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Space Shuttle Spy Gets 15 Years
goG writes "A Chinese-born engineer was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for hoarding sensitive information about the US space shuttle with the intent of giving it to China. US District Judge Cormac Carney called Chung's crimes a matter of national security, saying he had committed a breach against the trust Boeing and the country had placed in him. Attorney Greg Staples said, 'The [People's Republic of China] is bent on stealing sensitive information from the United States and shows no sign of relenting. Only strong sentences offer any hope of dissuading others from helping the PRC get that technology.' Staples also 'noted in sentencing papers that Chung amassed a personal wealth of more than $3 million US while betraying his adopted country.'"
If only the shuttle was run by Google, they'd have a better chance of gaining access...
You can't trust the Chinese.
Send him to Gitmo, then death penalty. No New York trials. He's a spy, stealing information that can be used against us. When are we going to acknowledge that we are at (cyber) war with China, have been for years, and start acting accordingly?
Letting China waste billions of dollars building one of those money sinks, plus $700 million per launch, would probably be the worst thing we could do to them.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He's 74 years old, he'll never see the end of this sentence. He lived what appears to be a good life living in the country he was betraying (about 3M worth of good life from TFA). His nursing home arrangements are less than desirable but he'll still have better care than many seniors in this country.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
fleet of Burans, that should keep them busy for the next decade.
It might even give us a chance to roll out a new heavy launcher before the rest of the planet :(
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Shuttle tech *IS* out dated, from the '70's
If its the current one in use don't see the problem really, all the tech in it is like what 20 years old?
In my opinion it would be a better for everyone if public-funded research bodies like NASA( and the equivalent in every other country) made their non defense-related information freely available to all anyway.
China won't consider 15 years a strong sentence when they're happy to execute people left right and centre.
How sensitive can that technology be when we're retiring the space shuttle soon and have no replacements past the drawing board stage?
...but I've known quite a few Chinese Americans, both from the mainland and from Taiwan, who despite having become citizens here seem to be more concerned about their former homeland than their new one. I remember when the American spy plane had the collision with the Chinese fighter jet in 2001, almost every Chinese person I knew, despite being US citizens, was adamant that the US should apologize. During the Tibet unrest, many Chinese Americans I know accused the US media of bias--begging the question why they care so much about how China is portrayed if they're now Americans. Maybe this is no different than past waves of immigrants, and maybe it's no different than some Jewish Americans (even born here) who show more support for Israel than they do for the US. It's also no different than Muslim immigrants to Europe who show more allegiance to their religion and the ummah than their adopted nations. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if anyone else had any thoughts or experiences in this matter. In short, in today's world, what are the real loyalties of an immigrant population? This story obviously shows one--money--but the question is whether there's anything beyond that.
In many countries spying results in the death penalty, why not in this case? Spying is a grevious crime against one's country and has been handled by the death penalty across countless cultures since before recorded history. For that matter, if your in a position of trust (vs just sneaking around) than it isn't spying, but treason. With a sentence of 15 years we appear to be weak, not strong from the eyes of someone who could consider the crime.
Certainly a spy that was caught by China would receive the death penalty, so nothing new there. Nothing against the Chinese (vs another nationality), but this business of pandering to foreign governments that spy against us has got to end.
I say let him go and let China do something with the plans if they so wish. Its not as if the shuttle program is continuing after this last flight or that NASA is going to do anything useful with the plans, other than let them gather dust or get lost. They don't have much of a budget anymore to even create a suitable replacement at this point. As a fan of the shuttle (despite the cost issues), it would be nice to see someone wasting their money on keeping the dream alive.
I know this is probably not a popular viewpoint in the USA, but I just want someone to get us to the moon again, somehow in my lifetime.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Judge Carney is being very short sighted if he expects that this "strong sentence" will dissuade people from stealing technology and giving it to China. I would be less likely to want to steal secrets from the Chinese Government because, if caught, I could be tortured and subject to unthinkable brutality. Note that this is not a suggestion that we implement torture. But another slashdotter noted that Chung's retirement in Federal Prison will give him better healthcare options than many Americans that have been good, law-abiding citizens will have access to. And, these Americans have worked hard for all of their lives. Honestly, a better punishment would be to strip Chung of his citizenship and deport him to China and finally to sanction the Chinese Government.
It's interesting that as much as we Americans deride the terrible space shuttle, only the Russians were able to build anything like it, but only the Americans were ever able to operate one.
Kinda makes you wonder, that, if we are not going back to the moon, can we at least keep these shuttles flying, or gasp, build a more modern one. I mean, the whole point of the new NASA way is to perfect in orbit assembly, and it seems we're kinda doing that now with the space shuttle and...
maybe we just need to make a new space shuttle that can be boosted farther into deep space, if we need to.
