worst spy scandal in recent history, the Aldrich Ames case, which he completely mishandled. I think it would not be too difficult to say he's not the best source for revelations. His time away from the job have probably led him to be imprecise with words, and he likely said things he didn't quite mean.
Second, who is the other source? The author of the article is Duncan Campbell, the man responsible - almost singlehandedly - for creating the furore over Echelon. He authored a few of the reports about Echelon, and seems to have something against the practice of collecting intelligence. He seems to enjoy fanning the flames of paranoia of the intelligence community, and sowing the seeds of discord between the U.S. and Europe. That is why, when you read the article we're discussing, he conflates and confuses economic and industrial espionage, two things which should be kept separate, and stresses Woolsey's remarks about Europe.
In fact, the only line in the entire article where Woolsey says anything controversial - that the U.S. commits industrial espionage - is brief and offhand, and it sounds more like a confused ramble than a straightforward, direct admission: "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."
Finally, how is the intelligence community supposed to defend itself? They say they don't commit industrial espionage, but their critics will not accept that, nor any other level of assurance.
A. Keiper
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. ;-)
____________________________
He who fights and runs away,