Slashdot Mirror
Russian Student Arrested For Revealing DirecTV Secrets
An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press is reporting the arrest of Igor Serebryany, 19, of Los Angeles for industrial espionage under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. Serebryany is accused of providing details of DirecTVs 'P4' card technology to a number of websites."
Does it need to be HIS economic benefit? If not then the sites he gave it to benefitted. Why aren't they introuble for recieving stolen merchandise?
I don't think we have all the facts here. Unless I'm missing something.
What I want to know is how did he get the information in the first place
RTFA!
"Serebryany obtained the documents while working part-time at a law firm in California that performed legal work for DirecTV."
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
It prohibits anyone from disclosing trade secrets for economic benefit, and carries penalties in this case up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Although investigators acknowledge that Serebryany apparently didn't profit from the disclosures, the law bars giving away secrets for anyone else's economic benefit.
For those of you with no knowledge of american culture.. "Fry him" often just means "send him up the creek". Calm down kids.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
what's so amazing about this "P4" techonology that no one has been able to crack it yet? Has it only been on the market a week? Or is it just really that good?
The HU cards still work and the P4 cards are still relatively rare (they've been around for ~6 months, but only come with really new recievers or in the mail if your HU card gets fried), so there hasn't been much time spent on cracking them yet. If it seems like they're going to turn off the HU data stream, you can bet your ass that some hotshot DirecTV cracker out there would figure out how to crack the P4 stuff.
Here is 18 U.S.C. sec. 1831 for your own eyes, but it looks like he only had to "know" that it would benefit a foreign gov't, agent, or instrumtality. To me I think the intent of this statute is to prevent espionage of the overseas variety, but good lawyers make their money fleshing out the grey areas like this when it's the person that is foreign. Who knows if he wanted to benefit foreign gov'ts; to my mind I think he just wanted free DirecTV. DirecTV has just been plagued by these hacked cards so long, I think the reason they're bringing charges under sec.1831 is they've done some serious lobbying to help bring out the big guns to make an example of some people now.
here's the statutory goodness...
1831. Economic espionage
(a) In General.-- Whoever, intending or knowing that the offense will benefit any foreign government, foreign instrumentality, or foreign agent, knowingly--
(1) steals, or without authorization appropriates, takes, carries away, or conceals, or by fraud, artifice, or deception obtains a trade secret:
(2) without authorization copies, duplicates, sketches, draws, photographs, downloads, uploads, alters, destroys, photocopies, replicates, transmits, delivers, sends, mails, communicates, or conveys a trade secret:
(3) receives, buys, or possesses a trade secret, knowing the same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or converted without authorization:
(4) attempts to commit any offense described in any of paragraphs (1) through (3); or
(5) conspires with one or more other persons to commit any offense described in any of paragraphs (1) through (4), and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of conspiracy.
shall, except as provided in subsection (b), be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both.
(b) ORGANIZATIONS.- Any organization that commits any offense described in subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $10,000,000.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
What exactly makes obtaining trade secrets through reverse engineering alright, but doing so by reading documents in a lawyer's office illegal?
The same thing that makes trade secrets a valid method of Intellectual Property protection only until the secret is disclosed. Once word about a trade secret is out you have no legal recourse. Presumably if the information were worthy of legal protection, the company that 'owned' it would get a patent on it. Since they did not, the information is only proprietary to them until somebody else figures it out. If somebody else discovers the secret through reverse engineering, the company the trade secret no longer has any legal protection. Even in this case, DirecTV can prosecute this guy, but afterward they are still without their trade secret. The prosecution will be for how he obtained and distributed it, not that he obtained and distributed it. It's not the knowledge or the distribution of the knowledge that makes this illegal, but solely the method through which the knowledge was obtained that makes it illegal.
What is illegal is that he obtained this information that is a trade secret of DirectTV.
This is where you were misguided. The only thing that protects a trade secret is that it's a secret. Once the secret is out there's no more protection. If the secret gets out because DirecTV implemented said secret and sold the product on the market than all that's protecting the secret is the obcurity of their implementation. It's perfectly legal to try and figure out how something you own works, and once you know how it works the trade secret isn't a secret anymore.
Yes, it was industrial espionage, yes he deserves to go to jail, etc. etc., but all he had to do was to sit on the information for a few months until his job expired and then release it through an anonymous remailer in Norway.
As a guy sitting in Canada, who is not allowed to subscribe to Direct TV, we have to pirate it to watch the Sopranos on HBO. And it annoys me that this guy could have been of huge assistance if he just held things close to his chest and then released them after a few months when he was long gone from the firm.
By the way, for those who care: the Canadian government originally said that Canadians could watch Direct tv all they wanted because DTV didn't have a licence to broadcast here. Now the supreme court has said "Nope" because although they don't have a licence here, it's "wrong" but we still aren't allowed to subscribe because DTV doesn't have sufficient Canadian contend.
So now approximately 200,000 Canadians have been made criminals in one stroke of a pen.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
"What would have happened if Henry Ford had not come up with standardized parts"
Well, nothing really, because he didn't. Sam Colt did.
Nope, Eli Whitney invented interchangeable parts. There's a very famous story of him demonstrating the concept to president Adams and the secretary of war, who awarded him a contract for 10,000 muskets in 1798.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's good of you to be helpful by explaining that "fry him", in this case, does not mean "kill him". However, note that you have replaced one weird American idiom with another ("send him up the creek").
To anyone still confused: in this case, it's likely that the original poster simply meant that the justice system should show the alleged stealer of secrets no mercy--that they should prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. It's doubtful that the original poster meant that they should electrocute the alleged thief.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Since [h]e wasn't a lawyer, but rather was in the employ of a lawyer, is it possible for him to violate attorney-client privilege (I honestly don't know)?
The correct answer is "it depends on which state we are talking about." Basic agency/principal law would say that the action of the lawyer's employee would reflect on the lawyer himself/herself, and the disclosure is a clear violation of the canons of virtually every state of the Union. The devil is in the details of the Codes of Conduct of the State Bar Association.
One thing is virtually certain: that lawyer is going to have a very bad start to 2003.
IANAL -- I am not a lawyer
Check out this link. Note that it says
Now, this is Arizona-specific, but I suspect it is similar to other states.Bruce
Bruce Perens.
http://www.asu.edu/counsel/brief/privilege.html. Sorry!
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
>The big dishes have been using a system that has been uncrackable since the day it was introduced with much noise from the underground claiming it'll be cracked in days... weeks... months... um... someone??
;-) stupid supreme court...
:) It still isn't particularly popular, though.
I thought VC was cracked surprisingly fast -- seems to me it was something like a year after it was released, maybe less (I wasn't doing any of this stuff then -- too young). I have a few 018 rev boxes with the extra work done to them sitting about the house... Not that I'm allowed to use the damn things.
VC-II+ is cracked too, but the people who did it have no interest in releasing any product or plans (yes, feel free to call BS on that one -- it really doesn't matter much anymore).
Anyways, VC was never popular with most consumers (probably due to the fact that nobody wanted a BUD in their backyard). I think about 1-million boxes were sold, which isn't much considering that was for all of North America.
Anyways, the satellite piracy industry has matured, IMHO, to the point where there's very little chance a worthwhile signal will go uncracked. The money to be made is simply too high for the top-tier people to just tuck tail and go home...
The only consumer signal I know of in North America that remains untouched is StarChoice's, since they use DigiCipher... It seems like pirates don't want to touch that with a 10 ft. pole (probably for VERY good reasons
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC