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Cisco Accused of Orchestrating Engineer's Arrest
alphadogg writes "Cisco Systems orchestrated the arrest of Multiven founder Peter Alfred-Adekeye last year in order to force a settlement of Multiven's antitrust lawsuit against Cisco, a Multiven executive said on Wednesday. Multiven, an independent provider of service and support for networking gear, sued Cisco in 2008, alleging that the company monopolized the market for its software. Cisco countersued, charging that Alfred-Adekeye hacked into Cisco's computers and stole copyrighted software. In May 2010, Alfred-Adekeye was arrested in Vancouver, Canada, on 97 counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer system without authorization for the purposes of commercial advantage, according to his arrest warrant. He could be sentenced to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. The arrest came to light only this week after local Vancouver press reported it."
Not only are Cisco devices over-priced from the beginning, they are somehow not liable for the problems they might have when vulnerabilities are discovered. Fixes are only available after Cisco is paid for them and, once again, the fixes come without guarantees as well.
Most people never get close enough to the networking hardware and infrastructure to experience this and so they remain under most people's radar. But as the article states, other vendors do not charge for updates.
By industry standards and practices, they are definitely "not usual." But is it illegal? Are they abusing monopoly power? I guess that's for a court to decide. But if it can be shown that Cisco fabricated evidence that resulted in the criminal arrest of someone who has filed legal action against Cisco, then huge problems should result for Cisco executives including but not limited to prison time. I find this to be a very interesting case indeed. I hope we can follow this case in more detail as new information comes out.
I think the real take away (after reading the story) is that the police; Canadian or United States, look as if they are becoming the gang enforcers of Corporations. If the prosecutors can't produce evidence after 9 months then it begs the question: what evidence was demonstrated to get an arrest warrant in the first place? Show the evidence or let the guy go. Especially if he's stuck in Canada ;)
The thing that surprises me the most is how often IT workers think that they need Cisco gear. There is very little that Cisco devices can do that cheaper third-party-- and sometimes even commodity hardware!-- cannot do. That is, unless you're running a proprietary Cisco routing protocol, or need to feel the mystique of running 'enterprise' gear.
We dumped our Cisco gear years ago after attending a presentation on OpenBGP (in which the presenter talked about routing his Internet2 connection with a P4) and we haven't looked back since. And the equivalent Cisco machines for our border routers cost an order of magnitude more.
OK, this guy is a Cisco competitor involved in some legal dispute with the company that's being resolved in a civil court. He also is suspected on reasonable grounds to have committed a bona-fide crime against the company at the same time -- Cisco asks law enforcement to investigate the crime and arrest the criminal. That's not 'orchestrating' anything, nor does his status as a competitor that's suing the company have anything to do with the matter. Lawsuit or not, no one is entitled to break into Cisco computer systems -- the law doesn't say "You cannot gain unauthorized access to a computer system unless it is owned by a douchebag corporation that overcharges and dicks over the used market".
There is no mention in TFM (which is largely sourced from unnamed "Multiven Execs" -- unlikely to be objective) that Cisco fabricated the evidence of the break-in or conspired to entrap the guy. He committed a crime, they sought his arrest which is 100% within their rights. They don't surrender protection of criminal law just because they are douchebags.
Since /. loves car analogies, suppose we got in a car accident that was totally your fault but you dispute that and want a trial. Then on the night before the responsibility hearing, I throw a brick through your windshield. Does the merits of the civil trial have anything to do with whether I can be arrested? Would it matter if you were universally considered to be a jerk that screws everyone over?
You don't buy Cisco because of the features, you buy Cisco because of TAC. At 2:30 AM when you have 96 phone lines down, the call center opens in 3 hours, and you're getting call supervision with no voice traffic, you call TAC. I got an engineer out of their Sydney office on the phone in 14 minutes, and we had the problem resolved within an hour. (It was a telco provisioning problem.) Having someone on hand to support a problem 24 hours a day, and a supply chain that can send a part out in 4 hours is a safety net worth paying for.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
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RUN
Woosh! He's not saying it didn't happen; he's saying there's no similarity between that and the case at hand. In fact, comparing the two trivializes the near slave conditions of early American workers.
According to what I read, the "evidence" to support his arrest has not been produced and delivered to the Canadian authorities. The claim of intrusion was made by Cisco to the US Secret Service. (The US Secret Service wouldn't just do this without a complaint or someone in high places issuing the directive after all.)
So this guy was arrested on criminal charges for which no evidence has been provided. This smells "not right" somehow.
The orchestrating part is where the evidence of the crime (required for the extradition) hasn't been sent to the Canadians yet. They've had 10 months to provide evidence of the crime, but have not been able to produce it. So, the civil case, which was getting close to going to a Jury trial, got settled because the guy got arrested. This is one heck of a coincidence.
Sleep: A completely inadequate substitution for Caffeine.