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German EU Delegate Sues 'Unknown' Over Echelon
belbo writes: "The German newsservice Heise reports that Ilka Schroeder, member of the European Parliament, has instituted legal proceedings at two German courts over 'unknown persons in the U.S., the UK and the German government operating and / or tolerating the espionage system ECHELON, thus violating several patent protection laws'."
And on top of it all the NATO docs are in German...j pg
:>
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/echelon.
I mean fine that you are crying "RAPE", but don't sleep with the offender for over 50 years before doing so. Ok, that was a bit blunt, they have been invaded by the good guys.
Still, they don't have to ditch a lot of money for defense nor do "they have to develop any geopolitical strategy for themselves" like let's say France, Israel (cough cough) or South Africa.
That last quote was straight out of one of SHAPE's meeting though
Just like a S.T.A.C B-52 crashing in your backyard, ECHELON is one of those things that NATO requires of you for years of services I guess.
I thought this was the Ikea homepage?
Oh, wait...
Besides, who cares what happens in Germany?
Well, I'm sure Germans and most Europeans do. Besides, I think what they're doing is good, not doing anything over Echelon is accepting it. Even if this lawsuit might not actually do anything, it might wake up a few people with ties. Heck, 99% of Internet users probably have no ideas what kind of "privacy acts" some govs are promoting.
"Oh, incidentally, Germany has one of the biggest financial services sectors in the world"
The biggest foreign exchange market is of course in London (just last year it was bigger than Tokyo and New York combined). But who cares, eh?
Check this link out to see some real figures: http://www.oecd.org/std/gdp.htm
As you will see, in 1999, the UK past France with respect to GDP. Germany's GDP is 50% greater the UK's. I dunno what the size of the German population is these days, but the UK's is between 55 and 60 million. The UK showed good GDP growth between 96 and 99, while Germany showed declined. Of course, these figures do not include this year, when I believe Germany has been reviving.
"The German economy is the third in the world, right behind Japan and before France "
Between Japan and the UK.
"- UK does not have a "very boyant economy" as you said - the UK economic boom was several years ago and is now slowing down (just look at Rover or any other UK car brand : they all got bought buy foreign car makers) "
The manufacturing sector was in recession a couple of years ago. At the same time, other parts of the economy were over-heating. The economy overall was still growing. Manufacturing, and car production in particular, are not indicative of the whole. Hey, Germany might have a F1 world champion... but most of the successful teams are British (will Ferrari make it this year again?)
> > If Echelon is reality (and that's a big "if"), the US is the only player.
> Actually, everything that I've ever seen on Echelon suggests that it's a joint U.S./U.K. project.
Echelon is run by UKUSA (pronounced "you-queue-sah") consisting of the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. The whole Echelon thing came to the fore after an Australian Govt official made comment about a facility in Australia and what it's purpose was.
pithy comment
And if significant evidence becomes public that the US is stealing trade secrets for commercial advantage, expect that fact to be used as a negotiating point in the next GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) rounds.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
In other news, Reggie Canute, member of the European Parliament, obtained an injunction from a German court, enjoining the tide from coming in.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If the US gov't spends so much on intelligence, how come they're all so damn stupid?
As noted in this story:
h tml
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/12/1910255.s
(Follow the link to the link of the full story)
Here's the headline blurb:
"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."
Scary !
Frank
Not ECHELON itself is the object in question,
but it's usage to obtain information about
patented technologies.
I think you could call it "industrial espionage"
The UK economy isn't very much smaller than the German economy at all. Per capita GDP is about the same. Remember - Germany is a bigger country...
You are right about the GDP/capita being close, but wrong about the conclusion. Following your logic, Monaco has a bigger economy than US (it has a way bigger GDP/capita than the US)... per capita GDP is fine for evaluating the living standard of a country, but for the size of the economy it is useless. Germany really has a much bigger economy than UK, eventhought the average German has about the same living standard as the average British gentleman (except when both go to the hospital : you don't want to be in the UK when that happens, unless you like dying a painfull death on the waiting list).
"Everyone knows that those shifty Europeans can never be trusted, and are only out to swindle honest decent americans, so they had it coming!"
And, of course, not a single fact to back it up.
First you file the lawsuit. That gives you a wide latitude to "go fishing." You can supoena any information you think is relevant to the case. IE: Names of people who posted (they thought) anonymously through some Internet service. Usually once you have the names you drop the lawsuit and induldge in a round of firings. This is one of the few "John Doe" cases I've seen which is intended to be followed through.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
She's probably pissed about being spied on, but she found a way to process the problem vie an anti-industrial espionage act in Germany. It's a normal legal manouver of getting what you want through some legal loophole.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
You have demonstrated an intellectual acumen and political awareness unseen in decades. Oh, no, wait. No you haven't. My bad.
there are some [politicians] left with ethical driven visions of what's right and what's not.
Moderators: +1, Funny, please!
