From: "Rich Gauszka" 


"mike"  wrote in message
news:4a3o639sivmp408oklesm8to0g9td38g45{at}4ax.com...
> On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:54:31 +1000, John Beckett
>  wrote:
>
>>"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
>>news::
>>> "The generous and noncynical view is that there has been
a fundamental
>>> change in philosophy about the degree to which antitrust should be used
>>> to
>>> regulate business activity,"
>>
>>Perhaps Bush is thinking that the US might need a few giant corporations
>>left, particularly in the IP area....
>
> Or maybe he does not want to lose NSA's ability to use the Windows
> backdoor.  :)
>
>  /m

Think you'll see a full listing of DoD requirenments?

The National Security Agency (NSA) stepped in to help Microsoft develop a
configuration of (Microsoft VISTA) that would meet U.S. Department of
Defense (DoD) requirements, said NSA spokesman Ken White.

http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm
The Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2000

Why We Spy on Our Allies
By R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former Director of Central
Intelligence.

What is the recent flap regarding Echelon and U.S. spying on European
industries all about? We'll begin with some candor from the American side.
Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it's true
that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you
stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for?

The European Parliament's recent report on Echelon, written by British
journalist Duncan Campbell, has sparked angry accusations from continental
Europe that U.S. intelligence is stealing advanced technology from European
companies so that we can -- get this -- give it to American companies and
help them compete. My European friends, get real. True, in a handful of
areas European technology surpasses American, but, to say this as gently as
I can, the number of such areas is very, very, very small. Most European
technology just isn't worth our stealing.

Why, then, have we spied on you? The answer is quite apparent from the
Campbell report -- in the discussion of the only two cases in which
European companies have allegedly been targets of American secret
intelligence collection. Of Thomson-CSF, the report says: "The company
was alleged to have bribed members of the Brazilian government selection
panel." Of Airbus, it says that we found that "Airbus agents were
offering bribes to a Saudi official." These facts are inevitably left
out of European press reports.

That's right, my continental friends, we have spied on you because you
bribe. Your companies' products are often more costly, less technically
advanced or both, than your American competitors'. As a result you bribe a
lot. So complicit are your governments that in several European countries
bribes still are tax-deductible.

When we have caught you at it, you might be interested, we haven't said a
word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the
government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly
to such corruption. They often respond by giving the most meritorious bid
(sometimes American, sometimes not) all or part of the contract. This
upsets you, and sometimes creates recriminations between your bribers and
the other country's bribees, and this occasionally becomes a public
scandal. We love it.

Why do you bribe? It's not because your companies are inherently more
corrupt. Nor is it because you are inherently less talented at technology.
It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert,
whereas ours is Adam Smith. In spite of a few recent reforms, your
governments largely still dominate your economies, so you have much greater
difficulty than we in innovating, encouraging labor mobility, reducing
costs, attracting capital to fast-moving young businesses and adapting
quickly to changing economic circumstances. You'd rather not go through the
hassle of moving toward less dirigisme. It's so much easier to keep paying
bribes.

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