
New WikiLeaks Documents Reveal NSA Spied on French Companies - maelito
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/new-wikileaks-documents-reveal-nsa-spied-on-top-french-companies/
======
mrschwabe
The espionage is perhaps most bothering of all. In some ways, most of us can
rationalize spying for the purposes of security (albeit a dangerous and
perhaps short-sighted rationalization) but when it's done with the intention
of economic advantage it clearly undermines our entire financial system and
the best features of capitalism: which is to reward those who innovate;
delivering the market with higher quality products at lower pricing over time.

Because now you have a 'special access' class of the economy that can subvert
this innovation/value mechanism with stolen data. Add corrupt politicians,
easily exploited loopholes, biased media channels, and a docile public - and
it's easy to see how this special access class can twist, distort (and
ultimately destroy) the system.

One can only imagine what humanity could achieve without these parasites
infecting our lives and businesses.

~~~
mercurialshark
Why We Spy on Our Allies

R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former Director of Central
Intelligence.

[http://cryptome.org/echelon-
cia2.htm?utm_medium=referral&utm...](http://cryptome.org/echelon-
cia2.htm?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
tl;dr - The CIA spies on European allies because we bribe our way to win
contracts, so the CIA gets the proof then blackmails (the Saudis) into handing
over some of the contracts to others. Oh sorry quietly has a word.

Look, use your spy satellites to publically shame bribery - that's fine by me.
Claim the UK is bribing every government it can find - sure, Cameron and Blair
were hardly discreet. But claim that after you have done this service to the
world, you then "quietly have a word". Come on. If you are doing this for the
greater good, make it public.

I swear, if the CIA spent the next year uploading to their web site phone taps
of public officials taking bribes, international corruption would end by 2017.

~~~
icanhackit
_we bribe our way to win contracts, so the CIA gets the proof then blackmails
(the Saudis)_ [...] _the UK is bribing every government it can find_

Your comment illuminates things somewhat - at the top end of the international
business food-chain there is no real free-market. We can talk about free-
markets when discussing small, medium and even large _domestic_ sized
businesses. But when we think about integrated circuits, aircraft, shipping,
consulting engineering, infrastructure etc, it's about discretion when
lobbying to get the winning the bid, discretion in stealing key technologies,
and discretion in manipulating the market.

My first instinct was to suggest that encryption is the magic bullet for
having a real free market at the top end - but that doesn't stop bribery. In
the one hand, we need to protect innovative businesses from having their
intellectual property stolen and handed to the incumbent, in the other we need
to shine a light on the corruption that pervades everything from soccer to
software contracts.

I'm not sure what can be done beyond what you suggest at the end of your post:
_if the CIA spent the next year uploading to their web site phone taps of
public officials taking bribes, international corruption would end by 2017._

Time for the spies to become Wikileaks? The reason they won't do this is
because every side has nasty secrets to hide.

~~~
Alphasite_
Well no, it could be argued that it is a free market of sorts.

------
tptacek
Three fun truths:

* France is one of the most notoriously brazen state sponsors of industrial espionage, especially within the EU.

* This stuff is rampant between all the industrialized nations. You can find stories going back decades about Americans being evicted from embassies over industrial espionage. Somehow, we all seem to remain allies.

* Technically --- modulo the "getting caught" part --- this is what NSA is supposed to be doing. That's a positive assertion, not a normative one!

Curious how we never seem to see Russia as the focus of Wikileaks releases.
They must just be really respectful of the civil liberties of citizens of the
world.

~~~
jacquesm
> France is one of the most notoriously brazen state sponsors of industrial
> espionage, especially within the EU.

When France does it, it's bad. When the USA does it it is bad too.

If my country would do this - and it is very well possible they do - I'd be
very much ashamed of this.

> This stuff is rampant between all the industrialized nations. You can find
> stories going back decades about Americans being evicted from embassies over
> industrial espionage.

Those stories are along the line of the article, not much of a counterargument
there then.

> Technically --- modulo the "getting caught" part --- this is what NSA is
> supposed to be doing. That's a positive assertion, not a normative one!

