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."
Information wants to be free!
According to confidential law enforcement memos, he is also suspected of starting the "IN SOVIET RUSSIA" cliche.
This has a maximum punishment of 20 years of hard labor building beowulf clusters for Profit!
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
What he did is just as illegal as if I'd stolen a bunch of information on Magellan's tracking software to distribute or use for my company's navigation software. This doesn't appear to be a case where the technology was reverse engineered and published by that means, which should be protected.
You'll note that this is not being described as a DMCA case, but as industrial espionage. And if it's true and he's convicted, he should go to jail like all the other white-collar criminals who do this.
Mitnick finally gets out of jail, Skylov gets amnesty, and now I gotta endure all the "FREE SEREBRYANY" sigs on Slashdot. When will the madness stop?!
Why is it that everyone at slashdot feels like they have the rights to any information that is out there?
This person stole technology plans while working at a law firm. He didn't reverse engineer, he stole. This is illegal and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. This is not a case of our rights being stepped on. This is a case of the rights of a company to trust that when they disclose something to a law firm that it won't end up all over the internet.
Yet anoher example of the weakest link in security being the human link.
I've followed DirecTv's skirmishes with hackers for a few years and have always believed that Dave's (DirecTV / NDS) house of cards would crumble from the inside. It's simply a matter of how many people have access to the keys.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
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.
Serebryany obtained the documents while working part-time at a law firm in California that performed legal work for DirecTV.
I'm -sure- they had to have had a non-disclosure agreement in place, especially working with a law firm. They guy broke the law and stole coroprate trade secrets. He should be arrested.
Now if he'd bought himself a DirecTV receiver and reverse-engineered the thing himself, and then got arrested, I'd scream "foul!". But come on... this is no Dmitry Skylarov case. This sounds like a case working the way the law should work.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
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.
New headline: "Dumbass Gets Caught"
Never confuse volume with power.
Since he obtained the documents working for a law firm, and I have a hard time believing a law firm wouldn't make an employee sign an NDA, this guy should fry.
No sympathy for those that distribute trade secrets. Intellectual property is far too valuable to ignore cases like this.
My 2.5 cents.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
Good grief, it says right in the article that he worked for a lawfirm that handled DirectTV legal issues. He had access to these documents because of his job.
The only issue is which law he was arrested for breaking. It is the toughest of such laws and is meant for people that take these actions with the intention of monetary benefit. He didn't benefit monetarily. However, the law apparently also says that you can't give trade secrets to anyone else that will benefit from them monetarily either. So there is the assumption that he gave it to people that will use it for monetary benefit.
He broke a law and deserves to be arrested. Did they choose the right law? That's for a jury to decide.
As a few other posters have already said, it looks like this kid just straight-up stole information DirecTV. That's illegal in any country, and I'm going to say he'll probably be treated nicer than he would be had he gotten caught in a number of other countries.
What's funny is that Slashdot is reporting this as a YRO article... I'm pretty sure industrial espionage isn't on anyone's list of rights...
Take a deep breath and read the story before going off here (unlike the editors who post these stories)...
The guy *worked* for a legal company that had access to sensitive company documents. He *stole* the documents, then released them to the underground web sites.
This was not some clever hacker sitting in a basement and figuring a bunch of stuff out with a soldering iron in one hand and scope probes in the other.
How would you feel if some clerk at your university office did the same thing with your class transcripts? Some waiter posted your charge card number? Some guy at the help desk of your ISP sold your email account and password to a company that writes spammer distribution programs?
There are legitimate issues with the DCMA and similar legislation and common law that *really need* to be hammered out. Waving guys like this around as "little guy getting stuck by the man" is the *worst* thing we can do for sensible legislation.
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
Right. So in essence, instead of going to jail for being an obvious criminal dumbass, he's going to jail for being a dumbass with nothing to show for it.
Never confuse volume with power.
What does a teenager committing brazen theft have to do with My Rights Online?
I'm not trying to troll here, but this shit is tiring after awhile. The fact that this is listed under YRO is some laughable shit. Committing a crime is committing a crime. I don't care how intelligent you had to be to do it or if you used your linux box or you put an advanced knowledge of computing into it, it's still a crime. I'm so sick of all of these people on /. thinking that if someone breaks the law, but they do it in a really bitching way using technology, or the crime itself revolves around technology, then that person should be elevated to the status of a hero.
If 5 years from now, cars became so computer controlled that you could literally hack into them and steal them, then drive them remotely, and some guy did this, it shames me to say that it would make a YRO article and we would be called to arms to defend this obvious victim from the slings and arrows of the cruel and unjust American justice system.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
"What would have happened if Henry Ford had not come up with standardized parts"
Well, nothing really, because he didn't. Sam Colt did.
Other things Henry Ford didn't come up with include the car, the assembly line and mass production.
He was a strong believer in trade secrets though, and the sort of guy who wouldn't hire lawyer if you stole one from him. He was more inclined to hire a thug to beat your head in with a baseball bat.
