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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.

29 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. A symbiotic relationship by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This actually makes perfect sense.

    There has existed a perception that large corporate compilers of information reluctantly acquiesced to the full might of national security orders and subpoenas..

    What's in it for me? is a sweet, sweet incentivizer, too.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:A symbiotic relationship by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not normally the same companies. Mostly defence contractors get the benefits, which sort-of makes sense as much of the US military depends on the products from these industries, and so if you squint enough it looks like a national security concern.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. German transcript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can be found here http://www.tagesschau.de/snowden-interview-deutsch100.pdf

  3. America Inc. by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The French was epic in industrial espionage until the Chinese caught up.

    Never to be left behind, the United States jumped on the wagon - and applied the lesson learned from both the French and the Chinese, the United States of America has perfected the art of industrial espionage to such degree that no one, not even the Chinese, can ever dream of matching their success.

    But unfortunately, 99% of the American corporations don't get to enjoy the fruit of the industrial espionage. Only HUGE industrial complexes (such as Boeing, Google, Corning, Citibank) get to benefit from the gems NSA manage to gather.

    That is why, even today, most of the SMEs in America are still struggling, but on the other hand, those HUMONGOUS corporations grow leaps and bounds.

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:America Inc. by cold+fjord · · Score: 3, Insightful

      no proof needed. It's too obvious.

      It's "obvious" in much the same way that other false things have been "obvious" over the years on Slashdot.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    2. Re:America Inc. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Precisely what we don't know. If the NSA were throwing useful business intelligence to every American company that could benefit, news would have leaked by now - enough people would know that someone would inevitably talk. So any business spying they do perform must be tightly controlled, and the intelligence given only to the most trusted companies, like defense contractors.

  4. Re:Outside the range? by SirGarlon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you accept that argument, then all economic activity falls under the umbrella of national security, and the Constitution goes out the window.

    Oh, I see what you did there.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
  5. Ever heard of Locust Funds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Get ready for leaks about NSA using spy data to short stocks on major stock exchanges around the world! Who said crime didn't pay?

    1. Re:Ever heard of Locust Funds? by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Informative
      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

  6. It's a free market ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a free market all right, it's a free "to spy on everybody and steal their secret" market !!

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  7. Re:Outside the range? by Xest · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well that depends, if you got a situation where America is artificially taking work away from other nations by simply stealing their knowledge, product designs and so forth then that might mean those nations become less stable and more likely to want to hurt America when they find out the only reason they're poor and unemployed is because America stole from them.

    Not to mention the harm this does for it's ability to partake in international politics, how silly will it look telling China off for manipulating it's currency to it's benefit when America has similarly been artificially propping it's economy up simply by stealing from everyone else? It's a dangerous game as if America wants to get in a race to the bottom it's going to lose hard because countries like India and China will be able to cope with reduced living standards far more than Americans will be able to without rising up and rioting. Those countries also have far less scruples about stealing from the US. You think China will now have any reservations about hacking US companies? It was supposedly doing so before but now it doesn't even need to care if it gets caught as it can just say it's fair play whilst America if it wants to be taken seriously still needs to retain some semblance of decency.

    Or in other words, engaging in this sort of subversive manner against foreign states might be exactly the sort of thing that starts World War 3 creating such instability and such threat to the US in the first place.

  8. Even friends and allies do it among each other by vikingpower · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  9. Re:Outside the range? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's not what the stolen information is used for. It just saves US companies from having to spend money on R&D to develop their own solutions, or helps them win contracts overseas.

    Besides which the NSA made sure that American products are compromised by weakening security protocols and not notifying companies about backdoors. Worse still since Snowden was able to gain access to all this information relatively easily it is probably safe to assume that foreign agencies have their own spies collecting it too, so know all about the NSA backdoors and vulnerabilities they discovered.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  10. Keep the love coming! by LF11 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This just gets more and more rich as time goes. So what if every spy agency does it? That does not make it right. It is time for ordinary people to figure out whether they want this kind of action being done by their governments.

    I am very happy Snowden is choosing to release this material one drop at a time. It is like Chinese water torture against the intelligence apparatus. Please, keep the love coming!

    I think after the Murrah bombing, 9/11, and the marathon bombing, we have established that the security agencies are not capable of stopping actual terrorist activity against American citizens. Not when every supposed thwarting is really just an FBI set-up. So it is time for us to really consider what these agencies are actually doing, since they are apparently not stopping terrorism.

    1. Re:Keep the love coming! by LF11 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because ordinary citizens -- both American and foreign -- have jobs with these corporations, jobs that are affected by industrial espionage?

      Because we have expectations of privacy (in the absence of wrongdoing) and that expectation applies to corporations as well?

      Because industrial espionage is the motherlode of data in the age of the Internet...can you imagine the damage if Snowden were corrupted by Chinese intelligence services? Or Russian? Indeed, what if that is the case with other NSA personnel already?

      Because an intelligence agency willing to engage in corporate profiteering is showing a callous disrespect for law, privacy, and ethics?

      If an intelligence agency has freed itself from the bonds of law and public oversight, how far will it go? Will it be used against a populist target such as the "1%" or against a political target such as Occupy? Indeed, is it already being used for such? (Michael Hastings!)

      Stop being an apologist, recognize the cancer for what it is.

    2. Re:Keep the love coming! by gnupun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Once again, what does this have to do with ordinary citizens?

      Translation: if it doesn't affect me, why should I care?

    3. Re:Keep the love coming! by jareth-0205 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Once again, what does this have to do with ordinary citizens? Yes, agreed that Snowden's disclosure of PRISM was relevant, but he's just grasping at straws with this one.

      That's pretty extreme myopia to decide that it doesn't matter because 'ordinary citizens' aren't affected... it doesn't have to directly immediately target normal people to affect them.

      But to answer your question, ordinary citizens *are* directly affected, they have jobs in these companies. Ordinary citizens are shareholders of these companies (Even non-explicit shareholders, of you have a pension then you have shares one way or another).

  11. Snowden interview in english by I)_MaLaClYpSe_(I · · Score: 5, Informative

    German sender ARD/NDR has now published the english interview in OV after substantial criticism.

  12. Re:What's next? by Maritz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Being deceptive and manipulative works out great when everyone thinks you're legit. Once you're outed as a conniving liar though, the consequences aren't always fun. I suspect the NSA/USA's 'spy-on-everyone-including-your-friends' tactic is in the process of backfiring spectacularly.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  13. Re:why the soap opera ? by LoRdTAW · · Score: 5, Informative

    The idea is that if everything is released at once then the story will ruffle some feathers for only a few weeks/months and die out quickly.

    By releasing their dirty secrets one at a time and once a month, the story can be kept in the media for years (or so Snowden says). This ensures the pressure is kept on the NSA and government to do something. Though, so far the crooks are trying to justify everything they do and are quite defiant in defending their practices.

  14. U.S stealing trade and tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's funny to hear U.S gov and confused Americans say the Chinese are stealing technology, a discussion and argument that bears no logic whatsoever, but at the same time they're doing everything they can to get information and secrets on trade, technology etc. while saying it's to protect the U.S. Hilarious.

  15. Re:I don't care for your vision of America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let's be honest though, the NSA serves only a small portion of our population and sees the rest of us as their adversary.

    The NSA serves nobody but itself. It's in its self-interest to siphon off as much tax payer money as possible but the control structures that need to be greased for that are deliberately removed from the control and oversight of the tax payer.

    That's not all too different from how secret services in other countries operate and partly hard to avoid if the "secret" is supposed to make some kind of sense.

    What's different in the U.S.A., however, is that the amount of money the secret services burn through without basic oversight is a significant portion of the nation's income, to a degree where it endangers the national finances as well as international relations.

    The NSA is out of control by design, but it is taking down the whole nation, and that's causing more damage than good to its ulterior justification of providing a net benefit to the U.S.A.

  16. Re:Outside the range? by G-forze · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes. Shooting the messenger is always a good idea.

    --
    "There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
  17. Re:*Not* news -- no kidding it's TIMOTHY by cold+fjord · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find that there is no shortage of false things that "everyone already knows" on Slashdot.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  18. Re:Outside the range? by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Almost, more accurately it passed from the NSA to select insiders who individually claim the technology and screw profits out of other Americans with stolen patents. Industrial espionage, criminal act and extortion espionage, business insider trading espionage all having nothing at all to make any country safer and everything to do with enriching select political insiders. Should it trigger cyber warfare the only question is will it be profitable for the select few.

    Once you accept that sort of espionage then fuck it, only one small step to consider foreign banks your piggy bank and start embezzling money straight out of them. Three cheers for the good old USA for working so hard to trigger global economic warfare.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  19. Re:Outside the range? by Xest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Regarding China, the most useful information probably relates to contract negotiation. Stemming the tide of Chinese corporate purchases and Chinese oil company investment in Africa and so forth, but also allowing companies like Apple to better negotiate terms with their manufacturers.

    But in general there have been a lot of military deals that European firms for example were set to win because they'd put in the best bid (objectively so) only for the deal to be cancelled last minute, sometimes after being signed citing "corruption" only for American firms to be handed the deal on a platter without restarting the tender process (which is what would happen if corruption was a real concern).

    If during take over and purchase negotiations and so forth America is able to get e-mails saying things like "We'll take $250,000 for the company but let's push for $500,000" then the American firms know they can hold out until that minimum and not risk losing the deal giving them an artificial advantage in negotiations.

    There are many examples, and I don't pretend it is just America doing it, I think the UK and France at minimum do a lot of it too, but it's not really a good idea long term as you're just legitimising the practice and it's simply then just a race of who does it best, until someone loses, then when someone loses a race that shouldn't even have been happening in the first place they'll get angry, and get their own back another way.

    It's just not a good idea building global distrust like this.

  20. Re:Outside the range? by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think he's trying to make the argument that if corporate espionage counts as "national security" then so does any NSA interference in "commerce," which due to the absurdly broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause means that the NSA can do literally anything at all.

    It's not actually that big a leap, I think.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  21. Re:Outside the range? by snakeplissken · · Score: 3, Informative

    a world government for the .000001%

    hmmm,

    85 people own as much as the bottom 350000000 people on earth combined - supposedly - (not half the planets wealth as reported because of course the bottom 350000000 people don't own that much) but still a metric fuck ton of planetary resources control. :)

    85 divided by 7 billion =~ 0.00000121%, i think you over estimate the size of the world government there.

  22. Re:why the soap opera ? by BobMcD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not to mention further revelations exposes the lies of excuses from each previous round of revelation.

    This, here, is the real trick.

    There has been a lot of this:

    1) Assert 'A'
    2) Government denies 'A'
    3) Prove 'A'. Assert 'B'.
    4) Government admits to needing to do 'A', but says it would never do 'B'.
    5) Prove 'B'. Assert 'C'. ...and so on...

    The fact that the government FELL FOR IT for so very long this summer and fall says a lot about their arrogance. Well that and how little they know about what he actually took.