Talk:Industrial espionage/Archive 1

Definitions
Can United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is used for political espionage and occasionally to help American companies against European competitors."anyone give a clear and precise definition of the difference bewteen industrial espionage and business intelligence?


 * They overlap. But at the extremes, if it's illegal, such as being devious to get info, it's espionage.GangofOne 19:47, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Technical espionage
One thing not mentioned is espionage to get technical information. Like when guy from one computer company snuck in to look at a prototype of other company's machine. See Soul of a New Machine for example. (It wasn't illegal, then)GangofOne 19:47, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

US government
"The United States government has admitted to using commercial espionage, for instance using surveillance of phone calls to determine that a French competitor of a US firm was bribing Brazilian officials to obtain an air traffic control radar contract (it was later revealed that the US firm was also bribing officials). It is generally believed that most large intelligence agencies are involved in the practice. A commission of the European Parliament suspects that ECHELON, a communications espionage system operated by the NSA and agencies of the

This needs references. Books, news articles. etc.GangofOne 19:47, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Ringling Circus
Would this corporate example be worth including? (Ringling circus vs critics)

References required
The claims in the second half should have at least one reference each.

20:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Sentencing in Coca-Cola espionage case
From http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/05/23/coca.cola.sentencing/

"ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Two former Coca-Cola employees were sentenced Wednesday to serve federal prison terms for conspiring to steal and sell trade secrets to rival Pepsi.

Joya Williams, 42, of Norcross received an eight-year prison term, while Ibrahim Dimson, 31, got a five-year term, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Georgia. Both were ordered to pay $40,000 in restitution."

Might be worthy of mention in the article--it's a high profile case, with one of the top brands in the world, and a pretty stiff sentence. scot 20:22, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Backfired attempts
I wonder if it might be useful and encyclopedic to include examples of industrial espionage gone wrong? I got to this article from Capacitor plague, which asserts that one cause of spontaneously exploding capacitors was a failed attempt at industrial espionage. The would-be spies got hold of a proprietary formula for an electrolyte... or rather, most of the formula. They didn't get the anti-corrosion ingredient (oops!). Another case that comes to mind is a little bit industrial and a little bit traditional: when the Soviets were trying to obtain pipeline software, and the CIA obliged them with a deliberately buggy version that caused a massive pipeline explosion (which somehow has managed to escape the notice of the editors of the List of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions article). There are likely other examples, though it's not something a company would typically brag about. --Robertb-dc 03:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

A wee bit biased
"Instead, it describes unethical or illegal activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery, blackmail, technological surveillance and even occasional violence."

1. It's not Wikipedia's place to state what is or is not ethical (unless we cite specific sources.)

2. Unless I am very much mistaken, at least some basic forms of industrial espionage are still legal in the USA, and in any case I doubt that all forms of industrial espionage are illegal in all countries. Therefore, illegality should not be used to define the term. You can say that it's illegal in many locations, but you can't imply that it's *by definition* illegal without sources. Yes, I'm aware of the competitive intelligence article, but neither that nor this article contains any references that prove the term "industrial espionage" *always* refers to illegal activities.

3. Violence is not part of the commonly accepted definition of "Industrial Espionage." 'Espionage' is a neutral term referring to information gathering alone. Violence can be used (feel free to cite examples), but it is not an inherent, inescapable consequence of industrial espionage.

4. It's not Wikipedia's place to redefine the English language.

Industrial espionage is defined by Wiktionary as "The use of clandestine methods to acquire secret information for commercial advantage." Answers.com: "Actions directed toward the acquisition of information on industrial production facilities, techniques, or capabilities through clandestine operations." Concise.brittanica.com: "Acquisition of trade secrets from business competitors." Etc.

None of these sources stresses illegality. We can't invent another term (competitive intelligence) for the legal types of espionage and then turn around and demonize the original term. To be fair, the term was *probably* invented elsewhere (by other people determined to distance themselves from the stereotypical cloak-and-dagger connotations of the term "espionage"), but despite this PR move, it's clear to me that the world at large still uses the term "Industrial Espionage" to refer to both types of activities.

Therefore, I propose that competitive intelligence be merged into this article. We can mention the term "competitive intelligence"--give it its own subsection, if you want, and stress the difference between agents who break the law and those that strive to stay within it--but Wikipedia can't be a part of any (thus far unsuccessful) attempt to redefine the English language.--Lode Runner 02:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Or you could make the case that this article should be merged into competitive intelligence. I suppose that "intelligence" could be a broader term than "espionage" (encompassing such non-espionage-y things as analyses and predictions)... however, as it stands competitive intelligence is written in such a way to emphasize ethics and legality, and this article is/was written to emphasize unethical behavior and illegality, and it is this artificially-created dichotomy that I object to. If you wanted to differentiate between "intelligence" that doesn't actually require any "active" information-gathering activities (e.g. analysis and prediction) and *espionage* that does, that's fine.  However, unless there exists such a crime called "Industrial Espionage", it should not be presented as something that is *always* a crime. --Lode Runner 02:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Industrial Espionage and Competitive Intelligence is completely different
Competitive Intelligence aggregates only legal methods.

