ABSTRACT
The Attorney General of the United States defined economic espionage as “the unlawful or clandestine targeting or acquisition of sensitive financial, trade, or economic policy information; proprietary economic information; or critical technologies.” Espionage is divided into the categories of economic and military/political/governmental; the distinction is the targets involved. A common term, industrial espionage was used to indicate espionage between two competitors. The prosperity and success of this country is due in no small measure to economic espionage committed by Francis Cabot Lowell during the Indus-trial Revolution. The world’s intelligence agencies began to focus their attentions on economic targets and information war, just in time for watershed event number-two — the beginning of the information age. The message from the HP case is that economic espionage also includes efforts beyond the collection of information, such as sabotage of the production line to cause the company to miss key delivery dates, deliver faulty parts and fail key tests.
