Industrial espionage: Data out of the door

www.ft.com

Jin Hanjuan was about to board a flight to Beijing almost four years ago when a random check stopped her in her tracks.

According to court documents and an FBI affidavit filed in an economic espionage case against her, when customs officers at O’Hare airport in Chicago inspected the bags of the 40-year-old software engineer, they found more than 1,000 confidential papers that are alleged to have been stolen from Motorola, the US electronics group for which Ms Jin had worked until two days before the flight.
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China catching EU on innovation, amid industrial espionage scandals

euobserver.com

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – China is catching up fast with the EU in research and innovation, according to a study published by the European Commission ahead of a meeting of EU leaders on the same issue. But industrial spying scandals in France and the US have painted China's economic ambitions in a disturbing light.

The US and Japan are way ahead of Europe, while China and Brazil are catching up fast with the old continent in the number of patents issued, private and public expenditure dedicated to research and development, and academic research on cutting-edge technologies, the EU's latest "Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010" shows.

Within the EU, Sweden is top, followed closely by Denmark, Finland and Germany. Latvia, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Romania are at the lower end.

"The scoreboard highlights the innovation emergency in Europe," EU commissioner for innovation, research and science, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn said. "If Europe stands still we will see the US disappear into the distance just as we feel emerging nations breathing down our necks."

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'Archer' Season 2: The Smartest, Smuttiest, Silliest Spy Satire on TV Returns

buddytv.com
As with most great comedies, especially of the cartoon variety, to describe FX's spy satire Archer on premise alone is to greatly undersell it. Sure, there's international espionage, jokes about code names and turtlenecks and bomb diffusion, and Get Smart-esque assassins screwing everything up before saving the day at the last possible second. Video & More...

‘My colleague was a Russian spy’

ft.com

For eight years I worked with one of the Russian spies arrested in the US last summer. I am an investigative journalist, and yet I had no clue.

I met Vicky Peláez in 2002 when, according to the FBI, she was already working for the Russian Federation. She had emigrated from Peru to the US in the mid-1980s with her husband, and got a job on El Diario La Prensa, New York’s largest Spanish-language newspaper. That’s where we met, after I started work there as a reporter. She was a columnist, well-known for her anti-American views and her support of radical movements in Latin America – some colleagues nicknamed her la Talibana.

But apart from her political activism, she just looked like a typical New York suburban mom in her fifties. When she wasn’t talking about politics, we chatted about her two sons, one of whom was a classical pianist; her two schnauzers; how expensive the city was or how to lose weight. She was a terrific cook who loved to make ceviche.

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Moscow raps British restrictions on Russian spy suspect

cnn.com

Moscow (CNN) -- Russia expressed concern Friday over restrictions by British authorities on Russian national Yekaterina Zatuliveter, who was arrested in Britain several weeks ago on suspicion of spying and faces possible deportation.

Zatuliveter, 25, a parliamentary assistant to Liberal Democrat Mike Hancock, has been questioned several times about her possible connections with Russian intelligence. She was detained in London early last month as a suspected "sleeper" agent spying in British Parliament.

"We are seriously concerned about the situation around Russian citizen Y. Zatuliveter, whose freedom has been restricted by the British authorities for six weeks now," the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday in a posting on its website.

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