MarginMike, slow down a little.. like the weeks after
Oklahoma..
One of the EU-(UK)USA negotiations going on:
But note that Finland is mentioned as a tool due to
Finland's libertarian traditions (besides beeing the
number one noncorrupted nation) which where closed
down not to be abused. (note also that EU does not
interfere in the Japanese trade examples)
europarl.eu.int
Examples of Abuse of Economic Information
Various examples could be mentioned about abuse of privacy via global surveillance
telecommunication systems (like ECHELON). A number of them is given in [58].
Many accounts have been published by reputable journalists citing frequent occasions on
which the US government has utilised Comint for national purposes. The examples given below
are the most representative.
Example 1:
On January 15, 1990, the telephone network of AT&T company, in all the North-east part
of USA faced serious difficulties. The network NuPrometheus had illegally owned and distributed
the key-code of the operational system of AT&T Macintosh computer (Apple company).
---
Example 2:
On January 24, 1990, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF) in USA, accused a huge
police operation under the encoded name «Sun Devil», in which 40 computers and 23,000
diskettes were seizure from teenagers, in 15 towns within USA. Teenager Graig Neidorf
supported by EEF, not to be punished in 60 years prison and 120,000 USD penalty. Craig Neidorf
had published in Phrake (a hackers magazine) part of the internal files of a telephone company.
M. Godwin: «The EEF and virtual communities», 1991
Example 3:
On June 25, 1998, in Absheim, an aircraft A-320 of the European Company «Airbus
Industries», was crushed during a demonstration flight. The accident caused due to dangerous
manipulations. One person died and 20 were injured.
Very soon, and before the announcement of the official report, in the aerospace and transport
Internet newsgroups, appeared a lot of aggressive messages against company Airbus and against
the French company Aerospatiale as well, with which Airbus had close co-operation. Messages
declared that, the accident was expectable because European Engineers are not so highly qualified
as American Engineers are. It was also clearly stated, that in the future similar accidents are
expected.
Aerospatiale’s agents were very impressive with these aggressive messages. They tried to
discover the sources of messages and they finally realised that senders’ identification data,
addresses and nodes were false. The source messages came from USA, from computers with
misled identification data and transferred from anonymous servers in Finland.
In this case Aerospatiale has arguments to insist in that American BOEING implemented
one of the biggest misinform campaigns over the Internet.
B. Martinet and Y.M. Marti: «L’ intelligence econimique. Les yeux et les oreilles de l’
enteprise, Editions d’ organisation», Paris 1995
------
Example 5:
The government of Brasil in 1994, announced its intention to assign an international contract
for the reconstruction of the overhead supervision of Anazonios. This procurement was of great
interest since the total amount available for the contract was 1,4 billion USD. From Europe, the
French companies Thomson and Alcatel expressed their interest and from USA, the huge weapon
industry Raytheon.
Although, the offer of French companies was technically perfect and better documented, the
contract eventually was assigned to the USA company.
This was achieved with a new offensive strategy used by USA:
When the government of Brazil was about to assign the contract to the French companies,
American Officials’ (with the personal involvement of President Bill Clinton) readjusted their
offer, according to the offer of the European companies, asserted that, French companies occurred
the committee, an accuse which never proved. On the other hand, European companies have
arguments, that, the intention of the government of Brazil to assign the contract to the European
companies became known to Americans with the use of FBI’s surveillance technologies
(ECHELLON system).
«La nouvelle machine de querre americaine», LeMonde du reseingnement no 158, 16
February 1995.
Example 6:
In January 1994 Edouard Balladur went to Ryad (Saudi Arabia), it was certain to bring back
a historical contract for more than 30 million francs in sales of weapons and, especially, Airbus.
He re-entered bredouille.
The contract went to the McDonnell-Douglas American company, rival of Airbus. Partly,
showed the French, thanks to electronic listening of the Echelon system, which had given to the
Americans the financial conditions (and the bribes) authorised by Airbus. This information is
collected and analysed by the batteries of hidden supercomputers behind the black panes of a
cubic building that is visible the node through the pines, when one rolls on the motorway between
Washington and Baltimore. Fort Meade (Maryland), head office of the NSA.
The National Security Agency is most secret and most significant of the thirteen secretes of
the United States. It receives about a third of the appropriations allocated with espionage: 8 of the
26,6 billion dollars (160 billion francs) registered voters to the budget 1997. With its 20.000
employee in United States and some thousand of agent throughout le world, the NSA (which form
part of ministry for Defence since its creation in 1956) is more important than the CIA, however
much more known.
Fort Meade contains, according to sources’ familiar of the places, the greatest concentration
of data processing power and math student in the world. They are charged to sort and analyse the
flood of data aspired by Echelon on the networks of international telecommunications. "There are
not only one diplomatic event or soldier concerning the United States in which the NSA is not
directly implied ", recognised in 1996 the director of the agency, John McConnel". The NSA
plays a very significant role as regards economic espionage", affirms John Pike, expert of the
information in Federation of American Scientist, which specifies "Echelon is in the heart of its
operations". In 1993, a direct president of the agency, the admiral William Studeman, had
recognised, in a confidential document, that " the requests for a total access to information do not
cease growing ", while at the same time the Soviet military threat grew blurred. Economic
espionage justifies in fact the maintenance of an oversize apparatus since the end of the cold war.
Admittedly, Nicky Hager, who reveal in 1996 the existence of Echelon, said not to have "an
evidence that the military circles (terrorism, proliferation of the armaments, espionage economic,
note) became priorities for the NSA ".
«Echelon est au service des interets americains», Liberation, 21 April 1998 |
