FC: Echelon debate heats up, writers reply to CIA chief

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

> From: "Kevin Poulsen" <klp () well com>
> To: <declan () well com>
> Subject: Echelon
> Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 17:20:04 -0500
>
> http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6
>
> Echelon Debate Heats Up
>
> NSA spying benefits American execs, says the author of the key European
> Parliament report.  "Puzzle Palace" writer disagrees.
>
> By Kevin Poulsen (SecurityFocus.com News)
>
> The British reporter who brought the word "Echelon" into the vernacular
> responded to a former CIA director's claim that the US doesn't commit
> industrial espionage on Monday.
>
> ...
>
> The commentary comes as the European Parliament moves toward convening a
> rare "special inquiry" into NSA spying, based on a recent report it
> commissioned from British journalist Duncan Campbell.  On Monday, Campbell
> told SecurityFocus News that Woolsey "is not wrong" in claiming that
> intelligence agencies do not steal corporate secrets for American
> companies... but he's not exactly right either.
>
>  "US intelligence collection is not tasked -- that is to say, instructed --
> by US corporations," says Campbell.  "It's tasked by the government.
> However, communications intelligence is passed through channels to agencies,
> including the Department of Commerce and the White House, among others."
>
>  "It is these politicians and civil servants who decide as to whether
> economic intelligence should be communicated outside the government,"
> Campbell says. "There is a formal channel for passing communications
> intelligence data to companies, but only as result of political decisions
> which can be taken on a case by case basis."
>
> Another scholar of the United States' largest spy agency disagrees.
>
> "That's nonsense," says James Bamford, the author of the "The Puzzle
> Palace," the 1982 book that first brought the NSA to public attention. "I
> think there's been an enormous overreaction to this in Europe, and most of
> what's come out of it is nonsense."
>
> ...

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