Founder of French smart card giant reveals U.S. hegemony in tech sector

(Xinhua) 08:27, September 24, 2021

VIDEO:

http://flv4.people.com.cn/videofile7//pvmsvideo/2021/9/24/HaiWaiChuanBoBu-LiangJun_091e6235f73a3a95983b7ef68e7bfe02.mp4

-- As a key founder of French smart card producer Gemplus, Marc Lassus's startling revelation in his new book has sparked a worldwide outcry against the American coercion in economic and technological sectors.

-- The United States not only usurped Gemplus' leading position in the industry, but also made best of the high-tech unicorn's smart cards to collect information and eavesdrop the rest of the world.

-- The Gemplus affair was just one historical scene in which the United States used its national power to steal information by all possible means. For decades, the country, relying on its technological superiority, has been addicted to peeping and wiretapping on ordinary people, their competitors and even their allies.

BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- In his new book The Chip Trap, Marc Lassus, key founder of French smart card producer Gemplus, has chosen to speak out and reveal how the U.S. security services persecuted him and seized control of his tech firm.

The startling revelation has sparked a worldwide outcry against the American coercion in economic and technological sectors.

The book, which came after The American Trap: My Battle to Expose America's Secret Economic War against the Rest of the World written by Frederic Pierucci, a former senior manager for French energy and transport conglomerate Alstom, serves as yet another testimony to America's dark history of handicapping tech companies of other countries by hook or by crook to make ill-gotten selfish gains.

U.S. MANIPULATIONS

Gemplus, founded in 1988, used to be a world's leading provider of smart card-based solutions. Running production plants and research and development centers in 37 countries and regions worldwide, the company had led the world production of smart cards by the end of 2000, taking a more than 40 percent share of the world market.

As the company grew, what co-founder Lassus did not expect was that the U.S. security services had been on its tail and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had already sent an investment group to sneakily seize absolute control of Gemplus.

"It was when I started my company that I began having problems with the Americans. They wrote a big check, they put in 550 million euros (643 million U.S. dollars) to take 26 percent shares of the company," Lassus told Xinhua via a recent video interview.

"But what I did not know was the first shareholders at that time, who were allies for me since they had gone up in the capital -- they had 20 percent, I had 19 percent and we were working hand in hand. And all of a sudden, what we see was that they were completely at the service of the Americans, of the CIA," he recalled.

Barton Gellman -- Since I Met Edward Snowden, I’ve Never Stopped Watching My Back

Since I Met Edward Snowden, I’ve Never Stopped Watching My Back

Story by Barton Gellman

After receiving a trove of documents from the whistleblower, I found myself under surveillance and investigation by the U.S. government.

Bottom of Form

“What time exactly does your clock say?” asked the voice on the telephone, the first words Edward Snowden ever spoke to me aloud. (Our previous communications had all been via secure text chats over encrypted anonymous links on secret servers.) I glanced at my wrist—3:22 p.m. “Good. Meet me exactly at four. I’ll be wearing a backpack.” Of course he would; Snowden would never leave his laptop unattended.

The rendezvous point Snowden selected that day, December 5, 2013, was a gaudy casino hotel called the Korston Club, on Kosygina Street in Moscow. Enormous flashing whorls of color adorned the exterior in homage to Las Vegas. In the lobby, a full-size grand player piano tinkled with energetic pop. The promenade featured a “Girls Bar” with purple-neon decor, stainless-steel chairs and mirrors competing for attention with imitation wood paneling, knockoff Persian rugs, and pulsing strobe lights on plastic foliage. Also, feathers. The place looked like a trailer full of old Madonna stage sets that had been ravaged by a tornado.

As I battled sensory overload, a young man appeared near the player piano, his appearance subtly altered. A minder might be anywhere in this circus of a lobby, but I saw no government escort. We shook hands, and Snowden walked me wordlessly to a back elevator and up to his hotel room. For two days, throughout 14 hours of interviews, he did not once part the curtains or step outside. He remained a target of surpassing interest to the intelligence services of more than one nation.

Watch: Are We Vesting Too Much Power in Governments and Corporations in the Name of COVID-19? WithEdward Snowden.

Watch: Are We Vesting Too Much Power in Governments and Corporations in the Name of COVID-19? WithEdward Snowden.

Glenn Greenwald

April 8 2020, 11:21 p.m.

