Australia Spied On Japanese Companies To Help Its Industries Negotiate Trade Deals
from the not-many-terrorists-here dept
As more information comes to light about the global snooping being conducted by the NSA and GCHQ, it is becoming clearer that much of it had little to do with combating terrorism, as a recent EFF article makes plain. But most damaging to the idea that massive surveillance was justified, because it was to protect people from extreme threats, is the revelation that commercial espionage was also being conducted. So far, the chief example of that is in Brazil, but The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) now has information about large-scale industrial spying on Japanese companies carried out by Australian secret services:
BHP [BHP Billton -- the world's largest mining company] was among the companies helped by Australian spy agencies as they negotiated trade deals with Japan, a former Australian Secret Intelligence Service officer says.
The article has more details, but doesn't reveal how the materials were obtained. However, since Australia is part of the "Five Eyes" inner circle of snooping countries that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, it seems likely that information of interest from those partners also found its way to Australian companies. SMH quotes Clark as saying:
A former diplomat has also confirmed Australian intelligence agencies have long targeted Japanese companies. Writing in The Japan Times, Professor Gregory Clark said Australian companies were beneficiaries of intelligence operations.
"In Australia, favoured firms getting spy material on Japanese contract policies and other business negotiations used to joke how [it had] 'fallen off the back of a truck'," Professor Clark wrote.Business information is a main target for [intelligence] agencies
It will be interesting to see if later releases from Snowden's hoard of documents show any evidence of this Australian use of NSA materials for industrial espionage.
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Filed Under: australia, economic espionage, gchq, nsa, surveillance
Companies: bhp billton
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If true, the damage of the spying is already done in theory. Now is the time for practical consequences. I say improve funding for counter-espionage massively and get the real dirty programs shut down. Radical moves are needed.
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This is actually good
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Barter
It's like barter.
Same with politicians, are you seriously telling me they use the spying machine for business and not for politics? That there isn't a you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-cover-yours? That Merkel was not political spying?
And now we have domestic surveillance, do you think they draw a nice line suddenly between a political activist and a competing future politician?
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Re: This is actually good
To them 'terrorist' is now anyone who threatens the status quo(hence the crackdown on whistlblowers/news-agencies using anti-terrorist laws), while 'National security' encompasses the power, both political and financial, of the country, which industrial espionage like this helps.
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