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Comment by jacekm | Hacker News Reader

Competition will love to have a look at this data but obviously they won't announce it to the whole world that they are digging through the files. One day Airbus will build a new plane before Boeing or just win a lucrative contract and we will never know whether this happened naturally or because of the knowledge they got from this data.

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Airbus won't touch this data with a 90ft pole. Their lawyers will make sure of that, as even just downloading it opens them up to tons of lawsuits.

The ones looking at this will be China, Russia and their associates that don't care about (Western) law.

Airbus is not a person but a company. Of course some of the employees will look at this data. They will all pretend that they dont but companies pay for industry secrets why would they stay away from free ones.

To be fair, 60s tech is widely known and Boeing would profit much more from Airbus tech than the other way around.

Let's not even bring project Echelon into this..

I didn’t know that Boeing was making carbon fiber wide bodies like the 787 back in the 60s…

Random low-level employees looking at stuff out of curiosity won't have the power or even the motive to act on that data.

For higher-level people it really just isn't worth the risk, unless there's some incredibly valuable secret.

For what you don't want your direct employees to do, you can always hire a contractor who will do the dirty job and give you the (in this case literal) TL;DR.

You can download it securely and anonymously. There is no way to find out.

Actually, the French government intelligence agency is famous for IP theft. This one is placed at their feet.

that doesn't matter. if an employee were to read it and perhaps glimpse some trade secret and include that, even inadvertently into a future product, that could open them up for litigation.

Why wouldn't Airbus not look into it, Boeing has often acted agressive in getting US government to put tariffs on Airbus.

Rumor has it airbus used to have a secure cabinet of Boeing analysis data that people would go reference once in a while in the 90s but I doubt that happens anymore

That will be the guidance from the legal department for sure. and I would hope most bigwigs would know this without being told.

If however, a completely separate company, perhaps in a different country, that has no business associations with Airbus in any manner, and there will never exists payments between Boeing and this company went through all of it would be no problem.

If a specific bigwig later on received among photos and videos, a steganographic encrypted document whilst visiting an anonymous sex site then read it and deleted it, nobody would ever know. (lest someone talks, always the human factor)

I made up all of the second paragraph. Companies specializing in what i described over to exist. They are not of course limited to ransomware leaks.

YES

If you are under defense industry rules, viewing data is generally on a Need-To-Know basis. For any data that is classified, or CUI (Controlled Unclassified Information), EVEN IF that data becomes publicly available, it is illegal to view it.

Now, I'm sure if a headline came up in a Google search you wouldn't get busted, but if you go ahead and download it, that is at least putting your ability to continue working with classified/CUI at risk.

So yes, it's a hot potato which no one (smart) in the civilized democratic world will touch.

What would Airbus learn from it?

How to shoot yourself in the foot with bad management?

(On the other hand maybe some other company's board went through the docs, hmm)

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