Ames was paid millions of dollars by his KGB contacts during the years that he provided them with intelligence information. Ames passed secret CIA information on Russian agents working for the US government to the Komitet Gosudarstvenny Bezipasnosti (KGB), resulting in the deaths of some compromised agents. Ames had been working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for more than 31 years and spying for the Soviet government since 1986. Probably one of the most embarrassing and damaging cases of espionage in recent years occurred in 1994, when the FBI arrested Aldrich Ames on espionage charges. However, economic espionage where industrial, trade, and economic secrets are compromised or stolen is a real and growing threat and is practiced by private individuals and organizations as well as nation states. We tend to think of espionage as involving information classified under national security legislation and relating to political or military secrets. Įspionage (spying) can involve the disclosure or theft of many types of information.
A 2015 American Management Association survey found that at least 66% of US companies monitor their employees’ Internet use. In this case the espionage (spying) was used against their own people in an attempt to find out who was leaking company information to reporters.
The 2005 case of Hewlett-Packard executives spying on employees and each other and members of the press may be the current pinnacle of unethical practices. According to James Chandler, executive director of the National Intellectual Property Law Institute, “We have seen industry after industry collapse after losses of intellectual property.”Īlthough espionage is not a new threat, the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s prompted increased activity. In today’s market, more and more companies seem to be turning to the dark area of industrial espionage. For years, corporations have gathered information on products, pricing, research, and corporate strategies from media reports, public financial statements, and other open-source research materials. Clearly, protecting research and development information and trade secrets continues to be a significant problem. In early 2018, private security experts reported that American businesses lose US$160–US$480 billion annually due to trade secret misappropriation. Director of the FBI Louis Freeh noted that the cost to US business for all types of espionage was more than US$100 billion annually. An employee most often accomplished the thefts. In 1994, the FBI reported that its economic counterintelligence unit had information that nearly 50% of research and development firms had a trade secret theft, and 57% reported repeat or multiple thefts. By 2015, research and development spending reached an all-time high of US$499 billion. “It’s a fact, if you snooze you lose.” “Competitive Intelligence is your best alarm clock.” īy 2010, research and development investment in the United States had more than doubled to nearly US$380 billion, or 2.62% of nominal GDP. The following information from a 2001 Business Week publication illustrates the point well: companies that engage in corporate spying see a payoff in increased revenue, costs avoided, and better decision-making. This ranges from analyzing publicity documents to schmoozing representatives to research securities filings and news reports. Competitive intelligence (which if not properly conducted can also be a form of industrial espionage) involves legal means of data collection. Still, the issue of what constitutes espionage can be gray. The spy’s tools may have transitioned to the computer and other sophisticated technology, but many of the people are previous Cold War participants, now working for private firms. However, the reality is somewhat different but in a world of increasing corporate competition and computer-based data storage, the problem of espionage is increasing. Government spies, typified by James Bond, working in glamorous settings, retrieve government secrets. Walters, in Introduction to Security (Tenth Edition), 2019 EspionageĮspionage usually brings about thoughts of spies sneaking into a company’s private vaults and copying or stealing formulas or products.
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