TABLE OF CONTENTS Based on reports of suspicious foreign contacts submitted, the Internet is the fastest growing modus operandi of unsolicited correspondence using computer elicitation between foreign entities and cleared U.S. companies and their employees. Foreign entities use the Internet to contact a wide variety of knowledgeable persons, with the intention to collect various pieces of information from each based on their area of expertise. This information is then put together in an amazingly clear mosaic, revealing a level of detail that no one individual would have been able to provide.
Use of the Internet offers a variety of advantages to a foreign collector. It is simple, low cost, nonthreatening, and relatively risk free for the foreign entity attempting to collect classified, proprietary, or sensitive information. These foreign entities can remain safe within their own borders while sending hundreds of pleas and requests for assistance to targeted U.S. companies and their employees. The unsolicited request for information, including use of the Internet, is the most frequently used modus operandi by "closed countries" and may often be worded to appeal to cultural commonalities.
One recent Internet request, sent from a foreign entity to cleared U.S. contractors, was a blatant unsolicited request for references to military projects that use software tools for networked, real-time operating systems (airborne, space, missile, tactical, intelligence, etc.). In the request, the foreign entity acknowledged much of the information would probably be classified. He also acknowledged his foreign "military customer" was too...
