[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Ex-CIA chief on Echelon: "European technology isn't

["Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Fri, 17 Mar 2000 11:21:15 -0500
To:             	politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: Ex-CIA chief on Echelon: "European technology isn't worth
 	stealing"
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com


"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing... Get
serious, Europeans. Stop blaming us and reform your own statist
economic policies. Then your companies can become more efficient and
innovative, and they won't need to resort to bribery to compete. And
then we won't need to spy on you."

---

http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB95326824311657269.htm.

March 17, 2000

Why We Spy on Our Allies

By R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former director of 
central intelligence. What is the recent flap regarding Echelon and 
U.S. spying on European industries all about? We'll begin with some 
candor from the American side. Yes, my continental European friends, 
we have spied on you. And it's true that we use computers to sort 
through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves 
what we're looking for? The European Parliament's recent report on 
Echelon, written by British journalist Duncan Campbell, has sparked 
angry accusations from continental Europe that U.S. intelligence is 
stealing advanced technology from European companies so that we can --
 get this -- give it to American companies and help them compete. My 
European friends, get real. True, in a handful of areas European 
technology surpasses American, but, to say this as gently as I can, 
the number of such areas is very, very, very small. Most European 
technology just isn't worth our stealing. Why, then, have we spied on 
you? The answer is quite apparent from the Campbell report -- in the 
discussion of the only two cases in which European companies have 
allegedly been targets of American secret intelligence collection. Of 
Thomson-CSF, the report says: "The company was alleged to have bribed 
members of the Brazilian government selection panel." Of Airbus, it 
says that we found that "Airbus agents were offering bribes to a 
Saudi official." These facts are inevitably left out of European 
press reports. That's right, my continental friends, we have spied on 
you because you bribe. Your companies' products are often more 
costly, less technically advanced or both, than your American 
competitors'. As a result you bribe a lot. So complicit are your 
governments that in several European countries bribes still are tax-
deductible.

[AUSLASSUNG]

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