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Re: The Neutron Star


From: Jason Syversen <jason.syversen () gmail com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:27:59 -0400

Ditto. If you want to believe the US does that go ahead, you're free to believe they planned 9/11 and faked the moon 
landing too. I've worked inside the government and plenty of commercial (including big bids with international stakes) 
and have never once heard of, seen hinted at, or even contemplated the USG ever spying for corporate reasons. Ever. And 
that covers a lot of the IC, DoD, etc. Heck the USG is having trouble figuring out how to tell companies when they 
being spied on, much less sharing competitive data from other places. 

That said, if China (and other countries to a lesser extent) don't stop and we can't dissuade them,  who knows what 
will happen. They may decide "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." But that hasn't happened yet. 

Jason

On Jun 27, 2013, at 1:36 PM, Richard Bejtlich <taosecurity () gmail com> wrote:

To the extent the US IC has ever conducted surveillance against private foreign companies, discovering bribery was 
the reason. Notice how often bribery appears in the Echelon list. 

Other cases, like Enercon, are bogus, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon#Patent_dispute

It's clear that non-Americans (and many Americans) find it hard to believe that the US IC doesn't spy on behalf of 
American companies, but it's the truth. 

If US IC economic espionage was such a problem, I would expect more evidence. Everyone points to the same 2001 
Echelon report and has nothing else to offer.

Richard


On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 8:38 PM, Fionnbharr <thouth () gmail com> wrote:
But the NSA do help American companies win contracts / do industrial espionage. One link I have handy is 
http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm#10 (scroll down to 10.7 for the list) which has a short list of known cases 
from the 90's put out by the European parliament. Also note that it's countries that the US would probably consider 
friendly that they're hacking, not just the main economic rivals.

It might not be on the same level as the Chinese but it's disingenuous to suggest American businesses are somehow 
the innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire or that there isn't some precedent for this behaviour by the US.


On 26 June 2013 23:53, Dave Aitel <dave () immunityinc com> wrote:
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2013-06/26/content_16659265.htm

Normally I don't like to stick my toe in the neutron star's gravity well that is the NSA-Snowden discussion. But 
it's important to point out that there are developing standards of behavior being negotiated not between China and 
the US, but between corporations and governments as a whole.

Chinese media has been going on for a week about how the Snowden PRISM revelations about the US hacking China are 
in some way equitable to the US complaints about Chinese government sponsored hacking for the purposes of economic 
espionage. This is pure public relations nonsense. The complaints US industry has about Chinese state sponsored 
hacking is not that it is occurring, but that the fruits of the hacking are being given directly to Chinese 
companies which compete with US (or European, or Korean, etc.) companies. 

It is impossible as a US company to go to the NSA and say "Hey, my competitor in China makes a pretty nice 
bulldozer, can I have the plans to that? Also it'd be nice to know what their bid is on that contract in Malaysia 
we both want to win."  

It's just that simple. Company's hate being forced to give information to their governments, or trojan their 
networking equipment (in the case of Huawei and ZTE). It's bad for business. Especially when you get caught or it 
gets leaked (which it ALWAYS does one way or the other).

But they hate state-sponsored economic espionage more and I hardly think Chinese companies would enjoy a change in 
Washington's tune that allowed US companies to employ the full power of the NSA against them.

-dave


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