Illicit activities of Royal Dutch Shell snared in NSA surveillance programs?

It would be ironic if Shell, a company that was publicly exposed for engaging in spying, undercover activities and dirty tricks operations against its perceived enemies, such as Greenpeace and John Donovan, are exposed again, this time by government secret surveillance programs.

By Washington Observer

Over the last year or so there have been a number of revelations about the telecom data collection capabilities of the National Security Agency and how those capabilities have been used – see informative Washington Post article index facility: “NSA Secrets.”

We shall presume that given the treaty arrangements between the US and the UK (and Canada, New Zealand, and Australia) that the British Secret Service is also involved in similar activities and that there is a great deal of cooperation between the agencies.

For companies like Royal Dutch Shell this poses an interesting conundrum. Shell is notorious (as are other companies) for flaunting the law (within limits, of course) when they believe there is much to be gained financially, politically, etc. Most recently we have seen allegations that Shell has engaged for over a decade in a conspiracy to fix the international price of crude oil. BP, StatOil, JP Morgan and others were named as co-conspirators.

Reaching back into the relatively recent past, the US Dept. of Defense also confirmed that Shell was or had been under investigation for allegedly conspiring to violate US espionage laws by targeting classified technologies.

What is now clear however, is that any telecom conversations between US Shell Oil Co employees/management and their hirelings and co-conspirators were swept up by NSA and recorded. It would be a safe bet that they have been placed in some sort of permanent storage for retrieval as needed. It is also a safe bet that the email and telecom conversation of anyone ‘targeted’ by Shell and their co-conspirators were also probably monitored and recorded.

I am not a legal expert on the type of surreptitiously captured communications that may be used in any legal proceedings, but I would guess they could be used in the case involving the US Dept. of Defense.

In any event, it seems to me that it would be wise to presume that NSA’s diligent efforts at tracking down terrorists (and criminals) may mean that Royal Dutch Shell and others could have some serious legal trouble ahead of them in the future.

It would be ironic if Shell, a company that was publicly exposed for engaging in spying, undercover activities and dirty tricks operations against its perceived enemies, such as Greenpeace and John Donovan, are exposed again, this time by government secret surveillance programs.

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