Industrial espionage by TLA's

[Peter Fairbrother]

Snowden recently said that the NSA was 'engaged in industrial 
espionage'. see eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/25907502 .


"Referring to the German engineering company Siemens, Mr Snowden told 
ARD: "If there is information at Siemens that they [the NSA] think would 
be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security, of 
the United States, they will go after that information and they'll take 
it." "



I was wondering whether GCHQ did the same, and came to the conclusion 
that they do - it is specifically allowed under RIPA.

The Secretary of State (the Foreign Secretary in this case) can issue a 
single certificated warrant to allow interception and examination of any 
and all "external" [1] communications  "for the purpose of safeguarding 
the economic well-being of the United Kingdom".

See RIPA 8(4)(b)(ii) and 5(3)(c).


Peter Fairbrother


[1] "external" communications are communications where either the sender 
or the intended recipient, or both, are outside the UK.

It is uncertain whether this applies to eg an email which is sent from a 
person in the UK to another person in the UK, but which is sent via a 
foreign country - a not uncommon happening, eg mail to and from all 
Google mail, Gmail and Hotmail addresses will pass through servers in 
the US.

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