Edward Snowden Says NSA Engages In Industrial Espionage

Maow writes "Edward Snowden has been interviewed by a German TV network and stated that the NSA is involved in industrial espionage, which is outside the range of national security. He claims that Siemens is a prime example of a target for the data collection. I doubt this would surprise AirBus or other companies, but it shall remain to be seen what measures global industries take (if any) to prevent their internal secrets from falling into NSA's — and presumably American competitors' — hands." AirBus is a good example of a company that has experienced spying from both sides.

Comments

Outside the range?

[Sarten-X]

Assuming the espionage is purely separate from any military programs, American companies get the ability to build products Americans rely on, rather than having American life be dependent on foreign companies which might not be able or willing to export during World War 3. And somehow that's not a part of national security?

Privacy

[aslashdotaccount]

What does this exposition have to do with helping preserve the privacy of citizens?

Even friends and allies do it among each other

[vikingpower]

I once worked for one of the companies involved in the JSF project. As soon as we knew that Lockheed Martin had a web app for performing a certain task, I was asked by my boss to get the entire web app's jar files, reverse engineer it, and tell him how good or bad LM's implementation was. The company for which I worked then went on to steal LM's implementation and incorporate it into its own commercial product.

Which, and this is the best part, they then sold. To Lockheed Martin.