THE SECOND EPISODE of our new video program, SYSTEM UPDATE, is now available on YouTube. It explores several of the under-discussed components of the coronavirus pandemic and our responses to it, including: Are we vesting too much power in the hands of governments and corporations? Are we allowing our fears to drive our deliberations and choices rather than rational calculations? how do we ensure that official orthodoxies, pieties and consensus can be meaningfully questioned and challenged? What lessons are there to learn from the fear-driven climate that arose after the 9/11 attack? What are the enduring political, social and cultural effects of sustained isolation? and what is the role of animal agriculture in the outbreak of new deadly pathogens over the last couple of decades?

To explore these questions, I spoke to three guests: the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, now President of the Board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation; Andray Domise, a contributing editor of the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean’s who has written and spoken in a very insightful way about these issues; and Cassie King, a young, courageous and experienced investigator and activist with Direct Action Everywhere, who has been inside numerous factory farms in the U.S. and has worked extensively on the impact on the public health from these industrial practices.

The full show can be watched on the Intercept’s YouTube channel — to which you can subscribe in order to be notified of all of our new content — or on the player below. A transcript is also below:

* * * * * *

System Update – Edward Snowden, Andray Domise and Cassie King

MONOLOGUE

Welcome to a new edition of System Update. I’m Glenn Greenwald.

This episode focuses on several of the under-discussed and under-explored ramifications of the choices we’re collectively making in response to the coronavirus pandemic:

How do we protect civil liberties and political rights while at the same time vesting powers necessary power in governments and corporations in order to manage the pandemic? What are the enduring social, cultural, political and psychological consequences — ones that will endure even after this pandemic is brought under control — from being in isolation and segregated from one another and quarantining and socially distancing?

Jacob G. Hornberger -- Pardon Assange and Snowden

Pardon Assange and Snowden

by Jacob G. Hornberger

December 19, 2019

The Washington Post has just released a trove of previously secret records documenting that the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been based on a multitude of lies and deception. It is beyond dispute that the Pentagon and other elements of America’s deep state were determined to keep those records secret from the American people.That’s because it took three years and two federal lawsuits to force deep-state officials to finally release the records.

No one is accusing the Post of publishing lies. It is undisputed that what the Post has published is the truth.

Why then did the deep state oppose release of the records? Why was the deep state so insistent that they be kept secret?

Karen Kwiatkowski -- RUN!

Bottom of Form

Run!

By Karen Kwiatkowski

October 3, 2019

Julian Assange is reported to very thin, very sick and being treated at this point, as little more than a “lab rat” by his state doctors and interrogators at Belmarsh.  Word is that his encryption key ring (with his private keys that unlock his various public keys) has already been extracted, under physical duress, cold, light and noise torture, food deprivation, BZ variants, some experimental, and now that he is very physically weak, PCP.  The arrests have started and they won’t stop until the injured parties –mainly the US government – have satisfied their bloodlust.

If the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of donors of information to Wilikeaks around the world haven’t begun to already, they need to rapidly take cover – legal, physical, operational and otherwise.

The US, its allies and understudies, its lackeys and satraps, both of the state and corporate type, want to know where the leaks are.  And they will find them.

Was Julian Assange the publisher (like Google and Facebook)?  Was he some kind of fake whistleblower (like the CIA guy on loan to the White House)?  Might he be considered an actual whistleblower like Chelsea Manning or Ed Snowden and Bill Binney and many, many more driven by a sense of real patriotism and justice to share with the people what is being done in their name?

Edward Snowden: 5 years in Russia and still relevant as ever

Edward Snowden changed the practices of both the internal and external focused US and global intelligence agencies.

Published

 1 day ago 

on

 August 3, 2018

By

 Seraphim Hanisch

ASS reported that August 1 was the five year anniversary of Edward Snowden’s being granted temporary asylum in the Russian Federation. This happened after his release of an enormous trove of information showing clandestine and illegal practices being carried out by the US intelligence agencies to gather information on just about anyone in the world, for any – or no – reason at all.

Edward Snowden, 35, is a computer security expert. In 2005-2008, he worked at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA) and at the global communications division at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In 2007, Snowden was stationed with diplomatic cover at the US mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2009, he resigned from the CIA to join the Dell company that sent him to Hawaii to work for the NSA’s information-sharing office. He was particularly employed with the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm.

In June 2013, Snowden leaked classified information to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, which revealed global surveillance programs run by US and British intelligence agencies. He explained the move by saying that he wanted to tell the world the truth because he believed such large-scale surveillance on innocent citizens was unacceptable and the public needed to know about it.