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Australian Defense Scientists Plagiarizing Trade Secrets
An anonymous reader writes "At least five businesses have alleged senior officers in the Defence Science and Technology Organization have plagiarized intellectual property for their own research [free reg. required] and then passed it on to government business partners to develop a rival product. There are fears that IP plagiarizing could increase with the new Defence Trade Controls Act passed last year despite warnings from the universities it would drive research offshore. Once the trial period ends Australian high-tech researchers will face up to 10 years jail for sending an e-mail or making an overseas phone call without a government permit."
...that industrial espionage, not "terrorism", is the real purpose for storage capacity of the magnitude of the NSA's Utah facility.
Not that any other government that can, won't. Eventually business will be sorted into those who have "government connections", and those who don't--the former collecting the latter's innovations and work product en masse (thus, essentially, their lives), and putting them out of business.
Corporatism (alternately, fascism), with turbo boost.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This was the actual text from Clayton Utz, the law firm acting for the Australian Department of Defence: "“The reason we believe your claim will fail is because you allege that the Commonwealth owes innovators submitting products or technology for evaluation a duty of care to ensure that the evaluations are either fair, proper and accurate or that the confidential information is respected. There is no such duty of care in Australian law.”
They are very disingenuous: The DSTO publicly solicits businesses to submit inventions to Defence under the "DSTO CTD Capability and Technology Demonstrator Program", and then screw them over behind closed doors.
Here the Defence Science Minister Warren Snowdon announced a DSTO Probity Board "to protect against conflict of interest" http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/news/6648/, while here he sends a letter to an independent MP in which he falsely claims the whistleblower didn't want the thefts from other companies to be investigated(!): http://victimsofdsto.com/doc/2011-02-28%20Letter%20from%20Defence%20Science%20Minister%20with%20false%20information%20to%20Independent%20MP%20(NAMES%20BLACKED%20OUT).pdf
Australia's Federal Police force, the AFP, are systemically corrupt. They ignore public service crime http://www.smh.com.au/national/public-service-keeps-fraud-cases-private-20110923-1kpdr.html and terrorise whistleblowers: http://pastebin.com/tD8Vd6Vd http://victimsofdsto.com/psc/#kessing
You can't use the civil courts: Under the Model Litigant Policy the Australian government has to keep legal costs to a minimum, must offer alternate dispute resolution, etc. But the government lawyers simply ignore it, run up huge legal bills and threaten to bankrupt you with a costs order if you dare step foot into court. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/gillard-government-lashed-for-ignoring-breaches-of-model-litigant-rules/story-e6frg97x-1226325228917 Another department did actually bankrupt a guy. Not mentioned in the article, the DSTO also stole IP from some big defence companies (including an American one).
It costs about $2M to litigate the gov. I don't know of a single company who has seen litigation through: SMEs can't afford it, and the large companies said litigating their biggest customer would lose future contracts. The only law firms capable of taking on the government pro bono in Australia are all on retainer to them! Here's a very good book "Our Corrupt Legal System" by an investigative crime journalist; Page 157- describes all the dirty tricks lawyers play: http://netk.net.au/Whitton/OCLS.pdf . play.