It also lays out penalties for corporate espionage, which can run into the millions of dollars and years of prison time. The law made stealing commercial secrets (as opposed to classified or national defense information) a federal crime for the first time, and codifies a detailed definition of what constitutes a trade secret. 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.
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