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Cisco, US DOJ Fire Another Salvo At Peter Adekeye
theodp writes "Citing the widespread practice of sharing passwords for expediency's sake, Cisco's Chief Security Officer proclaimed in 2007 that people 'need to be held accountable for their risk-taking,' noting that CEO John Chambers drives home the point that 'information security is everybody's responsibility' at Cisco. But instead of accepting responsibility after a Cisco employee provided his ID and password to ex-Cisco engineer Peter Alfred-Adekeye, the networking giant sic'ed the Feds on Adekeye, who was slapped with a five-count indictment by a Federal grand jury last week. Adekeye's crime, according to the Court filing, was using the login credentials the Cisco employee provided him with 'in excess of the specific use granted by the Cisco employee.' For his five downloads of different versions of Cisco IOS — four of which were launched within a 15-minute period in 2006 — the government is seeking a penalty of 5 years imprisonment for Adekeye, a $250K fine, and 3 years supervised release. It's the latest salvo fired in the war Cisco and US prosecutors have waged against Adekeye since he filed an antitrust suit against Cisco in December 2008."
this is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which basically makes it a Federal Crime to 'do anything we dont like, with a computer'.
it is overly broad and probably unconstitutional.
that is, if someone would challenge it's constitutionality in court.
if you dont know about the Thomas Drake case, google it
same for the specific counts against Manning (i.e. the 'collateral murder' video, well, they are trying to get him on the exact same paragraph here, 18 usc 1030 a 2)
Anyone reading this should also read how Cisco lied and got him arrested in Canada ... there's a link right below the description but I'm posting it again here as well:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110722/02351315202/how-cisco-justice-department-conspired-to-try-to-destroy-one-mans-life-daring-to-sue-cisco.shtml
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/a-pound-of-flesh-how-ciscos-unmitigated-gall-derailed-one-mans-life.ars/1
That's logic and reasoning. We'll have none of that and neither will Cisco.
It is plain for all who have been following this story that "Cisco" (or more likely, one or a few people within Cisco) really have it in for this guy who is an ex-employee (with much inside knowledge) and has sued the company for its actions and policies.
When the employee [who in my opinion, effectively represents the company] gave credentials to Adekeye for the purpose of access to download "whatever" then that is not unauthorized access. I find it easy to believe a grand jury delivered an indictment, however -- they are just juries and the prosecution always does its level best to pick the least brilliant people they can find to parrot the prosecution's position.
Also, I don't believe Adekeye will be stupid enough to enter the US after all the crap he has gone through so far because of Cisco. And even if he did come to the US to win his case and his defense, no one at Cisco will be held accountable for this ridiculous set of charges and no one at the DoJ will be either. It's beyond ridiculous and yet they are persuing this with a completely straight face.
Private citizens cannot file antitrust suits.
So we'll just ignore everything else you wrote, since that's likely made up too.
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/5:2008cv05391/209307/
If i trick (not saying it was the case here) an employee into giving me access to something then its still me who commits the crime.
Summary: Man penetrates corporate network with hot credentials, man copies software from illegally penetrated network, man complains when law enforcement gets involved.
Not only that, but he was let into the network to recommend his company become a preferred partner of Cisco. Why he decided to d/l software he was not authorized to possess is beyond me, but you would think he would realize that was likely to piss off Cisco.
There is more to this story than meets the eye; Cisco would not bother to do this unless there was something else at stake. My guess is there was some concern about how he planned to use the information he had gotten; or over the initial establishment of his company.
Of course, at /. big corporation bad is the general response...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Who says they didn't punish that employee? Secondly, how does that change the fact that this guy did something he was not authorized to do? So if you give me a key to your house to bring in your mail I can steal your TV without any consequences since you gave me the key to the front door?
I find it easy to believe a grand jury delivered an indictment, however -- they are just juries and the prosecution always does its level best to pick the least brilliant people they can find to parrot the prosecution's position.