This is true, but - and this will probably surprise you - the rest of the
world (the people, not necessarily the governments / those in power) considers
industrial spying to be a negative activity, and considers it a hostile act
against those people.

The goodwill that a country builds up can easily be eradicated by activities
such as these, _especially_ when uncovered.

The only other countries that I'm aware of that use their intelligence
services in such a blatantly offensive (both meanings of the word) manner are
Israel and Russia.

And none of those - and definitely not France - have been caught spying on US
politicians in their own offices.

'They do it too' is such a lame excuse anyway (especially when that is not
objectively the case).

~~~
kasey_junk
> When France does it, it's bad. When the USA does it it is bad too.

I think that this is a legitimate moral position to take, but I think you will
find that it is less widely held than other legitimate moral positions you
might take (for instance spy agencies spying on their own citizens is more
broadly recognized as bad).

Further, it seems to be a moral position that doesn't have much basis in
practice. Industrial activities are fundamentally linked with traditional
espionage targets such as diplomacy, military technology and military
operations. To deny an intelligence agency access to those things seems no
different than to deny them the ability to operate _at all_. Which is another
legitimate moral stand to take, but one that has even less broad acceptance.

~~~
jacquesm
When morals and gains are aligned being moral is easy.

~~~
kasey_junk
That implies that the people arguing for effective intelligence agencies are
doing so because of expedience. I for one believe that effective intelligence
agencies are a net good for the world as they decrease the instance of and
shorten the length of shooting wars.

~~~
jacquesm
> as they decrease the instance of and shorten the length of shooting wars.

That's definitely not a proven item, in fact you could easily argue the
opposite. Faulty intelligence has led to quite a few wars, and is worse than
no intelligence at all, also, what intelligence there is tends to be cherry
picked to support foregone conclusions.

------
doczoidberg
I am a German SaaS developer. More and more customers are asking me for not
using infrastracture services from US companies.

On the one hand this is bad for me because google and microsoft have top
products for my needs. On the other hand this means big opportunities because
my customers are heavily searching for alternatives.

The trust in US IT companies was never so bad here. It can become a desaster
for their european sales.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I wonder how much that has to do with CCC and general German culture. The only
stories about European customers refusing to use US web infrastructure I hear
come from Germany. I live next doors, in Poland, and here it seems like nobody
cares.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm seeing some of this in NL as well, especially companies that deal with
sensitive data.

------
hbbio
It would be very interesting to know, technically, what are the interception
means. Does it target phone calls, emails, internal spys, other things?

From other documents, it appears that the NSA has the ability to listen to
phone calls on French networks. As most of the "targets" use Orange, the
historical telecom operator, and that collaboration from Orange with the NSA
is unlikely, it would mean that their IT systems are owned.

Regarding email, most French companies use Microsoft products both as servers
(Exchange) and client (Outlook). Are there exploitable vulnerabilities in
these products? As we are in that space, we have to push hard, for people even
to consider French-written, open source communication software such as ours
([https://github.com/MLstate/PEPS](https://github.com/MLstate/PEPS)).

~~~
Zigurd
> _From other documents, it appears that the NSA has the ability to listen to
> phone calls on French networks. As most of the "targets" use Orange, the
> historical telecom operator, and that collaboration from Orange with the NSA
> is unlikely, it would mean that their IT systems are owned._

It's probably much worse than that. France, Germany, and most of the rest of
Europe are vassal states of the US through cooperation among intelligence
agencies. In other words, France is being sold out not only by Orange and/or
employees of Orange, but by their own intelligence services who have a
stronger allegiance to their links with Five Eyes intelligence services than
to French interests.

This is another reason "everyone does it" doesn't hold water as a
justification. The situation is massively asymmetrical.

~~~
renaudg
_by their own intelligence services who have a stronger allegiance to their
links with Five Eyes intelligence services than to French interests._

This is probably pushing it a little too far.

~~~
Zigurd
Meh. Do you think the French are governed by a government with actual autonomy
to go wherever the people wish to be led, or just pretend autonomy within a
narrow range of bouncing a little to the left or right within the neoliberal
framework?

------
kxyvr
If the NSA commits an act of industrial espionage, who gets access to that
information?

Ostenscibly, this information would be valuable to American companies, but I
don't recall there being any federal registration where I can sign up to
receive such information. Certainly, some company is getting access to this
information, but because this process isn't transparent, the other problem
with such espionage is that it leads to greater corruption. Basically, someone
gets to pick and choose who receives this extremely valuable information in
private industry with no external oversight.

~~~
saryant
When Bush Sr. was head of the CIA, agents would routinely meet with American
businessmen after overseas trips for off-the-record conversations. Both sides
learned from the other.

My father once cryptically told me "every American businessman overseas is a
spy." At first I didn't know what he was talking about—now I get it.

------
Smerity
Does anyone know of a modern, comprehensive list of such industrial espionage
events from a trustworthy source?

One of my go-tos was the European Parliament's report on the ECHELON
interception system[1] as it gives an idea of how long this has been happening
(the report was published 2001), but it's so very old now.

Under "Published Cases", the European Parliament list industrial espionage
attacks on a variety of companies and government agencies. Some you might
consider reasonable (exposing bribery in the bidding process then nudging the
contract to a US firm) but others are incredibly dodgy (forwarding technical
details about a wind generator to a US firm so they could patent it first).

[1]:
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN)

------
secfirstmd
One of the things that annoys me about these revelations is that, particularly
in regards to the espionage aspect of things, essentially private businesses
are de facto in some way gaining from either increased inside knowledge or
increased protection from the likes of the NSA or French equivalents etc...

However, if private people, journalists or NGOs are targeted by foreign
governments (or corporate intelligence) they are never told about it (probably
leading to the death of sources etc) - and if they conducted hacking/espionage
activities for the greater public good (for example to expose information
about people wanted for genocide in Darfur, those who murder journalists in
Russia, diamond corruption in the DRC) they would go to jail...What a sad
world we live in that we would rather prioritise protecting clean engine
patents and airplane deals instead of human life :(

------
bediger4000
Isn't the real problem with "economic espionage" who the NSA gives the info
to? By picking and choosing who gets the info, the NSA/executive branch isn't
really letting the free market make the choices any longer. There could be
political implications, giving info to companies that do campaign
contributions, or lobby more expensively.

~~~
fweespeech
To some degree, yes.

However...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#France_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#France_and_the_United_States)

US/French economic espionage has been an ongoing problem since before the Cold
War ended.

Its the "normal" state of affairs, similar to US v. China. Its simply a
question of how "gentlemanly" the matter is handled. France/US tends to be
rather "gentlemanly" as they tend to target the
negotiations/technology/contracts specifically.

> According to an economic espionage order, the NSA intercepted all French
> corporate contracts and negotiations valued at more than $200 million in
> many different industries, such as telecommunications, electrical
> generation, gas, oil, nuclear and renewable energy, and environmental and
> healthcare technologies.

~~~
bediger4000
I think I might have been unclear.

I often read that "this is the sort of thing we expect spy agencies to do". I
stipulate that economic espionage is part of what spy agencies do, and should
do. So, "normal" it is.

I'm interested in what information gets distributed to which US corporations,
and maybe why. That is, should the NSA give Boeing info it's filched from
Airbus, or should Lockheed-Martin get it, too? Why exclude Grumman-Northup?
Did LockMart give more in campaign contributions? Is that why they got the
insider info?

I want to use real US companies, I'm pretty certain that defense contractors
aren't multi-nationals. Certainly you could erase specific corporate names and
re-fill the blanks with corporations from another, arbitrary, market.

