Edward Snowden Says NSA Engages In Industrial Espionage 212
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.
America Inc. (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.
Ever heard of Locust Funds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Outside the range? (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.
Re:Outside the range? (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.
Keep the love coming! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I don't care for your vision of America (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.
Re:Outside the range? (Score:4, 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.
Re:Outside the range? (Score:5, 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.
Re:America Inc. (Score:4, 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.