The typical response from people who find it easier to believe that every politician is corrupt than to actually follow their actions and arrive at a conclusion based on that. There are 100 U.S. senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives, 50 governors, 1 President, and countless local and state legislators and executives. You really think the idea that ALL of them are corrupt has any basis in truth? Here's some news; they're like us. Some of them are honest, some are not. A lot of them are trapped by the system; they need to accept financial contributions, or else they have no chance of getting elected.
When asked in the street about what they think of issues or candidates, too many Americans come up with the stock answer of "oh, I think none of them candidates are any good", because it's pretty easy to fake lack of knowledge as worldweariness, and it makes them feel better than admitting they don't really know about the issues would.
Yes, I'm an American, and I'm part of a generation that has become "disillusioned with politics" as it's said. Personally, I'm not. Politicians today aren't any better or worse than in the past, and the system has actually improved somewhat in the past few decades.
--
Although I usually don't answer to trolls...
At least you should get the facts right, before you make wrong conclusions. Norway is not part of the EU, never has been. Therefore it was never asked about the Euro and can't bail out.
Maybe you're referring to the referendum in Denmark, but they didn't bail out, just decided not to join. However their currency is bound to the Euro anyway...
"And just what do they get if they win their lawsuit?"
If you start by assuming there is a reason for suing an unknown party, your reasoning is likely to achieve better results than maligning somebody in ignorance.
After one sues an unknown party, the plaintiff then subpoenas documents and deposes witnesses. This may include motions asking the court to compel production and testimony. The purpose is to discover the identity of the defendant. E.g., one might get the court to order various government officials to tell who is running Echelon, or one might order a landlord to identify their tenant or a supplier to identify their customer.
After the plaintiff discovers the defendant's identity, they file a motion to amend the complaint and an amended complaint that names the defendant. Then the suit proceeds as any other, with the possibility for injunctions, compensation, punitive damages, et cetera.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not like the French have ever been reluctant to lie, cheat, steal, and kill when their interests were threatened, and the SAS has been mentioned in some pretty odd places too.
(To give credit where due, however, the Germans have been pretty respectful of others' property the last 50 years.)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
and something called semicondunctor protection law (which i never heard of before). ... against stealing of their chip designs. it is forbidden by semiconductor protection law to put an chip under an electron microscope and reproduce it without an license from the original design firm. i think in other country this is simply done with the copyright law.
Semiconductor protection law is a copyright law for chip designs, it protects firms like intel,amd,nvidia
Jan
It's interesting to note that he's just 22 and he's taking on his government :o) Oh and mine :o)
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
And just what do they get if they win their lawsuit? A visit from the unknown comic? Perhaps a beter waste of money would be to name the unkown people and lobby for laws against theirs and other countries from participating. But again, it's all just a waste of money cause these .gov types are above the law.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
This is a *German person* (politician, but doesn't matter) suing *people* from the UK, US and Germany itself, namely the people who operate and tolerate Echelon, breaching a bunch of German laws. If the German government knows about Echelon in Germany and is not acting against it, they could go to jail personally.
Of course, a lawsuit against "Unknowns" is going to have problems...
But no, he's not suing states. He's not asking for money either, he wants them to stop and go to jail.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
from babbelfish: " these regulations become obviously hurt by the described restaurant espionage activity of the suspects ".
This wouldn't be the first time restaurant espionage has ruined lives. Especially when your "industrial secrets" are actually french fries and you return from the rest room to find them stolen!
Sorry, haven't had my coffee yet.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
And a lot of that is because many European countries are several orders of magnitude smaller than the U.S., and they depend on cost saving approaches like conscription to keep their costs low. Their military spending per capita may be somewhat lower than the U.S., but not orders of magnitude lower. And of course most of the EU countries are also in NATO, so they're also depending fairly heavily on the U.S. military to defend them, which helps keep their costs lower.
That said, there's every evidence that many European companies aim their intelligence apparatus much more heavily at Industrial espionage than the U.S. As was pointed out above, everyone knows that the French government loves to pass on useful information to French industry, and my impression is that they're just the most obvious case. The relationship between industy and government has always been closer just about everywhere in Europe than in the United States in other areas, like subsidies, government ownership, etc., so it's not too surprising that passing of intelligence information should be too. IMHO, part of the reason that so many people in Europe are quick to accuse the U.S. of industrial espionage and people in the U.S. are so reluctant to admit it is because the Europeans know that they'd pass on secrets that they turned up, while Americans generally don't view doing so as a valid or acceptable role of government.
Actually, everything that I've ever seen on Echelon suggests that it's a joint U.S./U.K. project.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Listen, don't any of you people understand *strategy*? If someone sues Echelon for patent infringement, they have a good chance of forcing disclosure of how Echelon works . . . thereby allowing programmers to route around it . . . thereby making it useless.
--J
I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners. - Berke Breathed
In addition Europe is not a country, nor is the EU, and forces are definitely not being pooled as far as espionage and military intelligence go.
