Energy company EDF has been fined €1.5m (£1.3m) for hacking into the computer systems of environmental campaign organisation Greenpeace.
Two high-ranking EDF employees were given prison sentences on Thursday for hiring investigators to hack into Greenpeace systems in France, Greenpeace said in a blog post on Thursday.
“The evidence presented at the trial showed that the espionage undertaken by EDF in its efforts to discredit Greenpeace was both extensive and totally illegal,” Greenpeace UK’s executive director, John Sauven, said in the blog post. “The company should now give a full account of the spying operation it mounted against its critics.”
Investigators from private detective agency Kargus Consultants hacked into Greenpeace systems in 2006 looking for plans concerning a campaign against new EDF nuclear power plants, a French court found.
In 2006 Kargus Consultants targeted the then-campaign director Yannick Jadot with an email with a Trojan attachment, in what is known as a ‘spear-phishing’ attack, Greenpeace France communications officer Axel Renaudin told ZDNet UK on Friday. When Jadot opened the email, the Trojan executed, opening a backdoor for the hackers.
Kargus Consultants then trawled Greenpeace systems looking for documents, searching on the keywords ‘nuke’ and ‘EDF’, said Renaudin. The investigators accessed around 1,400 documents on Jadot’s computer.
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This is ironic, considering Greenpeace’s record of lawlessness and low-boil eco-terrorism, e.g., the Danish oil rig invasion in September, crop destruction, etc.
They’re not as bad as the EDF and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, but, like narcotics smugglers who complain to the cops that their stash has been stolen, Greenpeace has a lot of chutzpah!
From where I sit ‘lawlessness’ requires perspective, and dismissing the activities of organisations such as Greenpeace on these grounds is disingenuous.
It’s clearly right to obey a law that is morally right (eg ‘Don’t drown your kids’); but is it wrong to break a law that’s morally wrong (eg ‘Profit from slavery’)?
Laws change with the times, and some times the law needs to be changed.
[Aside/clarification: when I wrote, “they’re not as bad as the EDF…” I meant the Environmental Defense Fund, not the energy company, is evil.]
I’m sure that EDF/Kargus thought the way you do: Greenpeace is evil, they are out to destroy us, and they are not constrained by the law; we have to fight fire with fire.
Indeed, I have some sympathy for that view. When “the law is an ass,” what is one to do? How much evil should you tolerate, just because the law requires it? What if the law is protecting someone who is actively murdering thousands of children? Greenpeace is evil, but they are not the most evil institution. What are we to do about abortionists, for instance?
In one sense, the EDF & Kargus guys got off lightly. When conscience and law collide, it is not always easy to know what to do, and following your conscience often incurs a much heavier penalty than they will pay. When a tyrannical government is oppressing and killing people to promote the cult of Muhammad, Mussolini, Marx, or similar, choosing to oppose it can cost you your life, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew and Youcef Nadarkhani knows.
Perhaps it would make sense for EDF not to see Greenpeace as pure evil, for Greenpeace not to see EDF as pure evil, and for this forsaken planet to be inhabited by people that don’t think they are fighting pure evil (apart from the very rare circumstances when there is pure evil around), so they don’t consider themselves justified to do anything repugnant/unlawful.
Then we’ll need to find something to do for all those lawyers. 😎
It’s a French thing!!
The linking didn’t work…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_bombing
This does not mean that EDF Energy have anything to hide. They are just getting fed up with the effectiveness of ideologically-driven irrational opposition, which is what prompted the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir John Beddington, to demand that scientists should be much more intolerant of pseudo-scientific assertions that climate change is not happening>/a>.
Oh, how I wish for the day that environmentalists will give up on being anti-nuclear. .. Unfortunately, apart from the drip-drip effect of high profile changes-of-heart such as that by James Lovelock and George Monbiot, this shows signs of being less likely than the re-unification of Roman Cathlolic and Orthodox churches…
Why did it take an investigation by the police to uncover if “EDF Energy have anything to hide”?
What a ludicrous claim to make. Who did you say you worked for?
Just as soon as you make nukes 100% safe, economically viable, capable of being deployed quickly enough to mitigate climate change before it’s too late and once the problem of where to put the waste for the next 100,000+ years is solved, then the sane and informed amongst us might support it.
Ah ha, I knew I had heard the name before when Pendanty recently recommended I read something you posted on your blog. Sorry, my memory must be going, it comes with age and experience (as does wisdom and perspective). If you had bothered to visit my blog, you would know that I am currently unemployed, which would have released you from the need to make such a pathetic attempt to undermine my logic. Had you done so, you might also have been in danger of grasping one of the central points I have repeatedly made that Fast Breeder Reactors would help us get rid of the high-activity, very long half-life, waste to which you refer.
No needed for all that pompous bloviating, all you needed to write was “I believe in vapourware.”
* It’s time to give up on breeder reactors. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, nuclear energy advocates have **dreamed** of a reactor that could produce more fuel than it used. More than 60 years and $100 billion later, that vision remains as far from reality as ever. http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/u6h61234431718h3/
* Despite the fact that fast breeder development began in 1944, now some 65 year later, of the 438 operational nuclear power reactors worldwide, only one of these, the BN-600 in Russia, is a commercial-size fast reactor and it hardly qualifies as a successful breeder. The Soviet Union/Russia never closed the fuel cycle and has yet to fuel BN-600 with plutonium. http://www.fissilematerials.org/blog/2010/02/history_and_status_of_fas.html
Please do not attempt to lecture me on the history of nulcear power (at least not without bothering to check what I already know first).
You already demonstrated your (lack of) knowledge by pinning the planet’s salvation on a failed technology. Any response other than indignation?
Yes. FBR is not a failed technology, it is merely one that was abandoned between 20 and 25 years ago (by the US and UK) for reasons of political expedience (and/or cowardice).
I am not pinning my hopes on anything but, unlike you, I am refusing to rule a possible solution out of contention on purely ideological grounds. That is to say, because we must phase out fossil feuls immediately, I believe that we should invest in renewable technology now and nuclear energy in the long-term… Therefore, with all due respect, I think you should balance out all the anti-nuclear propaganda you have previously swallowed by reading Tom Blees’ book – Prescription for the Planet.
Let us know when your vapourware becomes technically and economically viable. Until then, the rational amongst will be going with what works.