The problem is that the NSA (or whoever, the President maybe) becomes the
arbiter of which corporation succeeds and which doesn't, regardless of what
the rest of the market perceives, and how the rest of the market acts. This
seems like a bad idea.

~~~
fweespeech
Fair enough :)

------
themeek
Espionage is standard practice in the world today. So are isolated
assassinations, torture, coups, and state sponsorship of terrorism. The United
States participated in all of the above.

Domestic citizens in America feel as though their government is 'clean' or
'noble'. This is a myth propelled by Public Affairs, PR and supported by the
media (at worst, the media will say, the US made blunders and mistakes).

The United States is in the boxing ring with every other nation. It's a
heavyweight.

What's happening right now is that the United States is 'short of breath'.
It's overextended. Long term plans haven't worked out. The US is finding
itself reacting to other nations rather than keeping them on their toes. It's
dropped in its financial, economic, and technological development
capabilities. It is having trouble facing challenges brought by new
technology. It is losing the support of its closest allies.

It's a difficult time for America. Not everything is decided. It may yet
remain a unipolar power.

But to do so it will need to get in and scrap.

The hawks want to scrap. They want to fight for continued supremacy. There are
no doves that are serious contenders for president and I don't know if the
system would allow a dove to be elected, even if the candidate had majority
support from citizens.

In this turbulence, we have to think about what we can do as citizens. The
clearest answer is to get quality information and to be informed. Taking the
Snowden and Wikileaks documents as a list of things that the US does that are
bad is not the best way to read them.

The best way to read these and other documents is to better understand dog-
eat-dog realpolitiks of global power games.

No matter whether you want to support the United States in this moment or
demand it change course one thing is certain: you must be as educated as
possible about the tradeoffs, the current investments, the challenges and the
nature of the Great Game. Read across different sources of information and
focus not only on domestic news but good foreign policy sources. Talk with
neighbors and friends about your and American ideals and how and whether to
negotiate and achieve those goals in a world that is 96% non-American.

Wikileaks is a great place to start. The reason for this is not that they have
'the dirt'. It's because they have primary documents. When you read,
prioritize information that isn't summarized or filtered.

Muckrack is another great source. Washington Thinktanks another.

------
r0h1n
A state intelligence agency found spying on foreign private cos. in critical
sectors like nuclear power plants, planes, high speed trains,
telecommunications and energy, in order to pass on the intelligence and aid
its own domestic firms.

For a minute I almost thought we were talking about China.

------
5kyn3t
The news usually shows China as the bad-bad hacker-land, which is evil because
of their IT-espionage. So what is the US now?

~~~
kushti
the US is the exceptional country. Some polishing using double-standards, and
it will shine like a brightest star again.

------
api
I've thought for a long time that the most likely corruption we'd see around
the surveillance issue is industrial espionage. It'd be a great way for the
NSA to give an unfair advantage to state-linked American corporations, or for
independent actors within NSA to line their pockets.

A related issue would be insider trading. I mean, with a source of data like
that you could basically 'jackpot' stock markets and extract arbitrary amounts
of money from the global economy. Members of Congress are immune from
prosecution for insider trading.

~~~
a3n
There is probably no spy agency in any developed country that can rival the
reach, effectiveness and immediacy of the NSA.

So this kind of industrial espionage is a huge unfair trade advantage, at
least from the victim's point of view.

I wonder how long it's going to be until Europe levies an NSA trade tax
against US goods and services.

~~~
wahsd
What really has not been highlighted to even remotely an adequate level is the
huge damage to the trust and confidence in the USA as the stalwart and
upstanding sentinel image that we have cultivated to exquisitely over decades
now.

If there had only been some really good alternatives for the global focus to
orient itself by, the USA would have been side-lined and crushed economically
by now due to the direct and deliberate self-sabotage by our intelligence
community.

