1996 Economic Espionage Act and DirectTV

Pharmboy writes "The Register reports a 19 year old will plead guilty to the 1996 Economic Espionage Act for giving away DirectTV secrets, even though they admit he did not pirate the service or profit from the theft." See our original story on this case.

Comments

DirecTV Secrets

[Bearded Pear Shaped]

Yes gentlemen
Thank you all for coming here today
The bidding for these DIRECTV SECRETS
Will begin at

ONE MILLION DOLLARS

MUAH HA HA HA

No, spice network is extra.

Put him in jail

[possible]

The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 doesn't require that the defendant benefit from the act of espionage, it refers to the benefit of "any foreign government, foreign instrumentality, or foreign agent". That's worded specifically to include foreign companies. It doesn't even matter what your intent was, if you knew (or should have known) that your act of espionage would benefit them, then you have violated this law.

And let's be clear -- this WAS an act of corporate espionage. He knowingly stole trade secrets from his work and posted them online. Put him in jail, and any hippies who think what he did was right, you can go join him.

Theft is theft

[SwissCheese]

So what he didn't profit or use the service, he still illegally obtained trade secrets and distributed them to those who would try and profit, or at least enabled those who are trying to steal service. Now he's caught and is being punished. The lesson learned here: Actions lead to Consequences.

Kids are wacky

[L. VeGas]

It may or may not be true that information wants to be free, but it is definitely true that 19 year-old kids want to do stupid things.

What were the secrets?

[Joe the Lesser]

It was in the form of a memo:

To: CEO of DirectTV
From: Quality Assurance Engineer
Re: Our service

CEO,

I regret to inform you that our product is inferior, and should not be purchased. I pray no one gets wind of this discovery.

~QA

Excellent

[dmadole]

I'm all for this.

This case should not be confused with an independent person doing a "clean room" reverse engineering of the technology. This person was in a position of trust and violated that trust by stealing something that didn't belong to him.

It's irrelevant that he did not profit from this. The cost to DirecTV is the same whether he used the information himself or passed it on to someone else who did.

Why is this in YRO again? What rights online does this concern?

Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

It is really ironic that this is happening when the parent company of DirecTV at the time was busy giving away secrets regarding American rocket technology to the Chinese.

Impacts?
Giving away a hack to a TV box: Lost revenues for a satellite company.
Giving away high tech secrets: Future possibility of incoming with a payload carried by our own technology.

Which is really a worse outcome?

He shouldn't go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a law that was designed to prevent foreign companies from conducting espionage on American companies. Courts are supposed to (and generally do) take into account the intent of a law when they are overseeing a case. Stopping copyright infringement was not the intent of this law.

This was a case of *civil* law. Criminal law shouldn't be involved. He violated his employer's trust, which is a civil matter.

Do you know why they didn't pursue it in civil court? I would imagine that it is because they weren't damaged by his actions. (Because their system was good enough that people couldn't break it even with the information that he leaked.) They would therefore be unable to land a serious verdict, so they went the criminal way. And the US government went along with it, as it does.