While European governments are probably not innately morally any "purer" than the US, the US is way out there on its own as far as Echelon-like practices go. If Echelon is reality (and that's a big "if"), the US is the only player.
Ano... ano...
Um... I can't say I saw that one coming. Who'd have thought you could apply patent law in fighting this thing? And given the US government's subservience to corporations (Nader put it best when he talked about "patenting everything under the sun"), I don't think this is one corner they'll be able to back out of very easily.
Well, this is a fine dilemma to be in. On one hand, it's a patent issue relating to software (though I don't think Germany allows software patents anyway, so that's not the issue in and of itself). On the other hand, it's a case of fighting Echelon. Hmmm; who to root for...
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Ilka Schröder, Member of the European Parliament, today at 10:00 filed suit at the Generalbundesanwalt [attorney general] and the public prosecutors in Traunstein and Berlin against Echelon. The suit was filed against "unknown person or persons, especially from the USA or the UK and, if appropriate, the [German] Federal Government for operating and tolerating the espionage system ECHELON."
Schröder refers to reports from Duncan Campell and articles in Telepolis. Her juristic lever for calling the Generalbundesanwalt is his responsibility for the prosecution of certain violation against the 'Bill for Protection of Patents, Registered Designs and Semiconductors'. Schröder suggests in her charge, which is available to Telepolis, that "the bill is apparently violated by the reported acts of industrial espionage of the suspects"
As Schröder told Telepolis earlier today, she filed suit to "raise the discussion about Echelon to a different political level". The inquiry in the Non-permanent Commission of the European Parliament taking place since last week is "not targetted enough", according to Schröder.
(Author: Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti)
Telepolis is Heise's "net culture magazine" with a larger article about it. MP Schröder's Homepage has a homepage.
Censorship on Slashdot
Echelon: sueing unknown
Ilka Schröder, member of the European Parliament, sued "Unknown" against Echolon today (modnay 10:00 local time) at the federal high court, and locally in Traunstein and Berlin.
The suit is directed against "unknown suspects fom USA, UK and possibly the german federal government because of operation and/or operation of the espionage system ECHELON".
The lawsuit is based on reports by Duncan Campbell and reports in Telepolis [yabHuj: a german magazine, see e.g. http://www.heise.de/tp/de uts ch/special/ech/6998/1.html]. The juristic lever is the federal states attourney (Generalbundesanwalt) because he is responsible for pursuing certain cases of violations against patent and semiconductor laws [yabHuj: read: industry espionage]. Schröder suspects in her suit (of which Telepolis has a copy) that
vermutet in ihrer Strafanzeige, die Telepolis vorliegt, dass "these regulations are violated by the industry espionage described".
As Schröder said this morning, she wants to haul the discussion about Echelon onto a different political level. Since last week there are inquiries by a nonpermanent committee of the European Parliament which are "way too unfocussed". (Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti)
Yeah, I don't know much about the german legal system, but I know that in the US you have to actually NAME all defendants (at least in civil suits).
Have you forgotten the DeCSS lawsuit already?
When the MPAA decided to persue its (illegetimate) persecution of persons unnamed for posting links to DeCSS, many (If I recall correctly, the vast majority) of the defendents were listed as "John Doe #1" Through "John Doe #N", where N was some rediculous number like 90 or so.
In other words, a whole bunch of "unknowns" are being sued by the Motion Picture Association of America.
The German verbiage is simply more explicit, honestly stating that the offending parties are not known, rather than merely implying it by listing a fictitious name. (I've always found the assumption in using the name "John Doe" that the offendor is male rather amusing).
From what I have been able to learn, both systems appear to allow lawsuits against unidentified parties, if the harm done can be identified, documented, and proven. Should the parties later be positively identified, they will be held liable.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
As an American posting from Germany, let me just contribute two bits of information. The assumption is that Anglo-Saxons are conducting industrial espionage. This assumption is widely held (it's not just Ilka Schröder), and it's deeply resented.
I worked for a year at the Airbus airplane plant in Hamburg, and there are elaborate security mechanisms in place there. They said that they had already caught a couple of spies. Their only opponent, obviously, is Boeing.
I know that many of my fellow Yanks will resent this assumption, but let me gently remind you that our nation's espionage activities over the past decades have so thoroughly ruined our moral reputation that this reaction can hardly be surprising. Wake up, floks. When you send the CIA out to assassinate, topple governments and support thugs as often as we have, it's certainly not difficult to imagine our spooks stealing business secrets.
Also, many of you are getting a kick out of this "unknown" business, but this is just what they about an investigation when wrongdoing is suspected but nobody's certain who's doing it. When some of my stuff was stolen a few years ago, I reported it to the poilce and they initiated an investigation against "unknown". You can do the same thing in civil procedures. The purpose is simply to get a formal investigation going, so that you maybe find out who "unknown" is.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind