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Evidence Aside, FBI Says Russians Out To Steal Ideas From US Tech Firms
v3rgEz (125380) writes "It sounds like a scare from 1970s Cold War propaganda or a subplot from the popular TV series "The Americans," but the FBI says the threat is real: Russian investment firms may be looking to steal high-tech intelligence from Boston-area companies to give to their country's military. Many of the firms under scrutiny are in the Boston area, including those partnered with a number of area biotech companies and with ties to MIT." And while the FBI says this could be happening, as the article points out, this pronouncement seems to be based on plausibility rather than specific incidents of such theft. One relevant excerpt: "The FBI warning comes as the Obama administration has increased pressure on Russia for its annexation of the former Ukrainian territory of Crimea by levying sanctions on some business leaders close to President Vladimir Putin. In March, the US Commerce Department banned new licenses for the export to Russia of defense-related products and “dual-use” technologies that could have military applications."
what they'll do is take the design, and implement a very cheap poorly implemented knock off. No real threat in my opinion...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
All governments use (or would if they were sufficiently large enough) their intelligence agencies to steal business intelligence from corporations located in other countries in order to help their own economy. The Russians didn't just start to do this now because of the Ukrainian crisis and US sanctions.
Either we're looking to justify 2014's budget, reduce inquiry into the CIA, or keep americans in agreement with the narrative that america should do something, anything, about russian foreign policy that in no way concerns us ever.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Instead of stealing from everyone else, let the US do that work and then simply lift it from them.
Never would've thought that Russia would be teaching us a lesson in efficiency...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
WTF is "based on plausibility"? Many things are plausible
Yes, many things are plausible, but not all of those things will lead to an increase in the FBI's budget.
Investing in companies is hardly what I would call stealing.
Foreign companies can come in and poach talent and taxpayer funded research from Universities and the startups that come out of them. There's nothing illegal or even remotely unethical there. This is what we wanted! Russian capitalists investing in US companies, US students and US schools. Even if their goal is to move the company to Russia, that's part of how capitalism and globalization work. If we want to encourage researchers to stay in the US, we should do more to encourage direct domestic investment in startups rather than secondary investments like hedge funds.
If we want to completely protect our basic R&D, we have to classify it. That would be sure to drive researchers out of the country.
They did it!
Sure, you thought they had precious little to do when they started calling kids running DDOS scripts criminals. You knew it was bad the second and third times they created their own terrorist and handed him weapons from their own stockpile to arrest him with....
Now.... they are releasing politically motivated propaganda. Moving on up.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Many years ago, I recall that the US government refused entry to certain Russian mathematicians coming to attend a major conference in the USA. The reason given was that the commies were obviously trying to steal good ol' American know-how. The funny part was that the Russians in question were actually the world experts at the time (in that particular field), so the only people who lost out were the American mathematicians who had hoped to learn from them.
It's one thing to have a policy of pretending that all worthwhile innovation originates in the USA. It's quite another thing to start believing that's true. (See, for example, Joy's Law: ""No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else”).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
And the method is sadly pretty silly.
Putin want's to go back to the cold war... fine. We offered his country a clean slate... Obama even went so far as to offer that reset button thing. And what do we get? This... Well, whatever.
Back to the cold war it is then.
And that means going back to squeezing Russia's economy into ruin.
The ways to do that are obvious... Russia depends heavily on sales of oil and gas. Ruin them. Give their customer's cheap plentiful alternatives.
And calm down hippies... but fracking is happening... get over it... its going to be a big thing in eastern europe at the very least and they'll ideally be able to supply themselves and sell to the western europeans that still think they can't get off oil... despite utterly failing after spending hundreds of billions trying.
I said calm down hippies... When we get the tech to actually get off oil... such as getting a battery worth a damn... then fine. Till then... its here to stay.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Snowden supplies some of the answers.
The GCHQ and NSA's surveillance of Italy specifically included looking for commercial advantages. It looks very much as though the same applies to Germany so it seems obvious what this is a general pattern. My first thought when I saw this article was that the FBI is trying to claim "everybody does it" - hell, they may even be right.
What annoyed the Germans so much was that it was their supposed friends acting this way.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
If the NSA hadn't worked so hard to ensure that there were plenty of backdoors in our security protocols and hardware, it would be much harder for foreign intelligence agencies to exploit those backdoors.
Yeah, it's not like the Russians _just got fucking busted_ for doing this.
Dipshit.
When I think "tech firm" in this context I don't think Facebook or Google so much as companies like Cisco and Juniper.
Russian investment firms may be looking to steal high-tech intelligence from Boston-area companies to give to their country's military.
Oh, my. That does sound serious. Whatever can we do? Oh, I know, perhaps we should work to harden information security so that companies can maintain the integrity of their research. Futhermore, though I'm sure this goes without saying, we should fire -- and ban from any future participation in any aspect of government, government contracts, lobbying, or information security -- any person who has been involved in the intentional weakening of information security standards.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance