CTC International Group Limited

"Spying in the United States by foreign governments has become an art," according to the assistant FBI director of the national security division. The FBI is currently investigating several cases involving foreign businesses and intelligence services stealing information from US companies. The cases deal specifically with targeted collection against the US chemical, telecommunications, petrochemical, aircraft and aerospace industries.

For less than half a million dollars, the Al Qaeda suicide bombers of September 11th inflicted an estimated $700 billion worth of damage to the US economy.

Did you know that 25% of all résumés contain false or exaggerated information, 33% of job applicants falsify employment applications, 5-8% of work references are bogus and 20% of prior employment listings are "stretched" to cover gaps in employment?

According to a report by the US Department of Commerce, foreign companies have used bribes to edge out US competitors on some $36 billion of international business deals in the past year.

According to the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, the motivation for economic espionage is vastly different between the private collector and the government collector.

For private foreign collectors, the prime motivation for stealing economic secrets is generally profits.
Foreign companies may view the acquisition of trade secrets and proprietary information as the only way to compete against US companies that are moving up
the technological ladder. Others see industrial espionage as key to gaining access to new markets dominated by more advanced US firms. Foreign individuals involved in the theft of state-of-the-art US technology may do so to bolster their stature in a foreign firm. Individual collectors also may be motivated by revenge. In a number of cases in 2001, individuals stole technology from US firms after they were notified that their employment had been terminated.

For foreign government collectors, the driving forces for industrial espionage against the United States can be more complex. The immediate goal of these efforts to acquire US technology probably is to leapfrog scientific hurdles without undertaking expensive and time-consuming research and development. For the larger and more advanced countries, the longer term objective appears to be to enable their military establishments to move closer to parity with the United States and to give their defense-industrial base and private companies a competitive edge in the global economy. Less developed countries, by contrast, often appear to tap the United States for defense capabilities that respond to known or perceived threats. Increasingly, the search for technology is also motivated by the knowledge that acquiring advanced weapons technology can significantly increase a small nation’s power and influence. Collectors in underdeveloped countries are usually tasked with acquiring only small quantities of export-controlled goods, with the intent that domestic defense industries can cheaply reverse-engineer and mass-produce the products.

Telephone bugs were discovered in offices used by French, German, and other delegates, in a building in Brussels designated to host a prospective European Union leaders' summit.

Hurricane Andrew, the most expensive natural disaster in US history, caused $25 billion in damage. The average annual cost from tornadoes, hurricanes and floods in the US is $11 billion. The Love Bug virus is estimated to have caused computer users worldwide between $12-15 billion. The ability of a single university student in the Philippines to produce this level of damage using inexpensive equipment shows the potential risk from cyber crime to the global economy.

The American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) estimated that US Fortune 1000 corporations may have lost more than $45 billion in 1999 from theft of their proprietary information and as much as $59 billion in 2001. ASIS estimated that losses from the theft of intellectual property for all US companies might be as high as $300 billion annually.

A joint survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI showed 26 percent of companies reported intellectual property theft in 2001.

"Competitive Intelligence is a systematic program for gathering and analyzing information about your competitor's activities and general business trends in order to further your own company's goals."

-- Larry Kahaner, Competitive Intelligence

Top Ten Categories of Consumer Fraud Complaints for 2002

Internet Auctions	13%
Internet Services & Computer Complaints	6%
Advance Fee Loans & Credit Protection	5%
Shop-At-Home/Catalog Sales	5%
Foreign Money Offers	4%
Prizes/Sweepstakes & Lotteries	4%
Business Opportunity & Work-At-Home Plans	3%
Telephone Services	2%
Health Care	2%
Magazines & Buyers Clubs	2%