Re: fbi botches intel "ecspionage" case
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
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.
I don't quite understand your point. are you saying that a chip is far more than merely plans? that I totally agree with. a chip is built by a massive army of highly intelligent people and highly specialized equipment. I would wager that a very large part of pentium technology is in their fabrication equipment. it would take truckloads of files to describe all the equipment, and even then you wouldn't necesarily be able to build it: you need the geniuses who wrote the papers in the first place to pull it off. hence, one of my big criticisms of the concept of "intellectual property": does it really exist?!?! is it in fact an oxymoron? (don't tell the fbi!!! they'll get that weepy look that little kids get when you tell them santa claus doesn't exist, hehehehe)
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?????
actually I smell something really bad here. the reporter for nightline seemed kind of stupid to me. he kept talking about how Intel had not gotten any warning that the employee had a criminal record and had been involved in espionage in the past. that was LUDICROUS. didn't he understand what was going on here? the FBI was using this person as an INFORMANT and SPY and therefore probably did the exact OPPOSITE: tried to use whatever leverage they could to get him into a sensitive position where he would be USEFUL. and they succeeded!! I find this a highly plausible scenario that they are probably still trying to suppress. I doubt the full truth on the matter is out yet and a lot of people are doing the CYA thing in both Intel and the FBI over this thing. hence, I suspect the FBI was directly responsible for getting him into a sensitive position where he could do damage. at least, that's exactly what they'd be encouraging him to do. however he didn't seem to present any evidence of that. there was some kind of finagling that the fbi did to get him his job. what is possible is that the FBI has *other* informants and spies working in Intel that helped get the guy his job, and they would be "rooted out" if the whole story came to light. the FBI cooks up some story that makes him look like a lone madman that went loose on his own.
participants (2)
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jim bell -
Vladimir Z. Nuri