7.3.4.1 Intelligence-gathering: Spying
Intelligence-gathering can expose weaknesses in an enemy’s defences and detect threats; it can also be used to gain technical information.
Companies or governments can gain economic advantages cheaply by stealing commercial intellectual property. A CNBC CFO survey, 1 in 5 corporations say China has stolen their IP within the last year, shows the extent of the problem.
Stealing military secrets is partly defensive: ensuring that an enemy doesn’t gain a competitive advantage. Russia famously obtained atomic secrets to avoid being left behind, as in the widely reported case of Klaus Fuchs, the scientist and spy at Harwell.
If governments find out about security problems soon enough, they can avert some incidents and respond to others more effectively. If a local terrorist threat is uncovered at the start of its activities, it should be possible to use the law to imprison troublemakers and prevent the threat from growing.
People place a high value on their security so they might willingly accept some government surveillance – though they might resent the invasion of their privacy if there are no specific reasons for suspecting them. The extent of intelligence-gathering has become a subject of popular debate recently – as revealed in a BBC article, Edward Snowden: Leaks that exposed US spy programme.
A target country has no recourse in law against foreign spying, unless a spy is captured. And some spying is now done remotely, either using the Internet or drones.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/7341a.htm.