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It was a big part of the Snowden leaks, eg: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/snowden-nsa-conducts-industrial-espionage-too/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/snowden-ns

It was a big part of the Snowden leaks, eg: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/snowden-nsa-conducts-industrial-espionage-too/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/snowden-nsa-conducts-industrial... > The U.S. National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage and will grab any intelligence it can get its hands on regardless of its value to national security, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden told a German TV network. > In text released ahead of a lengthy interview to be broadcast on Sunday, ARD TV quoted Snowden saying the NSA does not limit its espionage to issues of national security and he cited German engineering firm, Siemens as one target. > "If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to U.S. national interests - even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security - then they'll take that information nevertheless," Snowden said, according to ARD, which recorded the interview in Russia where he has claimed asylum. Which, like... of course. Politics follow incentives. If you build an espionage apparatus that lets you spy on conversations worldwide, and you have laws that lets you read private data without a warrant and send a gag order to the company that owns the server, and you have laws specifically for doing the above to data stored in europe by american companies, and your only mechanisms for accountability are to the White House, not the public or foreign countries, and you can get your boss re-eletected by helping american companies create jobs at the expense of foreign companies... Why would you ever abstain from industrial espionage?

Hnrobert42 4y ago
Well, they abstain because it is wrong, immoral, and illegal. As this article [1] notes, even leaked material from the DNI which contemplates industrial espionage does not contain any evidence of it. The US IC being a horrible monster may well fit your world view. But we must not allow ourselves to confuse what we think should be easy to prove with what we actually can prove. And I don’t even mean “prove” in some strict, legal sense. I just mean prove in the sense of providing evidence with the same ease that you provide speculation. If you could point to cases of US industrial espionage in Snowden’s leaks, that would be a good start. 1 - https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/ https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...

Hnrobert42 4y ago

Well, they abstain because it is wrong, immoral, and illegal. As this article [1] notes, even leaked material from the DNI which contemplates industrial espionage does not contain any evidence of it. The US IC being a horrible monster may well fit your world view. But we must not allow ourselves to confuse what we think should be easy to prove with what we actually can prove. And I don’t even mean “prove” in some strict, legal sense. I just mean prove in the sense of providing evidence with the same ease that you provide speculation. If you could point to cases of US industrial espionage in Snowden’s leaks, that would be a good start. 1 - https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/ https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...