This is my sig.
Am I the only one who thinks the $3M remark is a red herring?
Treason is treason regardless of how much money you make doing it. He should swing for this, treason still has the death penalty.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
The Chinese government wants to promote their own agenda. Let them do so using their own advances, not by stealing the advances built by cultures which actually encourage advance.
Let the culture which reveres "ancient wisdom" prove its value by using feng shui to launch their space vehicles.
George W Bush borrowed quite a bit of money from China to finance his war in Iraq, we are still borrowing money from China, why shouldn't they be able to take what they want from this country? If you have an issue with what I have said then flip the roles and see what you think, then ask "Why are we borrowing money from China?"
Tough times are here and staying for a while, I would rather have tough times with little or no debt than tough times with massive debt.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A Chinese-born engineer was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for hoarding sensitive information aboard the US space shuttle with the intent of giving it to China.
In my opinion it would be a better for everyone if public-funded research bodies like NASA( and the equivalent in every other country) made their non defense-related information freely available to all anyway.
While I agree with you in principle, where do we draw the line on defense-related technologies? The technology used in the shuttle program, while dated, still has several potential military applications.
I heard on the radio that after the final shuttle mission NASA will be selling off the shuttles. Why try to smuggle out the information when you can just buy the shuttle outright and reverse engineer the entire thing in your own country?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
A funny thing happened in the 60's during the development of Concorde, the USSR was of course spying on the Europeans as they were also workin gon their supersonic Tupolev. One of the (numerous) big issues was that of the rubber with which to make the tyres, as it had to be solid enough to resist the speed and whatnot. In a documentary from 99, one of the European engineers said they had noticed spies collecting material on runways after tests, so they created a sort of unusable goo and pasted it on the runways for them to collect. He said he'd have given anything to see the Russians' faces while trying to make sense of the stuff to create tyres with it...
You are scaring me...
Ahh nothing gets a people's mind off their own corruption and failing nation like a good old fashion cold war.
People are easily united against a common foe.
Nothing like calling up China and saying, "Hey that Cold War thing with Russia was real good for the economy. Wanna play the bad guy for a generation or two?"
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
AFAIU US is not going to build more of them. Let it replicate by the chinese, they can test i a few times and when it find you buy it back for 1/4 of the price it cost you to build it in the US. Works for iphones, thinkpads, should also work for shuttles. Even better: Develop the next generation together with china.
If it'll help launch a new space race, I'm almost for letting them have it all.
I want to see the Chinese do something completely wild, like launch an 180-day orbit mission to Mars or something, completely blowing away anyone's expectations of what they're able to do, a la 2010.
That'll restart the space race.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
lol wut
If he were an American using torrents to distribute those plans he'd have gotten 20 years instead, but only because the MPAA would have sued him instead claiming the shuttles were used in several movie scenes.
This is a real question:
Was there any proof for the allegations?
All I could take from the article was that he took lots of material home. I do not read anything about a proof for giving the information to China, or receiving money for it for that matter.
They should have given him the death penalty.
We should just sell the entire shuttle program to the highest bidder (the Chinese), including all the equipment and documents.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If the Chinese knockoff space shuttle is anything like the Rolex I bought in Tian Jin, then there's really nothing to see here. It will stop working as soon as it gets a little rain on it.
Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
love your country always, your government when it deserves it. simply as that.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
If China wants Shuttle technology, we should just sell it to em. We're not interested in using it.
Why is anything about the Space Shuttle secret in any case? Space projects should be open to the public and there shouldn't be any secrets. If the technology is secret the human species won't get much utility out of that huge spending.
Too bad that the use of spies is not at all part of Chinese "ancient wisdom."
"Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results."
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War. (6th century BC)
If your not cheating your not trying ... apparently that is true of the government too. Hey, lets stop buying their immoral cheap junk. Outside of voting your wallet, China doesn't care what we think anymore.
Everyone here gets 15 years for hoarding porn with intent to rape.
He said he wanted to write a book and that is the reason he borrowed the papers. Probably some jealous douches reported him as a spy.
Moreover, they take cases against individuals and term them into "examples" and provide so called justice and as such. If it was a company doing this they would probably would have gone scratch free and would be sent home with some bonuses, a couple of bailouts and a kiss on the bum.
I isn't really possible to "steer" the shuttle, except to a very limited extent by the OMS, and you mostly use those for reentry. The external tank is emptied out by the launch and then jettisoned. This is why there are launch windows when the shuttle is launched to meet up with the ISS, or the Hubble, etc. You don't just go blasting away like an Asteroids video game. You can probably shift your orbit 10 or 20 degrees to the left or right over the course of day or two, but that's about it.
