Responding to msg by s1113645@tesla.cc.uottawa.ca () on Tue, 14 Nov 4:47 PM

For those who care, the Communications Security Establishment has been getting some flak for spying on Mex. during NAFTA talks and on Korea to help us sell Can. nuke reactors:

Here's a facet of the burgeoning counterspying, oops, biz-intel blathering, oops, globally competing, oops, leveling the playing field, oops, securing the econo-nation, oops, downsizing spies and X-spies and XX-ing spies and putting to pasture cud-chomping nincompoops of the Chomsky-contra-CIA golden-asses era: --------- The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 1995, p. A15. This Is the CEO -- Get Me the CIA [Op-Ed, excerpts] By Ernest Brod. (Mr. Brod is executive managing director of Kroll Associates, an international investigation, business intelligence and security frim based in New York.) While government policy makers ponder and debate [economic espionage] issues, U.S. companies are fighting the global competitiveness battle. In the past year U.S. companies have rushed to level the playing field with foreign competitors who have long exploited the advantage of competitor intelligence. For years, foreign-based multinationals have had teams of people devoted to learning as much as they could about their U.S. competitors. The methods ranged from in-depth research and analysis of publicly available information to covert and sometimes clumsy attempts at industrial espionage, in some cases with the active support of their government's intelligence agencies. Today, having had their consciousness raised by the global business realities of the '90s, U.S. companies in all industries are scrambling to set up units devoted to gathering strategic information about the competition. Teams can be found at both corporate and division levels; they may be multi-department or reside within planning, development, marketing, finance or international units. They may have euphemistic labels and they increasingly draw upon burgeoning numbers of outside private resources. In recent months, for example, my firm was asked to help determine: + Whether an Asian competitor will take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement to establish facilities in Mexico in order to supply the U.S. market. + How an overseas competitor with an apparently comparable cost base can consistently produce lower bids. + Who controls an overseas private company and how deep are their pockets. While the controversy continues over whether U.S. companies should be favored with government-sponsored industrial intelligence, managers are already employing legal and ethical research and investigative techniques to learn more about the methods, resources and plans of their marketplace adversaries. These forays may not be exciting, risky or glamorous enough for our battle-hardened spy masters, but they help American strategists win hard-fought ground from their adversaries.