Plans by Federal Government to push a security related bill that would empower it to eavesdrop on telephone conversations of the general public is generating some controversy. SHUAIB SHUAIB examines the issues, citing related examples from India, Turkey and the USA to throw light on the pitfalls of the idea.
The Federal Government under the ruling People’s Democratic Party has been reported to be working on a bill that will give it powers to eavesdrop on telephone conversations of the general public all in the hope of curbing and detecting crime. As expected, the challenges of foiling terrorist attacks is the main motive for the upcoming bill; which could also come in handy in the array of arsenal available to any sitting government to keep tabs on the activities of opposition politicians, inquisitive journalists, intransigent lawmakers and even judges exhibiting too much independence.
Read More
Magazine reports that the IRA had tapped into a secure line between Dundalk Garda Station and Newry police were discounted at the Smithwick Tribunal this morning.
Telecommunications engineer Tom Roddy who spent 37 years based in Dundalk said if the IRA had tapped the secure line by gaining access to the telephone in Dundalk “the evidence would be still there today”.
Read More
A Chinese national has pleaded guilty to economic espionage for providing trade secrets from agricultural firms Dow and Cargill to the Chinese government.
Kexue Huang, pleaded guilty to one charge of economic espionage before a federal judge in Indiana, admitting that while he worked at Dow AgroSciences LLC and Cargill he obtained and transferred to China trade secrets from the companies. Huang was arrested and charged in an indictment in July 2010.
Huang worked for Dow from January 2003 to February 2008 and conducted research on an organic insecticide that was being developed by the company. The plea agreement filed in federal court in Indiana today asserted that between 2007 and 2010, Huang provided the Dow trade secrets to two people working for the Chinese government.
The court papers note that one of the unindicted co-conspirators was a Chinese exchange student studying at the Technical University in Dresden, Germany, who later moved to the Hunan Normal University in China.
“In stealing, transferring and using the trade secrets, Kexue Huang, a/k/a ‘John,’ intended to benefit Hunan Normal University, the national Natural Science Foundation and the 863 Program. Each of these entities is a foreign instrumentality of the People’s Republic of China,” the plea agreement said.
Program 863 is known as the “National High Technology Research and Development Program of China,” according to the indictment.
After working for Dow, Huang worked for Cargill and stole information relating to genetic information for enzymes used by the agricultural company. Court papers unsealed today in Minnesota revealed the theft of trade secrets at Cargill. The plea agreement estimates that Huang cost the two companies $7 million to $20 million in damages.
“We cannot allow U.S. citizens or foreign nationals to hand sensitive business information over to competitors in other countries, and we will continue our vigorous criminal enforcement of economic espionage and trade secret laws,” Lanny Breuer head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement. ” These crimes present a danger to the U.S. economy and jeopardize our nation’s leadership in innovation.”
French spy chief Bernard Squarcini. (Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images)
Investigators have launched an inquiry targeting Bernard Squarcini, the powerful head of France’s domestic intelligence agency, who is facing allegations that he may have illegally spied on journalists.
Squarcini, the chief of the Direction Central du Renseignement Intérieur, is alleged to have “obtained the Le Monde reporter’s telephone records to uncover a mole feeding the newspaper information about a political scandal,” Kim Willsher of the UK Guardian reported Tuesday.
Read More
Why does China seem to be targeting Dow?
Following the 1996 enactment of the Economic Espionage Act, federal prosecutors state that eight cases have been brought charging violations of that law. On July 13, 2010, Kexue a/k/a “John” Huang, 48, a Chinese national who had been granted legal permanent resident status in the United States and a former resident of Carmel, Ind., was arrested in Westborough, MA and indicted on 17-counts in the Southern District of Indiana for misappropriating and transporting trade secrets to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) while working as a research scientist at Dow AgroSciences LLC.
On October 18, 2011, a separate indictment filed in the District of Minnesota was unsealed, charging Huang with stealing a trade secret from Cargill Inc.
