[benevol]

So now employers are being told to have their employees put business data (potentially even sensitive or secret) on US servers that are "owned" by the US government (see PRISM, etc.), while everybody today knows that NSA surveillance data is being used to gain economic advantages for the country.

How stupid do you think the rest of the world is?

[prostoalex]

Considering that the door was wide open with Google Docs (err, Suite), Microsoft Office 365, respective e-mail offerings (Google Apps, Microsoft Outlook), Yammer, Github, Box, Dropbox and Slack, I don't know if "now" is an appropriate term to use.

[linkregister]

> everybody today knows that NSA surveillance data is being used to gain economic advantages for the country.

I didn't know that, can you give some examples of this?

I heard about the US government making a WTO claim over bribery by Airbus in Saudi Arabia ostensibly discovered by electronic surveillance (not PRISM-related), but this is in the gray area.

[JumpCrisscross]

The American surveillance infrastructure was deployed, allegedly for corporate espionage, against targets in France [1], Germany and Brazil [2]. The IMF, the World Bank and the EU antitrust commissioner, amongst others, were likely targeted to help politically-connected companies [3].

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/wikileaks-enthuellung-...

[2] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150629/16134031494/nsa-d...

[3] https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...

[linkregister]

I appreciate your links to articles about espionage activities with corporate targets. None of them mention any examples of economic benefit, due or undue.

The infamous Petrobras espionage that was implied because it appeared in a slide in a training presentation is a great example of justified espionage (if it occurred; it probably occurred). Less than 2 years later, Petrobras was implicated in massive corruption scandals involving the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff. U.S. decision makers should probably know if a trade partner and friendly nation is about to have massive political unrest due to corruption charges!

If you wish to change the subject to "economic espionage is wrong" or something like that, feel free. If so, please don't imply my assertion is incorrect. I think that is misleading.

[meira]

What about FIFA? And why nobody is hearing about it anymore? All that scandal was only to pressure brazillian major media group, Globo, responsible for most of bribering in futebol. But then Globo delivered what US demanded and nobody hear about FIFA scandal anymore

[JumpCrisscross]

The Intercept article [1] references the DNI's 2009 Quadriennial Intelligence Community review report [2] which "envisions a scenario in which companies from India and Russia work together to develop technological innovation, and the U.S. intelligence community then 'conducts cyber operations' against 'research facilities' in those countries, acquires their proprietary data, and then 'assesses whether and how its findings would be useful to U.S. industry'."

So no, we don't have a smoking gun. But we do have a powerful agency with questionable oversight which has proven its willingness to lie to Congress and documented its willingness to deploy intelligence assets in ways that prove "useful to U.S. industry".

[1] https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...

[2] https://theintercept.com/document/2014/09/05/quadrennial-int...

[bogomipz]

>"The infamous Petrobras espionage that was implied because it appeared in a slide in a training presentation ..."

This is interesting, I hadn't heard of this, are there any links to the slide?

[linkregister]

Yeah, they're on The Guardian from when before Greenwald turned the leaks into his The Intercept venture [1]. It was one of the documents in the 2nd round of leaks about a month or so after the original PRISM and phone metadata. This presentation was the first evidence that the United States spied on State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in addition to foreign governments.

The presentation was for analyst training, and the Petrobras intrusion was nonchalantly used as an example.

If you're just getting into learning about the Snowden leaks and NSA network exploitation, I would suggest starting from the beginning in 2013, checking out the original The Guardian articles and the NYT and Washington Post ones. Der Spiegel also received one or two leaks as well; the articles were written by Jacob Appelbaum and are fairly thorough. The Guardian and Der Spiegel articles are heavily editorialized and jump to some conclusions that were later discounted, but overall the reporting is decent.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra...

[meira]

Yep, here in Brazil digital info was used to "softly" overthrow a government. I don't think it can get any worse, only easy and more common.

[linkregister]

Are you implying that the United States is behind the recent Dilma Rousseff ouster? This notion is fascinating and I want to hear more!

[dangoor]

Google Apps for your Domain (G Suite now, I guess) is already like this, right?

[lettergram]

You'd be surprised.

Google recently bought API.ai for the exact same reason, albeit API.ai has raw data and Workplace would be companies internal interaction data.