Regarding the information research it contains all sorts of open source intelligence (like patent databases, internet, online databases, ...). When it comes to human intelligence it has a focus in using elicitation techniques, but again 100% legal. When it comes to analysis you find methods that are part of every education in business administration (e.g. financial analysis, portfolio analysis, ...). Therefore competitive intelligence may be described as more or less aggressive data collection and analysis.

On the other hand industrial espionage definatetly includes illegal actions like, stealing information, lying about one identity when doing an interview or even worse things.

Big companies usually have their own competitive intelligence department, i.e. the departments are really named that way. Do you really think they are all criminals? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)
 * stealing information=> not intrinsically illegal unless said information is subject to specific legal protections (e.g. copyright)
 * lying about one identity when doing an interview=>not intrinsically illegal unless you take or sign a legal oath (thus the crime would be perjury)


 * As I've already said, I agree that Competitive Intelligence might imply a broader category of data aggregation (including those from published sources), whereas Industrial Espionage seems to imply collection of information that isn't already known and published.


 * However, the legal/illegal dichotomy is false. One can use publicly available data illegally--for instance, by copying and distributing copyrighted (but publicly available) documents. One can also "spy" on someone's activities in a public place (such finding out that two CEOs are meeting at a restaurant to discuss a possible merger) without violating any laws I'm aware of. I still think that there's enough overlap between the two concepts to merit a merge, but even if the articles remain split there remains a very large POV issue to be fixed. --Lode Runner 13:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the definition be based upon a Denotative basis...?
While well aware of the outmoded definitions (to a certain degree) of some of the definitions of the words involved (e.g., espionage, while having some Germanic origins (OED), can generally be agreed upon to be descended from the Italian 'Spione' and the French 'espion', both meaning, essentially "spy"), an important point which virtually all current dictionaries of which I'm aware include either in the definition of 'Espionage' itself, or, within the definition of 'Spy'/'Spying', includes, is that it is done secretly.

Thus, instead of basing any decisions regarding a merge upon 'local laws' or subjective ethics, might one not, instead, have the separation thusly? Everything being a matter of degree, of course, this analogy is a shallow but adequate one: if Farmer Andy has an applecart across the street from Farmer Brian, and both have their prices posted on a sign on the applecart for public view, can either be said to be engaging in anything covert when comparing their prices to one another, perhaps with the aim of undercutting the competition?

No, that is simply making use of information which the competition has made available to the public. Information which can be accessed directly and overtly.

Now, if both Andy and Brian maintain their prices and keep the capitalistic competition friendly, let's pretend a new fellow, Farmer Charles comes along, selling apples obtained elsewhere, and proceeds to undercut them both. Is their overt notation of his lower price (and then making subsequent business decisions based upon the intelligence gained) espionage? I would say no.

If Andy and Brian covertly follow Charles to his own, different apple supplier after the business day is over, thereby gaining the knowledge of where he is getting his items for less, and this is presumably followed by their prices the next day being competitive with if not lower than his own.

The above, although not universally illegal, and not universally unethical, would qualify as -- bizarrely enough -- an act of Corporate Espionage, and not merely Business Intelligence -- at least if one goes less by legalities, ethics, etcetera, and instead bases the articles (ideally separate although inextricably inter-related) upon the functional definitions, with 'Competitive Intelligence'/'Business Intelligence', presuming it is executed in a non-covert-fashion, and/or is produced from public sources (whether or not the competition made said information public intentionally, even...) to be merely within the category of Information Gathering (something one cannot help but do the moment one is conscious), whereas those behaviors executed in a deliberately covert fashion (regardless of legality/ethics) to retrieve information which another organization/Government/Corporation would prefer not to relinquish, would technically fall under the category of espionage.

While this is clearly open to some debate, and these are actually much murkier waters than many may realize, my opinion is that the above is the most rational way of deciding what counts as what. Secrecy (part of the operational definition of what constitutes "spying"), or Covert versus Overt behaviors, if not the sole defining factors, certainly should be considered along with the other points in deciding how to classify these articles.

I would, per the above, argue against a merge, for whatever that's worth.

