09 September 2013

The NSA is capable of conducting corporate "economic" espionage

From Bloomberg:
The U.S. government spied on Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Globo TV reported, citing classified documents obtained by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The television network, which reported a week ago that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted phone calls and e-mails of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, aired slides from an NSA presentation from 2012 that explained the agency’s capability to penetrate private networks of companies such as Petrobras, as the oil company is known, and Google Inc...

The NSA allegedly shared its spying capabilities and information with peer agencies in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, according to Globo. American journalist Glenn Greenwald collaborated with Globo News to report tonight’s story...

The presentation appears to contradict a statement made by an NSA spokesman to the Washington Post in an August 30 article, in which the agency said that the U.S. Department of Defense “does not engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”

Petrobras declined to comment in an e-mailed response to questions. An official at the NSA told Globo that the agency gathers economic information in order to monitor for signs of potential instability in financial markets, and not to steal commercial secrets, according to tonight’s program. 
Oh, yes.  We believe that...  Just image how much that information would be worth to Big Oil.

Via BoingBoing.

2 comments:

  1. At least here in Brazil the oil company belongs to the state, so it is less hipocrisy to care about.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder how many NSA "analyst" have traded on info gleeded from their spying system?

    ReplyDelete