So now Greenpeace is accusing the corporate heavyweights of spying.
As reported here, Greenpeace has filed a lawsuit in the US against the Dow Chemical Company, accusing it of conspiring to spy on the organisation's activities in the late 1990s. Dow is the world's largest chemical company and a major producer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The lawsuit has accused Dow of hiring a private security firm – Beckett Brown International (BBI) – to spy on Greenpeace using physical and electronic surveillance techniques. BBI's employees include former officers from the US secret service and the Central Intelligence Agency. The company changed its name to S2I in 2000.
Greenpeace claims the industrial spies were seeking specific knowledge of how Greenpeace was allocating its funds. This would help the companies allocate money to counter Greenpeace's campaigns, the allegations suggest.
Dow has denied the allegations, claiming Greenpeace is just whipping them up to generate publicity.
If you read the complaint here, you will learn that suit charges the defendants stole thousands of documents, intercepted phone call detail records, trespassed and conducted unlawful surveillance and theft of confidential information. It charges that the chemical companies, PR firms and individuals "conspired to and did surveil, infiltrate and steal confidential information with the intention of preempting, blunting or thwarting" Greenpeace's environmental campaigns.
This case is unlikely to die quietly. Whatever the outcome, we can expect it will damage Dow's reputation badly.
no comment untill now