FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
|
------- 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]
------- End of forwarded message -------