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【中文标题】间谍和公司
【原文标题】Spies and Co.
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】EAMON JAVERS
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/opinion/corporate-espionage-american-style.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp
突然之间，华盛顿开始严密关注中国的间谍活动了。
上个月，白宫拒绝了一家中国公司在俄勒冈海军基地附近兴建一家风力农场的要求。接下来，白宫情报委员会说，两家中国通讯公司所生产的设备可以用来在美国从事间谍活动，国防部长Leon E. Panetta告诫商界领袖，国家正在面临“网络珍珠港”的威胁——一场来自恐怖组织，或者像中国这样的国家的攻击。在星期一的总统大选辩论中，罗姆尼警告说，中国人正在“盗取我们的知识产权、我们的专利、设计、技术，潜入我们的计算机”。
毫无疑问，美国公司的确在被监视。我听说FBI手中有一个视频，其内容是在一家中国酒店里，中国的特工在一个美国商人的房间中布线。据两名消息灵通人士透露，FBI向企业安全专家播放了这个视频作为一个警告。但是，尽管中国毫不掩饰自己的间谍行为，但是过去一百多年里，美国公司难道不是一直在被监控、监听和盗取信息吗？而且，犯罪者大多都是美国人，还不是转而效忠其它国家的美国人，而是仅仅被利益驱使的美国人。
一个名叫D. C. Williams的股票经纪人利用最新的电信技术，在加利福尼亚普莱瑟维尔盗取了交易内部信息。那是在1864年，号称从事马车生意的Williams先生，在Sportsman’s Hall酒店租下一个房间，那里正是国家电信公司的办公所在地。他坐在房间里，利用声音接收设备轻易地破解了隔壁讨论的商业交易信息。当他试图贿赂电报员以全面接触一个重要的采矿案件的资料时，电报员把他告发了，Williams先生随后被逮捕。
我们还可以看看John Broady的案子。50年代中期，这位胆大妄为的窃听者在曼哈顿市中心的一所公寓中建立了一个窃听工作室，他所使用的设备可以同时录音附近10条电话线的通话。Broady先生的客户是医药公司辉瑞，他的任务是窃听辉瑞公司员工和竞争对手施贵宝的电话。
Broady最终被一个匿名的内幕人士告发，这个人很可能就在他的组织内部。奇怪的是，他在接受审判时坦白，有一个邪恶的中国人也落入了他的窃听陷阱。他说他曾经用这些设备窃听一个中国空军将领的电话，这个人贪污了政府数百万元。Broady先生说，有一个试图阻止调查进行下去的人，在墨西哥杀害了他的一名组织成员。他声泪俱下：“我不想让他们抓到我，落一个跟手下人一样的下场，我还有老婆孩子。”陪审团觉得他是在演戏，Broady先生被判两到四年监禁。
近年来还发生过多起利益驱使的间谍案件。90年代末，糖果公司雀巢和玛氏发起了一场大规模战争，一名参与其中的线人绰号叫“深巧克力”。前政府特工通过雀巢的分包商从玛氏公司总部窃取了垃圾袋，为防止保安发现，他们用假垃圾袋做替换。他们在咖啡渣和变质的食物中找到一些被切碎的文件，煞费苦心地拼凑出一些可以识别的公司记录。
2008年秋天，我在伦敦见到了前英国特种部队士兵Nick。他曾经涉足过私人间谍业务，为世界各地的公司挖掘竞争对手和自己员工见不得人的事情。Nick要求我不要透露他的姓，他说他们经常使用的是一种简单的方式：雇用一些人在竞争对手对面的大楼中租房子，用激光麦克风对准马路对面大楼中的会议室。房间里的声音通常会引起玻璃的轻微震动，Nick的麦克风可以把这些震动转化成声音，并记录下来。
技术的革新让间谍所能获取到的公司信息量越来越多，也改变了远程攻击的方式和可能性。但原则都是一样：窃取总是要比自己搞研发容易得多，中国当然也是这么看的。
华盛顿真正担心的，是这种被动的偷窃会变成主动的威胁——不再仅仅是见不得人的探听消息，而是让电梯停止运行、破坏总统选举集会上的通讯，或者关闭由软件控制的自来水供应、关闭电网和核电站。
但是，尽管我们面对的是新一代的间谍，我们也不应该忘记在与老一代间谍的斗争中所吸取的教训。对抗科技的最好方法并不是更新的科技，而是人。就像Williams先生和Broady先生后来所发现的，对高科技间谍最致命的威胁是那些愿意挺身而出、暴露阴谋的内部人员。19世纪和20世纪的执法人员已经找到了一些鼓励内部揭发的方法，我们也应该这么做。
原文：
SUDDENLY, Washington is extremely concerned about Chinese espionage.
Last month, the White House blocked a Chinese company from operating a wind farm near a sensitive Navy base in Oregon. Next, the House Intelligence Committee said two Chinese telecommunications firms were manufacturing equipment that could be used to spy on the United States, and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told business leaders that the country faced the risk of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” — an attack that could come from terrorist groups or a country like China. Finally, during Monday’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney warned that the Chinese were “stealing our intellectual property, our patents, our designs, our technology, hacking into our computers.”
There’s no question that American companies today are under surveillance: I’ve learned that the F.B.I. has obtained a video taken inside a hotel in China that shows Chinese agents rifling through an American businessman’s room, according to two sources familiar with the tape, which the F.B.I. has been playing as a warning for corporate security experts. But while the Chinese spying push is aggressive, American companies have been tapped, bugged and spied on for more than a hundred years. As often as not, the perpetrators have been other Americans — motivated not by patriotism for a foreign flag, but by simple profit.
In PlACerville, Calif., a stockbroker named D. C. Williams took advantage of the latest high-tech telecommunications gear in an insider trading scam. The year was 1864. Mr. Williams, claiming to be in the stagecoach business, rented a room at a hotel called the Sportsman’s Hall, where the State Telegraph Company had offices. Sitting in his room, within earshot of the receiving equipment, Mr. Williams simply decoded the messages about business deals as they clattered in. When he tried to bribe the telegraph agent for exclusive access to news on an important mining lawsuit, the agent turned him in, and Mr. Williams was arrested.
Or take the case of John Broady, an audacious wiretapper who in the mid-1950s set up an eavesdropping nest at an apartment in Midtown Manhattan. Working with a source inside the phone company, he set up equipment capable of tapping and simultaneously recording 10 phone lines in the area. Among Mr. Broady’s clients was the drug company Pfizer, which hired him to tap the phones of its own employees and those of a competitor, Squibb.
Mr. Broady was ultimately undone by an anonymous tipster, most likely someone inside his organization. Bizarrely, at his trial he claimed there was a nefarious Chinese angle to his scam — he said he’d used the equipment to spy on a rogue Chinese Air Force general who’d stolen millions from his government. Mr. Broady said that someone who wanted to stop the investigation had killed one of his own agents in Mexico. “I didn’t want them to knock me off, like they did my man,” he said, breaking down in tears. “I have a wife and kids.” The jury thought it was an act, and Mr. Broady received a two- to four-year prison sentence.
Spying for profit continued in more recent times. In the late 1990s, the candy companies Nestlé and Mars engaged in an epic corporate war that included a confidential source nicknamed “Deep Chocolate.” Former government agents, working through a subcontractor for Nestlé, snatched garbage bags from the Mars headquarters, replacing them with dummy trash bags so the custodial staff wouldn’t catch on. Picking through coffee grounds and stale food, they found shredded documents that they were able to painstakingly reconstruct into readable corporate records.
In London in the fall of 2008, I met with Nick, a former British Special Forces soldier who has gone into the private espionage business — working for companies around the world to dig up dirt on their competitors or their own employees. Nick, who asked that I not use his last name, told me that they often used a simple strategy: they hired subcontractors to rent space in a building across the street from their competitor, and pointed laser microphones at conference rooms across the way. Voices in the rooms made slight vibrations in the windows, and Nick’s microphones could translate those back into sound that he could record.
Technology has changed the volume of information spies can purloin from corporate files, as well as the types of attacks possible from a distance. But the principle remains the same: spying is often easier than conducting one’s own research and development. This is certainly true from China’s perspective.
What has people in Washington really worried is the idea that such passive theft could turn into an active threat — not just snooping, but knocking out elevators or communications at a presidential event, or shutting down software controlling water supplies, electrical grids and nuclear power plants.
But while we deal with this new generation of spies, we shouldn’t forget the lessons learned battling the old. The best way to fight technology is not always with more technology — it’s with human beings. As Mr. Williams and Mr. Broady learned, the most dangerous threat to a high-tech snoop is an inside source who’s willing to come forward and expose the scheme. Law enforcement officials in the 19th and 20th centuries found ways to motivate those whistle-blowers. We must do the same.
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发表于 2012-10-26 09:44
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