From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 07:14:52 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: fbi botches intel "ecspionage" case
Message-ID: <199606291925.MAA12512@netcom3.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



"economic espionage" (ecspionage?) is in full swing as being 
promoted as the new bogeyman to justify spending billions of
dollars to our intelligence agencies, both military and
the FBI.

we already have a very good example where this has
backfired. I was watching Nightline on Tues night or
so in which there was info about how the FBI helped
get an informant into Intel in a *very* sensitive
position, where he was able to film the pentium chip
plans. he said he sold them, as I recall,
to iraq, syria, china, etc.

at the end of the show, the reporter stated that
the FBI was seeking stronger laws against theft
of "intellectual property" in congress that might
solve the problem. there was much lamentation over the
fact the criminal in question only got about 33 months
of prison time or something.

the FBI emerged with great egg on their face. I would
say if anyone wants to ridicule them for getting into
covering "ecspionage" cases, this is a prime candidate
case. is this what they are aiming for? heh, heh.

==

somehow we have missed a good public debate about 
ecspionage in the country. there were a few NYT 
editorials, but it is clearly being used as a very
major aspect of promoting the new post-cold-war spy
and intelligence strategy without almost any notice
by major analyists.

I was thinking about all the objections I had to the
FBI ecspionage treatment that were never raised on the
program:


1. there was an implicit assumption that merely having
the plans to the chip would allow other countries to somehow
slaughter us in economic competition. but INTEL has spent
billions of dollars on physical infrastructure without which
the plans are virtually useless. it would take other countries
years to get the kind of equipment necessary to produce the
pentium, by which it might actually be yesterday's technology
that no one cares about any more.

2. we have a tradition of separation of church and state in
this country, and also separation of the public government
and private industry. suddenly we have the FBI saying they
want to infiltrate companies to deal with economic espionage.
well, these companies have their own policy, and what do
they gain by having a government agency working inside them?
in the above case I note, it led to exactly the *opposite*
of what was intended: the theft of *highly*sensitive* plans
by an FBI mole.

3. hence, one wonders if the FBI could do a better job of
combating ecspionage than companies are already doing, or
if they are just going to botch it as has already been 
spectacularly proven in this case.

4. we could have companies that are run like the NSA to prevent
"theft of information" (in quotes because I wonder if this will
be considered a crime in future decades, just as heresy and
blasphemy were once considered crimes a long time ago but no
longer are today).  however, we have the old "openess vs.
security" catch-22. we can't have technological development
without some degree of openess.

5. what is "intellectual property"? I think a very good case
can be made that there isn't really any such thing, that
the term itself may be thought in the future as something
like an oxymoron. there is a big red flag going up here:
why do we need all kinds of laws to combat this? is it
really a problem? can anyone actually point to a very sinister
situation in which massive amounts of cash were lost by a 
company due to ecspionage? as the steve jackson games 
incident proved, companies are liable to vastly exaggerate
their losses to the point of fantasy. they have a tendency
to think that "their information" is worth hundreds of thousands
of dollars when it may actually be freely legally obtainable.

if someone else can give more info on this case (apparently
a book is coming out about it or something) including the
guy's name, I'd appreciate it, I didn't take any notes so
this is a bit fuzzy.