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Sabato 7 giugno 2008

Da Christopher Caldwell | Installando le macchine fotografiche e controllando le rotture della toletta degli impiegati', come la catena di supermercato Lidl; mantenendo “un fondo monetario dei soldi neri„ per i contraccolpi ai funzionari nei p#si in via di sviluppo, As Siemens presunto; diversione dei soldi per pagare le ragazze di chiamata per i membri di bordo refrattari, As Volkswagen … i quadri tedeschi non erano stati ultimamente al loro la cosa migliore. Ma niente ha in modo da scosso il pubblico come allegazioni in questi ultimi due settimane quello Deutsche Telekom, il più grande gruppo del telefono in Europa, ha usato un ricercatore riservato per spiare sui giornalisti e sui membri di bordo.

La Germania ha avuta, generalmente, un sistema eccellente per la segretezza di protezione. Sta sbriciolandosi non perché la relativa elite ha fatto alcuni errori, ma a causa di nuove pressioni economiche e sociali che i commerci in tutti i paesi affrontano.

Che Telekom sta emergendo nei dribs e nei drabs. Nel gennaio 2005 - quando Kai-Uwe Ricke, il relativo esecutivo principale, stava provando alla destra le finanze dell'azienda tagliando 45.000 lavori - il capitale tedesco dello scomparto di affari ha pubblicato un articolo ha basato sui documenti di alto livello di Telekom. Il sig. Ricke ed il presidente del bordo di sorveglianza, Klaus Zumwinkel, ha creduto che la perdita stesse venendo dal bordo. Hanno deciso tapparli. Un'azienda denominata Network Deutschland è stata assunta. È dichiarato per avere centinaia controllate delle migliaia delle telefonate in uno sforzo trovare la talpa. Può seguire gli individui' dove con i dati del telefono mobile e perfino le linguette mantenute su Blackstone, il gruppo di investimento degli Stati Uniti, che ha comprato un palo nell'azienda in 2006.

All'inizio di quest'anno, Ralf Kühn, la testa della rete Deutschland, faxed una fattura per diverse centinaia mille euro per i servizi resi. Ha offerto “un termine controllato del nostro rapporto di affari protetto dal indiscretion„, poichè il cliente del Der Spiegel lo ha messo. Il capo corrente di Telekom, René Obermann, che ha sostituito il sig. Ricke nel novembre 2006, si è messo in contatto con i procuratori. Il sig. Ricke, il sig. Zumwinkel e sei altri sono ora in esame. (Il sig. Obermann non è.) l'ex capo di sicurezza del Telekom ha detto che nè l'esecutivo principale nè il presidente era informed dei mezzi usati per studiare le perdite.

Il gigante di calcolatore degli Stati Uniti Hewlett-Packard ha avuto uno scandalo simile in 2006 perdite di coinvoluzione dal bordo e dai ricercatori riservati assunti per scoprirli. Perchè questo ha colpito un nervo? For one thing, German politics has lately been focused on data security. This year Germany came into compliance with European Union directives calling for phone records to be stored for at least six months. Wolfgang Schäuble, the interior minister, has asked for broader powers to monitor telecommunications, the better to fight terrorism.

Corporate leaders have very good reasons to treat boardroom leaks as emergencies. Responsibilities to shareholders can be compromised by the loss of business plans and trade secrets. There are moral responsibilities, too. Leaks can be a sign of insider trading. If they are not curbed, the likelihood that they will lead to some kind of market manipulation will grow. Against that, what is it to take a peek at a few phone calls? If you raise freedom of the press, a hard-headed executive can reply – in good conscience – that he is not against it; he is interested only in rooting underhanded conduct out of his boardroom.

But here a line may have been crossed – because it is alleged that Telekom monitored not just its employees but its customers, private citizens. It may have done so with the help of data the company collected on them in the course of ordinary business. If that is the case, then this was less a matter of fiduciary responsibility or “quality control” than a privatised espionage operation.

After these revelations, Financial Times Deutschland reported that in 2000 its own reporter, Tasso Enzweiler, had been tailed, filmed and investigated by Control Risks, a company hired by Telekom. At one point, according to a report filed by Control Risks and cited by FTD, two teams run by a second company called Desa were tailing Mr Enzweiler around the clock, tactics reminiscent of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi. Desa, as it happens, was founded by former Stasi agents.

That is what is unsettling. When we talk about the “power” of corporations we usually mean they have money and influence. But the allegations against Telekom describe a company exercising the kind of power we associate with states. Of course, Telekom, in which the German government still owns a 32 per cent stake, is a hybrid company.

But Telekom’s state-like power comes from its operation in telecommunications, its trade in data. The power that data offer is of a peculiar kind. Why has Facebook’s market been estimated at $15bn? Not because of any “product” Facebook “sells” to its members. The value comes from the window it offers on the consumer preferences of its millions of members. Personal data are to the new economy what oil reserves are to the old one – the core commodity. Is it realistic to expect a company that controls a lot of data to feign ignorance of their political uses forever?

Mr Schäuble would like to establish some code of self-regulation for telecom companies. Renate Künast, a prominent Green parliamentarian, does not think that is possible. She told the Frankfurter Rundschau that the only real way of protecting data is to keep as little as possible. Ms Künast’s approach would do economic harm, because it would destroy a valuable commodity. But she has a point. Maybe personal data are a man-made equivalent of what economists call the “resource curse”. Just as there is a correlation between oil wealth and autocracy, there appears to be some link – hard to define but getting easier – between the growth of our information wealth and a dwindling of our liberties.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 1:04 am and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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