It's also worth noting the difference between a Grand Jury and a Petit (Trial) Jury. A Grand Jury only hears the prosecutors side and only decides if there's enough evidence to proceed with a trial. It's not until a defendant is before the Petit Jury that he can offer evidence or attack the prosecution's evidence.
Normally I would, but Cisco has been proven to be complicit in lying and subterfuge in this case.
Check out the note above about what they did in Canada. They fed a boatload of lies to the DoJ which were then parroted to the Canadians to get him extradited here. The Canadian judge was PISSED when this was found out.
It was seriously evil and twisted. How's this: He is a British citizen traveling on a valid British passport. He sues Cisco. He lives in Switzerland and can't get back into the US legally until he resolves some immigration issues, which he has documentation he's been actively trying to do. So he can't come to the US to make a deposition in the case. Cisco doesn't want to go to Switzerland, so they arrange for Canada. Cisco/DoJ has him arrested and held for extradition in the middle of the deposition.
Here's a fun lie: The justification for this was that he refused to come into the US, so he had to be nabbed in Canada. But there is documentation showing he had been continually trying to come back to the US to run his company. A quick check with DHS would have shown the DoJ that Cisco was lying, but they didn't even bother. The judge in the antitrust case knew about the situation and had approved the Canadian deposition.
If they wanted him that badly, they could have just granted the visa, he would have entered the US, and he could have been arrested.
He's Nigerian by birth, but he had been a British citizen for years, and a successful executive with IBM, AT&T and then Cisco. Cisco brought him to the US on his British passport. Cisco then fed the DoJ a big story about this shady Nigerian who could flee at any moment if not nabbed in Canada and held there. Without checking, the DoJ passed this false story onto the Canadians.
I've read the Canadian court decision. It is downright scary what happened, Cisco colluding with the DoJ and lying to a sovereign country's courts in order to strongarm a person into giving up his antitrust suit.
After reviewing all of the facts of the case:
"Here we have a man who has no criminal record, who made every possible effort to comply with US immigration laws and procedures, but who dared to take on a multinational giant, rewarded with criminal charges that have been so grotesquely inflated as to make the average well-informed member of the public blanche at the audacity of it all"
It is the antitrust suit he had going against Cisco. Cisco had locked out any other company that might want to provide maintenance for Cisco products, and that was the business his company was in, so he sued. He had been gathering evidence to use in the case against Cisco, and of course Cisco didn't want that.
Separate from the supposed anti-trust actions of Cisco, why would anyone do something that could be used against them by someone they were suing? You're basically giving them the club to beat you with; if you really need that information you should try to get it through the legal process. I have no idea what his motivations were, it just strikes me as odd to expose yourself the way he apparently did knowing your opponent is a very large company who can buy boatloads of legal advice.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
and Cisco's as well, and revealed that the DOJ was nothing less than armed thugs working at Cisco's direction.
I saw the video of the deposition in Canada. It was in Canada because the US wouldn't let Adekeye into the US. Both the Feds and Cisco knew that Adekeye had applied for permission to enter the US and was denied, but they didn't inform the Canadian police of that, leaving them with the impression that he was a fugitive from Justice. IF he were a fugitive they could have let him in and then captured him at the boarder. But, what they really wanted to do was further soil his reputation unjustly. So, they lied to Canada about his status. While he was being questioned by attorneys at the deposition a Canadian constable, uninformed of the situation, barged in and served a warrant for his arrest, interrupting the legal proceeding, which was itself unprecedented. Attorneys for Adekeye wanted to shut off the cameras, but attorneys for Cisco wanted them to run so they was have video "proof" of Adekeye's "guilt", as if being accused is the same as being guilty.
The judges ruling was a very strongly worded condemnation of Cisco and the DOJ, accusing them of collusion in the abuse of power. But, in a country where the government now does the bidding of its corporate overlords, the Canadian ruling bears no weight. It only stands as a moral indictment of both our judicial system and the corrupt corporate environment.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!