
federal law that governs corporate espionage is the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. In general, acquiring trade secrets (commercial secrets that have monetary value to the businesses that owns them) without the consent of their owners is against the law. For instance, you can send "secret shoppers" into a rival's store to see how they do business, or hire a private investigator to lurk around a trade show and see what they can overhear.īut beyond that, things get legally trickier. And it's true that it's not illegal to obtain information about competitors via legal means, even if those means are secretive or deceptive. Many people are under the impression that spying on a private company isn't illegal the way that spying on, say, a foreign country is. When state actors are involved in the process, the specific term often used is economic espionage. As a result, other governments find themselves drawn in to various degrees as well one of the main motivations President Trump has given for escalating a trade war with China has been to fight against Chinese theft of American trade secrets. Governments get into the game too - especially in countries where many businesses are state-owned and the regime views economic development as an important national goal. It's also worth noting here that not all corporate espionage involves private businesses spying on other private businesses. That's the theory, anyway, though sometimes, as we'll see, the line separating these operators from criminality can be thin. They might research the background of a rival executive - not to dig up dirt, they say, but to try to understand their motivations and predict their behavior.

Competitive intelligence companies say they're legal and above board, and gather and analyze information that's largely public that will affect their clients' fortunes: mergers and acquisitions, new government regulations, chatter on blogs and social media, and so forth. Then there's competitive intelligence- which is, to put it in infosec terms, the white hat hacking of corporate espionage. Much of it can take the simple form of an insider transferring trade secrets from one company to another - a disgruntled employee, for instance, or an employee who has been hired away by a competitor and takes information with them that they shouldn't. Attacking a competitor's website with malwareīut not all corporate espionage is so dramatic.Posing as a competitor's employee in order to learn company trade secrets or other confidential information.Trespassing onto a competitor's property or accessing their files without permission.LegalMatch outlines a number of techniques that fall under the umbrella of industrial espionage: But in fact, many of the same techniques - and even many of the same spies - work in both realms. We usually think of "espionage" in terms of spies working on behalf of one government trying to get information about another. Send us feedback.Corporate espionage - sometimes also called industrial espionage, economic espionage or corporate spying - is the practice of using espionage techniques for commercial or financial purposes. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'espionage.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors.


government says were also fabricated to take him as a bargaining chip. Reuters, CNN, Whelan, who was seized in 2018 while attending a wedding in Moscow, is held on espionage charges that the U.S. Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, After Meng's arrest, two Canadians were arrested by Beijing and accused of espionage. Todd Spangler, Variety, 3 June 2022 But the steady camerawork counters those initial feelings of espionage. Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker, 6 June 2022 On Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, right next to a Chik-fil-A, is Spyscape - a two-floor, futuristic-looking museum/interactive experience space that gives spycraft lovers a close-up look at the world of espionage. computer network that was not connected to the Internet, the spectre of espionage raised another alarming possibility.
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Lawrence Richard, Fox News, 13 June 2022 Given that the software exposed in Vault 7 had been maintained on a proprietary C.I.A. Jeneé Osterheldt,, 17 June 2022 The British government has approved the extradition of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, to the United States to face charges of espionage.īyjon Haworth, ABC News, 17 June 2022 According to the report, the IRGC may have killed Esmailzadeh over suspicions of espionage. Recent Examples on the Web He was arrested in 2018 and convicted of espionage in June 2020 and sentenced to 16 years.
