{"id":47255,"date":"2014-09-08T12:02:58","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T11:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47255"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:37","slug":"the-u-s-governments-secret-plans-to-spy-for-american-corporations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/the-u-s-governments-secret-plans-to-spy-for-american-corporations\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Government\u2019s Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"us-corporate-espionage-surveillance<\/a><\/p>\n

Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China\u2019s infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA spokesperson\u00a0emailed\u00a0The Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>to say<\/a> (emphasis in original): \u201cThe department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that categorical statement to the\u00a0Post<\/em>, the NSA was caught spying on plainly financial targets such as the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras<\/a>;\u00a0economic summits<\/a>;\u00a0international credit card<\/a> and banking systems<\/a>;\u00a0the EU antitrust commissioner<\/a> investigating Google, Microsoft, and Intel; and\u00a0the International Monetary Fund and World Bank<\/a>.\u00a0In response, the U.S. modified its denial to acknowledge that it does<\/em> engage in economic spying, but unlike China, the spying is never done to benefit American corporations.<\/p>\n

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for instance,\u00a0responded to the Petrobras<\/a>\u00a0revelations\u00a0by claiming: \u201cIt is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters\u2026. What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of\u2014or give intelligence we collect to\u2014U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a secret 2009 report issued by Clapper\u2019s own office<\/a> explicitly contemplates doing exactly that. The document, the 2009 Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review\u2014provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden\u2014is a fascinating window into the mindset of America\u2019s spies as they identify future threats to the U.S. and lay out the actions the U.S. intelligence community should take in response. It anticipates a series of potential scenarios the U.S. may face in 2025, from a \u201cChina\/Russia\/India\/Iran centered bloc [that] challenges U.S. supremacy\u201d to a world in which \u201cidentity-based groups supplant nation-states,\u201d and games out how the U.S. intelligence community should operate in those alternative futures\u2014the idea being to assess \u201cthe most challenging issues [the U.S.] could face\u00a0beyond the standard planning cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the principal threats raised in the report is a scenario \u201cin which\u00a0the United States\u2019 technological and innovative edge slips\u201d\u2014 in particular, \u201cthat the technological capacity\u00a0of foreign multinational corporations could outstrip\u00a0that of U.S. corporations.\u201d Such a development, the report says \u201ccould\u00a0put the United States at a growing\u2014and potentially\u00a0permanent\u2014disadvantage in crucial areas such as\u00a0energy, nanotechnology, medicine, and information\u00a0technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

How could U.S. intelligence agencies solve that problem? The report recommends \u201ca multi-pronged, systematic effort to gather\u00a0open source and proprietary information through\u00a0overt means, clandestine penetration (through physical and cyber means)<\/em>, and counterintelligence\u201d (emphasis added). In particular, the DNI\u2019s report envisions \u201ccyber operations\u201d to penetrate \u201ccovert centers of innovation\u201d such as R&D facilities.<\/p>\n

\"cyber_ops-540x360<\/a><\/p>\n

In a graphic describing an \u201cillustrative example,\u201d the report heralds \u201ctechnology acquisition by all means.\u201d Some of the planning relates to foreign superiority in surveillance technology, but other parts are explicitly concerned with using cyber-espionage to bolster the competitive advantage of U.S. corporations. The report thus envisions a scenario in which companies from India and Russia work together to develop technological innovation, and the U.S. intelligence community then \u201cconducts cyber operations\u201d against \u201cresearch facilities\u201d in those countries, acquires their proprietary data, and then \u201cassesses whether and how its findings\u00a0would be useful to U.S. industry\u201d (click on image to enlarge):<\/p>\n

\"tech540-540x360<\/a><\/p>\n

The document doesn\u2019t describe any previous industrial espionage, a fact the DNI\u2019s office emphasized in responding to questions from The Intercept.\u00a0<\/em>A spokesman, Jeffrey Anchukaitis,\u00a0insisted in an email that \u201cthe United States\u2014unlike our adversaries\u2014does not steal proprietary corporate information to further private American companies\u2019 bottom lines,\u201d and that \u201cthe Intelligence Community regularly engages in analytic exercises to identify potential future global environments, and how the IC could help the United States Government respond.\u201d The report, he said, \u201cis not intended to be, and is not, a reflection of current policy or operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the report describes itself as \u201can essential long-term piece, looking\u00a0out between 10 and 20 years\u201d designed to enable\u00a0\u201dthe IC [to] best\u00a0posture itself to meet the range of challenges it may face.\u201d Whatever else is true,\u00a0one thing is unmistakable: the report blithely acknowledges that\u00a0stealing secrets to help American corporations secure competitive advantage is an acceptable future role for U.S. intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

In May, the U.S. Justice Department indicted<\/a>\u00a0five Chinese government employees on charges that they spied on U.S. companies. At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder said the spying took place \u201cfor no reason other than to advantage state-owned companies and other interests in China,\u201d and \u201cthis is a tactic that the U.S. government categorically denounces.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the following day,\u00a0The New York Times <\/em>detailed<\/a>\u00a0numerous episodes of American economic spying that seemed quite similar. Harvard Law School professor and former Bush Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith wrote<\/a> that the accusations in the indictment sound \u201ca lot like the kind of cyber-snooping on firms that the United States does.\u201d But U.S. officials continued to insist that using surveillance capabilities to bestow economic advantage for the benefit of a country\u2019s corporations is wrong, immoral, and illegal.<\/p>\n

Yet this 2009 report advocates doing exactly that in the event that\u00a0\u201dthat the technological capacity\u00a0of foreign multinational corporations outstrip[s] that of U.S. corporations.\u201d Using covert cyber operations to pilfer \u201cproprietary information\u201d and then determining how it\u00a0\u201dwould be useful to U.S. industry\u201d is precisely what the U.S. government has been vehemently insisting it does not do, even though for years it has officially prepared to do precisely that.<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, and author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His fifth book, <\/em>No Place to Hide<\/em>, about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world, will be released in April 2014. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn\u2019s column was featured at <\/em>Guardian US<\/em> and <\/em>Salon<\/em>. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u2019s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras, <\/em>Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He lives in Rio, Brazil.<\/em> glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Illustration: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After that categorical statement to the Post, the NSA was caught spying on plainly financial targets such as the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras; economic summits; international credit card and banking systems; the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft, and Intel; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}