Netspionage 20:03, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that there is a difference between covert and overt activities, though I don't believe that the difference is large enough to merit a separate article (a separate sub-section, perhaps.)


 * Why am I pro-merge? Well, the goal of both kinds activities is the same--figuring out what the opposition is doing.  And I don't think that the line between covert and overt is so cut-and-dry.  Some methods involve simple observation (e.g. looking at a competitor's price), some methods involve detailed theoretical analysis (e.g. examining every single publicly available document related to a company to draw a cohesive picture of their finances and capabilities), some methods involve finding data in proactive/unorthodox/non-obvious ways (e.g. interviewing ex-employees who're not bound by NDAs, detailed scientific analysis of competitor's products, photographing a competitor's prototype as it's being examined in or transported through public property... even photographing a product on private property that's clearly visible from public property, such as a new car on a test track located near a public road), and some methods are downright deceptive (e.g. sending in "spies" to be hired.)


 * It's also worth noting that corporations sometimes try to hide publicly available data, or even claim that "stealing" said data is illegal--witness retailers' lawsuits against Fatwallet.com for publishing their sale prices. In this case Fatwallet wasn't a competitor, but I believe that the rationale for the lawsuit was to prevent competitors (...and consumers) from quickly and easily discovering each others' sales.


 * Even if we agree that covert-ness is a quality inherent to Espionage, is it really such an important quality as to merit a different article? For example, IIRC you're generally allowed to photograph anything clearly visible from public property.  If I make no attempt to hide the fact that I'm (legally) photographing a competitor's new product, am I conducting espionage? By what we've said so far, I think the answer is "no"--otherwise, taking pictures of (or even memorizing) a competitor's publicly displayed prices would also have to be deemed "espionage."


 * Now what if I try to hide the fact that I'm taking pictures (to avoid the possibility of harassment by ill-informed security guards, or to simply give my opponent the illusion that he's *not* being watched)--do my actions now suddenly constitute espionage?


 * More to the point, do they now suddenly merit a separate article in Wikipedia to describe them? --Lode Runner 14:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Other
The blog referenced contains references to full length newspaper articles, not otherwise available, containing pertinent information on this subject. You may not agree with the information but it is nonetheless a valid source and readers can judge for themselves, caveat lector.News4a2 (talk) 21:10, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Assume good faith. Your edit states that "some active blogs" make this claim, which isn't supported by citations. You have provided a link to one blog, which is not a reliable source. -- Zim Zala Bim talk  22:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

You're observant. I didn't write "some" -- someone else changed it to that as a compromise and I didn't change it back on the old adage. My original contribution .News4a2 (talk) 22:20, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It also appears that the link you are adding, is likely owned by you, revealing a likely conflict of interest. It would be better to provide citations to the newspaper articles, even without full text links, than linking to your own website. -- Zim Zala Bim talk  16:37, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

News4a2, your blog is not a reliable source. Tom Harrison Talk 19:22, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

'''The blog referenced contains references to full length newspaper articles, not otherwise available, containing pertinent information on this subject. You may not agree with the information but it is nonetheless a valid source and readers can judge for themselves, caveat lector'''.News4a2 (talk) 21:26, 26 December 2008 (UTC)


 * If it's in the sources, cite the sources directly, don't cite copies of the sources hosted in violation of copyright on your own blog - that contravenes copyright policy, conflict of interest guideline, reliable source guidelines, verifiability policy (because we don't get the reference to the original source). A source which is available only on paper is still a valid source, a blog is not.  Edit warring is unacceptable. Guy (Help!) 21:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

CERT paper
"Insider Theft of Intellectual Property inside the U.S. Involving Foreign Governments or Organizations"

The paper deals mainly with naturalized american citizens who stole I.P. and provided them to foreign countries/foreign companies. I think the examples in the paper could be added to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.119.191.190 (talk) 22:43, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment on sourcing
The sources are extremely clear - it just uses notes and references. It is consistent with using shortened footnotes related to references, avoiding unecessarily repeating extended references where one book or article is referred to repeatedly. This enables all material to be referenced only once with notes pointing to more specific sources where necessary. This is better referencing than many Wikipedia articles so I see no need for the notice at the top of this article which should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzbein (talk • contribs) 18:05, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, didn't see this talk thread until Silvermoonspider mentioned it in his second revert. And fair enough if it's a new and valid referencing system, I just couldn't see any clear connection between the "Notes" and the "References" section, and assumed the references were still awaiting inline footnotes.
 * Are the links working as they should? The "Palmer 1974" and "Hanson 1987" notes are the only ones I can find that do anything when clicked. --McGeddon (talk) 19:58, 29 June 2010 (UTC)