Dave Hartley http://www.asheville-computer.com/dave Here's a story from tomorrow's Crain's Chicago Business: => Motorola dials up city sites Motorola Inc., the electronics giant that left Chicago three decades ago and has kept moving toward the exurban fringe, is scouting for office space downtown to lure young city dwellers who won't commute to the suburbs. In what would be a major boost for the city's high-tech image, Motorola is seeking about 40,000 square feet in the Loop or on the Near West Side for a "creative talent facility" to help it design and market wireless Internet products, cell phones and other products. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?article_id=14693 ================== ZNet Commentary / July 31 / By Jim Hightower 007 INCORPORATED What's a spook to do? The cold war is over, the Ruskies are now our buddies, the Butchers of Beijing have become our business partners . . . so where's a spy to go to get a job? Try Motorola, it might be hiring. The Wall Street Journal reports that Motorola Inc. has a substantial spy shop, with "units sprinkled in almost all of their outposts around the world." Indeed, it seems that just about every major U.S. corporation now employs spooks to go into the global cold and spy on their competitors, on foreign governments, and . . . well, who knows who else they're spying on? Actually, the term "spying" is too dclass for the pin-striped corporate crowd. "Competitive intelligence" is the preferred designation, or, as one corporate snoop calls his espionage activities: "specialized management consulting." This is not some rogue basement operation either-it goes right to the top of the company. The Journal notes that Motorola's clandestine network, created and headed by a former CIA operative, is central to executive suite decisions, with the spooks sitting in on most corporate strategy sessions. "The concept was to mirror the interaction between the CIA and the White House," says the agent who set up Motorola's shop. There are enough of these corporate 007s that they've even established their own trade association, with nearly seven thousand members. The corporate spies use all sorts of sophisticated, new software to do their espionage, but there's plenty of old-fashioned spy-stuff, too-from paying informants to rummaging through a competitors trash. Even the CIA winces at some of the practices of the private-sector spooks-as one agent put it: "In corporate America, the definition of what's ethical is what's legal." This is Jim Hightower saying . . . And they've always got corporate lawyers to help them define legal as whatever needs to be done. ====================== --------------------------------------------------------------------<e|- <FONT COLOR="#000099">Get a NextCard Visa, in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.9% Intro or 9.9% Fixed APR </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/6628/6/_/475667/_/965023455/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> --------------------------------------------------------------------|e>-