Will we see the USA recover from all the damage, abuse, and devastation it has
caused to its relationships and self-destruction it has wrecked upon itself? I
don't know, but I can tell you that if the European Union rightfully moves
against American companies as a justified threat to their national security,
it will cost our economy billions. Facebook's market cap is currently $245
billion, how many billions do you think would be shaved off if the EU and / or
other countries acted against that facade of USA global surveillance
domination? How about Google? How about Cisco? Apple ... even though at least
in terms of impression, I think Apple is playing a smart card by siding with
encryption of their devices. Personally, though, I think the lies by the NSA
to our own government and the revealed actions prove one thing, that you can't
trust anything that comes from our government and you really can't trust
anyone that is affiliated, either voluntarily or compulsory, and Apple has
been working with the government and intel agencies. Can they be trusted? Are
their efforts to secure and encrypt their devices really genuine or just lip
service and smoke and mirrors? Who knows. The trust is permanently destroyed,
really!

~~~
happyscrappy
We have been hearing this trope for years and Europe is more dependent upon
the US than ever.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Yes, but it takes time to make the switch. It isn't like one build AWS over
night.

------
fixxer
"economic intelligence" sounds so much nicer than "corporate espionage"

------
ghaydarov
I think it's a bigger problem when we just accept it as it is, something that
is necessary.

------
jimjimjim
Is anybody even remotely surprised? even slightly? Any country with sufficient
power will spy on any and all people, countries and entities it can. If they
don't either something bad will happen (and the public will be demanding to
know why someone didn't do anything about it) or they will be out-maneuvered
by countries that do. Information is power and all types of information add to
a map of what's going on and with who. Companies/Corporations are modern day
dukes, robber barons and tyrants, and people with power and influence have
always been spied upon.

~~~
neilk
With respect - I don't know why people always say this when government
misbehavior comes to light. Other than to demonstrate that they were more
jaded than everyone else.

Yes -- everybody knows that the government does bad things. Having evidence is
different. I'm sure the French government knew they were being spied on to
some degree, but with this evidence they can now react officially. Allied
countries will be less likely to engage in mutual intelligence sharing,
knowing that their domestic industries can suffer. Non-aligned countries might
walk away entirely. And the US government will have more difficulty internally
when these powers are brought up for legislative review.

Also, we know the government does bad things. However, they don't do every
conceivable bad thing - they wouldn't have time or resources. Knowing which
bad things they are doing is also helpful.

------
necrodawg
Corporate espionage is like tax havens. You can't expect one country to stop
it, everyone needs to agree to stop doing it at the same time. Otherwise the
first to stop will be at a disadvantage.

And a lot of countries do this.

------
darkhorn
And Microsoft Turkey (future partner) ask us to host our web application in
Azure. I'll do my best to keep my employer out of this way.

------
minusSeven
Zzzzzz this has gone from one of the shocking news in the world to a regular
occurrence that its not much a news anymore.

------
ExpiredLink
Asylum for Snowden in France now!

------
coldcode
It might be shorter to list who the NSA didn't spy on.

~~~
qnaal
reminds me of the snl sketch where the other colors of soylent individually
turn out to also be made out of people

------
ScootyPuff2000
So what? I certainly don't mind if my Government spies on _other_ countries.
It's just spying on its own citizens that's an issue.

~~~
Roodgorf
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. Are you saying that you
believe ethical practices are so vastly different across arbitrary
distinctions like state borders?

~~~
cheald
Well, your government ostensibly has an obligation to protect your interests,
while other state governments have no such obligation.

You can certainly argue against the ethics of _any_ spying, but it should be
abundantly clear that a government and its agents have a duty to its citizens
that is greater than its duty to the citizens of other sovereign nations.

------
h1fra
I wonder how Barack Obama will stand against this assumption.

There are some serious accusation, I'm pretty sure both side will temper all
the way they can but may lead to intense change in business as company already
starting to file complain !

~~~
x5n1
Basically the rules of the game are there are no rules. Whoever can steal
anyone's secrets does and probably should or risk being left behind. China
plays by these rules, it's about time that everyone else wisen up to this and
accept it as the real state of affairs outside of rhetoric and propaganda.

~~~
tawaynow
Ok so next US officials accuse the Chinese of spying based on some very shaky
evidence we can just all collectively tell them to stop whining right?

~~~
x5n1
yup. or even very concrete evidence. or pretty much any other country. one
strategy the US employs in all of its dealings is holier than thou. As Chomsky
says, never listen to what the US says, always look at their actions. They
never match what they say.