He was also a primary participant in one of the longest, nastiest and expesive patent busting cases in American history.
Go figure.
KFG
Well, maybe not *that* big, but ABC News is reporting that he actually worked for a digital IMAGING company that was contracted out by the law firm to create digital copies of these sensitive docs. Adjust arguments appropriately knowing that he didn't work for the law firm.
Sometimes it helps to search for alternative versions of the story.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Lots of people are saying "He broke the law, so fry him", but you don't really mean that, because the consensus around here is that some folks who break some laws (i.e. bad laws, laws we don't like) are heroes who don't deserve frying. But this law is a law preventing theft, and since we all agree that theft is bad, and we don't want our stuff stolen, we basically like this law.
But in this case, what he stole was a description of technology that is going to be used to stifle the flow of information. Somebody could argue that this property doesn't deserve to be protected from theft, and that anybody who steals from the information-rich to give to the information-poor doesn't deserve to be punished.
If this doesn't prove that the law is bad in general, it proves that this application of this law is protecting an unjust institutionalized system of information as property, when information isn't and shouldn't be treated as property.
If you treat this as an act of civil disobedience, in the style of MLK, then let the system arrest and punish the guy, so that the system reveals its own injustice to anybody who happens to be watching.
I'm not sure I buy it myself, but I think it is a serious argument to consider, and so I'll throw it out there, since nobody else seems to be.
You can find good info on the DirecTV hacking scene at PirateDen and HackP4.
A lot of these people are ligit suscribers to DirecTV service. They see this as a game, release files to the public and see what Dave counters with. Its your typical hacker scene, more about bragging rights than free TV.
That is not to say it hasnt caused a black market to spring up. There are lots of scammers out there trying to rip people off. Just search eBay or Google for HU 3m some time.
Str8Dog
using System.Darkside; public
in my day we had to actually work to crack a system. social engineering, scopes, reverse engineering. Not kids today, they just steal the documantation and call themselves hackers.grumble grumble, mutter, wheez
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A common pattern in the threads below is a sense of incredulity that something other than civil remedies are available for misappropriation of a trade secret. Criminal responsibility for trade secret theft is actually quite common, and there are statutes in most states addressing same.
Usually, DA's have better things to do than to prosecute causes for which civil remedies provide adequate deterrence, relying instead on the private actions to keep honest folks honest. But every now and then, civil remedies fail to adequately encourage good behavior -- particularly when the defendant is effectively judgment-proof -- and a state attorney may decide to try to get someone's attention.
At any rate, the Economic Espionage Act is simply a Federal law against theft of trade secrets. The remedies are tougher than most analogous state laws, but so are the reqirements. No doubt, the language is somewhat different from uniform acts, but it is hardly anything new or special -- and chances are that if it weren't applicable, one or more state laws would also be relevant.
Here's why this may be about your rights...
This is about the disclosure of a trade secret by an employee of an employee of a company being prosecuted as if it were an act of industrial espionage by a person employed by a foreign power in order to harm the U.S. industrial base relative to foreign competition.
There are several problems here:
1) We don't know if he had legal access to these documents, prior to the disclosure, in the course of his normal work responsibilities, as assigned by his employer.
2) We don't know if he's the original discloser, or if, assuming he did *not* have legitimate access, the original discloser was someone who left a CDROM sitting in the lunch room, instead of maintaining physical control over the information, as required by due dilligence... making them the discloser.
3) Trade Secrets have no constitutional protection. This is on purpose. To obtain constitutional protection, you have to file a patent, and agree to lose that protection after the patent expires. The lack of protection is intentional, to encourage disclosure.
If he went out of his way to steal the documents, that's one thing. If it's simple disclosure, however. which seems likely, then the amount of recourse is (intentionally) limited to damages to the company, recoverable from him personally.
In any case, now that the information is disclosed, it's disclosed: it's in the public domain. The company has the right (in the U.S.) to file patent, up to a year following first public disclosure. Foreign patents, except for Japan, are now impossible -- if they weren't imposssible as software patents everywhere else (except Japan, again), anyway.
Personally, I doubt he had to violate the law to obtain the information, and I doubt that he profitted from the disclosure, and I doubt foreign companies will profit from the disclosure. So this is a likely an attempt to bludgeon him for the disclosure, using an inappropriate law.
On the other hand, it's likely that no one will hire him for an NDA position, ever again, even if he didn't violate NDA through the disclosure (by being a person who picked up a CDROM that was not dilligently stored or protected by someone else). That's as it should be.
In any case...
The reason that makes this about your rights, is that Trade Secrets are not Constitutionally entitled to the level of preotection that is being attempted to be enforced in this case.
We should be wary of any attempts to increase legal protections for Trade Secrets, without some benefit to society, in trade (and that's what Patents and Copyrights are intended to do). Permitting a company to obtain (in effect) patent protection without the disclosure required for patent protection is simply wrong.
-- Terry