Second, preparing the shuttle for launch is difficult, time consuming, and expensive, as opposed to just tying in a few numbers and pushing the button to launch a conventional ICBM. So you would only arm the Shuttle if nuclear war were imminent, and then it could easily be blasted while it was being set up.
Third, placement of weapons of mass destruction in space is prohibited by treaty. It would be pretty easy to detect violations, without even having any spies on the ground.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I would call just an another kind of money-making business. Much of it is self-directed with the intent to sell it to an agency or business, to sell it directly, or to start a business with it. I suspect this holds true for internet-hacking: lots of it is self-directed.
We are in a cold war. China has their money fixed to America's in spite of their treaty with us and their belonging to WTO. Likewise, they have higher trade barriers now, then when we first made the treaty with them. They are dumping products on the west, as well as subsidizing much of the production.
Add in that they are building up their military, but not in a defensive manner, but in Offensive. That will only work if you intend to attack. They are adding several different space stations. One is ran by their space agency. That agency is funded and controlled by their military. Though, it does have part of their information given out. BUT, they have another space station going up that will be MILITARY ONLY. Little info is given out about. The interesting part is that there is ZERO advantage to a military to have a person on space station UNLESS YOU HAVE WEAPONS that you want to use. Because it is so trivial to take out those stations, they are only of use in a first strike scenario.
China is in a cold war with the west. We are trying hard to avoid it, though to Obama's credit, he is slowly stepping up repercussions for CHina to continue this course. He is now taking actions against the dumping and the subsidiaries. A few cases have been denied but we have called China on more in the first year, than W did his entire 8 years. We are also a long ways away from what EU does, even though CHina does more dumping here than there.
Hopefully, China stops this reckless actions, but I doubt it.
Has everyone forgotten that, before 9/11, "news" organizations like Fox were banging the war drums against China. Then, when 9/11 happened, that all magically got put on the back burner. China was suddenly not such an immediate threat. Oh, and Pakistan was now our ally. Pakistan had *always* been our ally. Now, I guess people aren't as scared shitless of the terrorists as they were 8 years ago, so they have to bring up the China threat again.
Now, go back to bed America. Watch your mindless television and shut up. Your government is in control.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
To be precise, I work for an outsourced metal fab company, that works with digital part models created by BOEING.
(It should be obvious why I am posting as an AC)
I get to see fully articulated models of "Export controlled" military aircraft components, and accurate digital representations of military aircraft skins. (They are NURBS models, in case you were wondering, so they are accurate to the mathematically ideal level, which means you could derive radar profiles from the models if you were truly interested in doing so.)
All I would need to "Steal" this information is a USB pen drive, and some time.
Bureaucrats like to pretend that there are checks and balances in place to prevent this kind of data theft, but as far as I can tell, these checks and balances boil down to:
1) you must be a native born US citizen to review these documents
2) If you try this, you will probably go to jail.
3) Your odds of getting such cushy employment again (in the US) is pretty much guaranteed to be zero to 1.
otherwise, I could have half the damn BOEING MMA's (Multi Mission Aircraft-- essentially a highly versatile light bomber with cargo and troop transport capabilities; A modified 373. That much is public knowledge.) structural details in my personal possession by now.
Personally, I consider the "Chinese agent gets shuttle plans" to be a "So what, so do hundreds, if not thousands of other supply house workers."
The real story here, is why was a chinese national permitted in the engineering section? He should have failed the "native born" requirement for candidacy.
If you ask me, the BEST way to steal this information is to send a plant disguised as a poorly educated janitor.
Janitors have keys to every room in the building so that they can do their job. (emptying trash bins, sweeping floors, and cleaning toilets.)
All that would be required would be for them to wait until one of the engineering staff forgot to log off their terminal all the way (I have caught at least 3 repeat offenders in our own engineering department guilty of this crime), then "borrow" their session for a few hours while they replicated the agency's structural model repository onto an external USB hard drive. After that, you just place it into a harddrive archive case, wrap it in protective foam, and ship it off to your contact. Probably in the same night, using overnight air.
Doing this on second shift would be a cakewalk.
Finding a janitor that is disgruntled enough, and has sufficient tech savvy to pull this kind of stunt is pretty trivial as well. I know of at least one candidate right off; he's a friend of mine who is the janitor-man for a city hall in another state. He has MORE than enough technical savvy to pull it off. (He is a fellow technology enthusiast.)
Any boasting from the industrial giants that there are security protocols in place is not thinking things through the weakest link principle of security vantage point. As far as I can tell, this information might as well be public on the internet for all the security protection I see.
The US Constitution makes a successful prosecution for treason very difficult.
