Tangled webs of corporate spying uncovered
The New York Times has been picking apart a web of intrigue, deception and industrial espionage in the French capital.
Journalist David Jolly reported from Paris that what began as a Tour de France doping investigation in 2006 has now exploded into a labyrinthine trawl through the less scrupulous side of Gallic big business activities.
Three years ago top American cyclist Floyd Landis was found guilty of doping and was disqualified from the Tour de France and international cycling. As part of the doping investigation a computer at the drug testing lab was discovered to have been infected by a 'Trojan horse' virus. A Trojan horse is a tool that can be used to spy on the contents of a computer and steal the information from it.
The French Interior Ministry cybercrime unit got involved and the discovered a trail leading to Alain Quiros, a French national living in Morocco. His computer turned out to be an Aladdin's cave of information apparently stolen from top ranking business people's computer systems. He in turn fingered a former French intelligence agent Thierry Lorho, the head of Paris based Kargus Consultants. Evidence showed that the intelligence gathering attacks had been carried out against, not just the drug testing lab, but also lawyers, aerospace companies and even charities such as Greenpeace.
Mr. Lorho claimed that he had collected data on Greenpeace on behalf of Électricité de France, which had paid him for “strategic intelligence” on anti-nuclear campaigners. E.D.F. who are now moving into the UK energy market in a big way denied any knowledge of the cyber-theft by Kargus Consultants.
The Greenpeace campaign director at the time of the alleged spying incidents said the case showed “a systematic policy of spying by E.D.F.”
David Jolly goes on to say that spying by large corporations on their perceived enemies is by no means a recent phenomenon. He reminds his readers that in the 1960s General Motors hired private detectives to dig up dirt on Ralph Nader, the consumer activist who would later run for president of the USA.
Jolly also looks at German corporations such as Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Bahn, all of whom have been caught "overstepping the line regarding surveillance of critics and their own employees".
Read David Jolly's article on corporate theft in France
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