Next for the Cia: Business Spying?

Snooping on foreign companies has become the most hotly debated topic in the U.S. intelligence community

When executives at Science Applications International Corp., a California- based high-tech company, learned that a former employee had been stealing the codes to their computer programs, they brought charges against the man. But when they later found out that he had given those secrets to a spy ring that included Japanese corporate giants Mitsubishi, Nissan and Toshiba, there was little they could do to recoup the competitive advantage they had lost. The man was sentenced to six years in jail, but no action was ever brought against the Japanese companies, which claimed they did not know the information was stolen.

So...

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