Article III. Section 3.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted. Article III
That's the best, one sentence global economic over view I have read. "China is spending money on its future, we are spending money from the future."
Nailed it. And I don't blame them for doing that, because our own domestic economic traitors handed that opportunity to them on a silver platter, the Chinese would have been 'tards to turn it down. It was completely logical what they did and are still doing, building up their own nation, "protecting" themselves, adding to their real economy, etc. Of course they would take that deal, free stuff. And how it happened is we let those wall street pirates and bribed off politicians cook this whole scheme up, then they hard sold it all over, to great success, they sold that con and got most to "believe" in it, and now they are extorting trillions in bailouts on top of that. *Extorting*.
The Chinese guy is sort of a spy, I'm not all that concerned about him because I imagine he is merely one of tens of thousands in a similar (barely hidden) tech transfer situation. Because that's been the business of the US since they started this con job, transfer as much manufacturing tech as possible.
The real economic and security damage has been from the short term mega profits crowd who destroyed, in a single generation, sold it off cheap for a fat skim, what it took multiple generations to build up in the US, all that wealth creation manufacturing infrastructure, all of it, from A to Z. All those value added jobs..all mostly poofed now, so multi millionaires could become billionaires and another flock of corrupt politicians could get re-re-re elected, so they could keep accepting more bribe money, all the time spouting off all these economic and social promises to the US people that they knew in advance could never be met. And they are still doing it, and tons of people asre still falling for that noise.
They sold this global wealth transference con with massive credit expansion, got almost everyone faked out that credit=produced wealth, like it is the same thing. Something to keep the peons amused while their bank accounts, retirement savings, etc all got evaporated away, and will continue to evaporate away.
On a small scale they call it corporate raiding. A hostile take over, sell off all the assets cheap, gut the workforce, etc. Massive short term profits are the result, wall street loves it, politicians love it, they all get rewarded for their "hard work" of gutting companies, then they bail out with golden parachutes, leaving a company in mostly name only. Everyone has seen this happen and knows exactly what that is.
But do the exact same thing on an entire national scale, all of a sudden there's this mass blindfold gets slapped on, people *refuse* to see the situation for what it is, go into complete denial over it, claim it is something other than that. We are supposed to believe these national scale wall street/ DC politician corporate raiders that what they are doing isn't corporate raiding. They just call it something else and say it is a "good deal".
They have been saying that for near 25 years now, and if it WAS such a good deal, why all the recent economic meltdown? Could it be, that manufacturing really is the big kahuna when it comes to creating real wealth, and not phony IOU and credit crap so called "wealth"? I say yes, it is. And we let them crooks sell it off cheap for their fat middleman skims, now we are seriously hosed, and are borrowing against our future generations, which is a pure bogus abomination, we should have never had to do that. It wasn't necessary until we let them sell off/transfer all that good tech and generations of hard work and massive investment in R&D.
This is what happens when the corporate culture gives employees tacit approval to conduct such scams.
Have gnu, will travel.
Much of that same tech is for use in Missiles. This would allow CHina to build faster, more powerful ones to be able to launch multiple neutron bombs. As it is, they have re-started production of these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The People's Republic of China (PRC)is only missing three letters, IAY, I will let you do the math!
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
CHINA ACQUIRES '80S TECH
In startling revelations, it was discovered that China's multbilliondollar industrial espionage program has been targeting things invented in the 1980s, because "everyone knows it was the coolest decade". In recent weeks, sources say they've gained access to enormous amounts of sensitive information about Commodore 64s, Nintendo Entertainment Systems, and the Yugo.
The head of the Chinese espionage program was later seen smoking a cigar and proclaiming "I love it when a plan comes together."
But isn't the shuttle itself up for sale? So I guess we're just upset this guy was only getting $3 million for the information, vs. $28.8 million we'd get if we could get the PRC to buy the shuttle itself?
Was this repealed sometime ago, or is the judge just being a rubber-kneed softy? What the chinaman did amounts to nothing less than treason. Make no mistake, China is our enemy, and this is no less a crime than giving sensitive information and national security secrets to Al Qaeda or North Korea.
The space shuttle tech is so old, what is the big deal?
We're talking 1970s tech much of which is probably on-line by now.
Let the Chinese have it. Knock yourself out.
Hi hao, motherf*cker!
an ill wind that blows no good
What's the big deal? It's not like it was rocket science or anything.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
amassed a personal wealth of more than $3 million US while betraying his adopted country.
Sounds like he was living the American dream (get rich)
We can send a 35 megaton cobalt-salted warhead. You get it in 30 minutes or it's free. Heck, we can probably get it there in 5 minutes.
We show we care by sending the very best. :-)
...very long.