Re: fbi botches intel "ecspionage" case

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 12:25 PM 6/29/96 -0700, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
>
>"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.
[snip]
>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.

It's worse than this.  I can recall talk of a big problem WITHIN INTEL 
trying to tranfer the process to produce a part between (as I recall) two 
Intel semiconductor fabs,  Fab IV and Fab V, which are buildings only a 
couple hundred feet apart!  And obviously, this was done with the full 
cooperation of everyone within Intel, and did not require the interfacing 
with any other company.  The idea that you can just steal the "plans" for a 
chip and build it yourself is crazy.

>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.

I was even more disgusted with the FBI:  I kept hearing them claim, "We did 
not authorize him to break the law."   Huh?!?  Maybe they didn't, this time, 
but does this mean, implicitly, that this country has sunk so low that the 
FBI thinks it has the legal authority to "authorize" somebody to break the 
law?????


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com