Akamai Employee Tried To Sell Secrets To Israel

CWmike writes "A 43-year-old former Akamai employee has pleaded guilty to espionage charges after offering to hand over confidential information about the Web acceleration company to an agent posing as an Israeli consular official in Boston. Starting in September 2007, Elliot Doxer played an elaborate 18-month-long game of cloak-and-dagger with James Cromer, a man he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer. He handed over pages and pages of confidential data to Cromer, providing a list of Akamai's clients and contracts, information about the company's security practices, and even a list of 1,300 Akamai employees, including mobile numbers, departments and e-mail addresses. Doxer delivered the information to a dead drop box 62 times. His motivation: To help Israel and to get information on his son and estranged wife, who lived outside the U.S., prosecutors said in court filings. Doxer faces 15 years in prison on the charges."

Comments

Re:Tumbled

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depends on the details of the start of the affair: "However, there is no entrapment where a person is ready and willing to break the law and the government agents merely provide what appears to be a favorable opportunity for the person to commit the crime."

If the agent merely posed as the sort of consular person who the suspect was looking for, it's just a sting, not entrapment. If, on the other hand, the agent engaged in a prolonged campaign of grooming and cajoling to get otherwise upright and/or feckless people stirred up enough to do something, there would be a serious argument that entrapment was going on...

It would be interesting to know if the feds just have undercover people swarming around likely defection loci, just hanging out and looking shady and approachable, or whether Akamai is considered cool enough to get investigations focused on its employees, or whether the fellow in question has something else that flagged him.

The case IIRC isn't like that at all

[Moraelin]

Actually, we had this story before, when they caught him. And no, there was no entrapment and whatnot. The guy is simply a flaming asshat, and he WOULD get a conviction out of me and then some.

For a start, they didn't seduce him, he actually contacted the embassy on his own proposing to sell them some "secrets" they didn't ask for and didn't need. Those guys promptly tipped off the FBI.

Second the whole "distraught father" and "patriotism" BS is just that: BS. I WOULD believe either of that if that were his primary motivation. It pretty obviously ain't.

The first thing the guy asked for was money. He tried to sell his employers' customer lists and whatnot, for plain old money. And see again: there was no social engineering, no seducing him, bla, bla, bla, he actually went to what he thought would be a buyer and HE proposed to sell that stuff.

When they told him they're not interested in paying for that, he basically asked that something bad happens to his ex. And I don't know about you, but trying to get a hit on someone isn't exactly a moral high ground any way I want to slice it.

His son only entered his equation as an after-thought, as he just asked for some photos of him. It wasn't his first or second price, and, you know, it's not like he even wanted the son back or anything, just some photos.

So, yeah, we have an asshat who actually goes looking to sell on his own, for money, and failing that, hey, maybe he can get them to whack his ex. Proving more than amply exactly what his morals are. Sorry, he's just scum, plain and simple, and more than deserves everything coming to him.