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Apple Accuses Worker of Leaks
booboothefoo writes "A former Apple Computer contract worker in Sacramento has been slapped with both civil and criminal charges for allegedly
leaking Apple's trade secrets on the Internet." I think the real message here is "don't trust contractors." Or maybe "rumor sites are evil." Or maybe "Setec Astronomy."
"Setec Astronomy" = anagram("Too Many Secrets");
Employee signs NDA. Employee breaks NDA. Employer gets mad. This is news?
Illegitimi non Carborundum.
Contract workers being treated like shit?! when did this happen? good lord. breaking news to be sure.
It's not as if they're suing a rumors site or going after someone saying bad things about them. This guy signed an NDA -- a real live legal contract, you'll note, not some click-though thing of arguable validity, or something that can only be enforced by twisting the DMCA in strange ways. He then proceeded to blatantly violate that NDA. This lawsuit is completely legitimate -- any company in Apple's position would do the same.
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As a contractor, you have to be an idiot to leak stuff: who'll hire you in the future, especially if you're a Macintosh specialist...
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I am a contractor for Volt, at Apple, in Sacramento, this guy did violate the NDA, and if you have ever worked here, thats a big big no-no, you don't leak confidential information, there are markers everywhere, he didn't do it on accident, and he should get in trouble for it, I can't comment on how big a fight they are putting against him, but he did mess up, and thats the consequences.
and to the guy talking about 'ripping off BSD code and selling it for Millions' Apple GIVES AWAY DARWIN under open source guidelines, and it works on PC's and on Mac's, they only 'sell' the Quartz interface (the one WE developed), quit bitching, they give it away, they aren't ripping it off, its a superior product, its free, they used it, this is what SHOULD be happening, Microsoft is a different story.
What a great movie. It dealt with information security before most people understood what it was... and explained digitial encryption in way most people could understand.
Whistler: Cryptography systems are based on math problems so complex that they can't be solved without a key.
They also explained why being able to easily solve just one of those problems would render all encryption based on the same problem (Long factorials, anyone?) moot. We're coming up against this with Quantum technology. While it will provide encryption that can't be broken, all previous encryption will be pretty easily brute-forced with even a relatively weak quantum computer.
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I would be ...
I think the fact they brought cival and criminal charges against him proves they didn't skip over the justice system they just leveraged the crap out of it.
Information might want to be free. But I think people respect that a promise is a promise, and if you say you are going to keep a secret then break that promise you deserve whatever you get.
Just because information WANTS to be free, doesn't mean it SHOULD be freed at first opportunity. That (overused) quote really means "once information is out it is gone", not that sometimes it's not possible to keep information secret for some time, just that it is hard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's pretty open-and-shut.
He took digital photographs of the new motherboard and case (and his workshop surrounding it) and sent them to a rumors site. He also posted a PDF with specs.
A little work with the background of the photos, the IP address of the forum poster, and the list of people with access to the models probably led Apple straight to him.
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Irrelivant. It doesn't matter what your competitors do with the leaked information. That makes as much difference as defending the willful violation of someone's copyright by saying that you didn't make any money doing it.
What matters is that this information was a secret and he signed an agreement to keep those secrets. The law doesn't care what Dell would or would not do with the leaked information. The law only cares that confidential information was leaked.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Apple computers largely aren't built by employees, contract or otherwise, of Apple. Apples are assembled by people who work for a large temporary workforce agency (Volt).
Apple decided years ago to dump the overhead, both both legal and financial, associated with having a manufacturing labor force on their payroll. People who build Apples have a job and get paid only when Apple's inventory is down and they need to build some units.
How strongly attached would you feel to Apple if you got a call Monday morning at 6AM telling you to report to the factory - with no certainty that you'd have a job for the entire week. Or if that phone call doesn't come at all and you need money for rent.
Or, when at noon, they blow the whistle and say "that's it, everybody go home, and don't come back tomorrow". Remember, you don't get paid for hours you're not actually on the assembly line.
The pay for assembling Apples is about the same as for flipping cheeseburgers but without the security of knowing that you'll probably have a job next week.
This is "A Good Thing" for Apple because they don't have all that foolishness of hiring people for real jobs, paying them benefits, wondering what to do with them when production requirements slow, or taking accounting hits for layoffs.
The net of it is that Apples are to some large extent built by people who are willing to get along making a few bucks now and again, and who don't feel any loyalty to Apple or their products.
Is it any suprise that they leak information?
Setec Astronomy:
"cooty's rat semen"
"too many secrets"
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
And it's not legally binding if you do that -- if you don't point out the changes then there's no contract whatsoever.
And don't think this gets you off the hook... because you've now attempted to enter into a contract under bad faith, and/or attempted to defraud, and their lawyer is going to eat you for breakfast.
IANAL, and so some of the above may be offbase, but I doubt it's far offbase.