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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."
For several years I worked in Manhattan for one of those large privately held media Companies, one with both magazines and magazine websites galore, including ones you would know. We used to use Akamai. Sure they could cache our content and then absorb a lot of traffic from our servers, but they were expensive as hell--especially for what they did, in my opinion. I do seem to recall that our big company eventually dumped Akamai and all the money that went with it. Why they still exist I will never know.
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.
It's not about his profit.
It's about the fact that the world would end in a fiery wreck if anyone should get faster video over the internet without paying license fees.
We're talking profits here, man. What is the worth of a man's family in the face of lost shareholder value? Get your priorities straight!
I'm telling you this as a friend.
Plus, Akamai is an important part of the coming private Internet which is coming to replace the messy public internet. Don't you want a safer, more orderly Internet? And if Akamai's technology makes the new private Internet a "safer, speedier Internet" (as their marketing material says), obviously we can't have that technology falling into non-license paying hands. How can you have a "safer, speedier Internet" if a lot of people have access to technology that makes it "safer" and "speedier". That would be socialism, and you don't want socialism do you? Or do you, you filthy socialist? How would you like it if your family and employer found out that you were a filthy socialist who doesn't want a "safer, speedier Internet"? You wouldn't want that to happen. Bad things happen to filthy socialists who don't want a "safer, speedier Internet".
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Uniform Trade Secrets Act makes trade secret "theft" a civil matter between the secret holder and the leaker. Apparently something went through in 1996 making it a Federal crime. The economy went fine for hundreds of years without the threat of jail for leakers -- why change? Especially since trade secret law can be and has been abused.
On another subject, there's a gaping gap in the story as we've seen it. How did the FBI know about his email to the Israeli consulate? Why did it take years before they followed up?
Is it? Is it really? Do you know this?
I sure don't. I don't know that farming in China is worse than living in "corporate cities". It could be worse.
It could be better, but only because of social policies enacted by the Chinese government to ensure that they have a large population of workers desperate enough to take any work they can, a virtual slave class who are not allowed freedom of travel, who very well could have led a more happy and healthy and stable life as simple subsistence farmers. Of course, that wouldn't be as good for The State, so it's discouraged.
Don't ever underestimate the evil of the Chinese government. Their population, to them, is not people but a resource. Look at their treatment of other resources and you will see how they will treat their people-resource. Its only value is to be exploited as harshly as possible for the benefit of the State.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
How it should have happened:
After a few transactions, the FBI realizes this guy is zero threat. They refer the case to the Massachusetts Attorney General "for further joint investigation". Based on the evidence, the AG charges the guy with larceny or embezzlement or whatever, Akamai takes their civil remedies for breach of contract, etc, and the FBI declines to prosecute. The guy loses his job, pays $150K in fines and does 6 months in minimum security + probation. His life gets pretty hard.
How it actually happened:
After a few transactions, the FBI realizes the information sucks. No source code, no proprietary technology, no M&A data, no insider-level financials. It's client lists, contracts and internal employee information. The information is so weak, they can't even charge him with anything under existing Federal statutes. But there's a foreign government involved, so all sense of proportion is lost. They keep asking the guy for more information. And more. 18 months and 62 transactions later, they finally get to a point where:
Now they can charge him under the Economic Espionage Act and prepare to drop him in a very deep, very dark hole. Slam dunk. Promotions all around for stopping a 'grave threat to U.S. economic security'. The guy loses his job, pays $400K in fines and goes to Federal prison for 10 years. His life is over.
Insane.
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.
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