Man Charged With Stealing Code From Federal Reserve Bank

wiredmikey writes "A Chinese computer programmer was arrested by U.S. authorities in New York on Wednesday, on charges that he stole proprietary source code while working on a project at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The man arrested, Bo Zhang of New York, worked as a contract employee developing a specific portion of the GWA's (Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program) source code at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where the code is maintained. The complaint alleges that in the summer of 2011, Zhang stole the GWA code, something he admitted to in July 2011. Zhang said that he used the GWA Code in connection with a private business he ran training individuals in computer programming."

Comments

Lesson 1

[ackthpt]

Don't steal from the government - it hates the competition

Re:Lesson 1

[ThatsMyNick]

Fed is not part of the government. Its a private entity controlled by the members.

Re:Lesson 1

[redmid17]

The people who run the Fed are largely appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate

Re:Lesson 1

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

The Fed is as close to godhood as one gets in public life. You only serve for fourteen years (unlike federal judges), but you also make the money. I suppose the Fed could be abolished, but short of that, you're pretty much set.

Re:Lesson 1

[ackthpt]

Fed is not part of the government. Its a private entity controlled by the members.

You mean all that paper money I keep in my pillow, mattress and bags in my closet with ' Federal Reserve Bank' are not issued by the actual Department of the Treasure, a cabinet position below the US President, but some private firm?!?

I've been swindled! I'm going to complain about this as soon as I finish throwing away my pillow, mattress and all those heavy bags. >:(

Re:Lesson 1

[The Grim Reefer]

Don't steal from the government - it hates the competition

I realize that you are joking. But it makes me wonder why so many on /. would consider this "stealing". Especially when the majority will argue the semantics of stealing when it's regarding music or entertainment data. Less than three hours prior to this,the Megaupload story has many defending piracy. Granted, the ramifications of people being arrested outside of the US for piracy is scary. But still, what's the difference between the bits that were taken for the banking code and bits taken for entertainment?

Re:Lesson 1

[hedwards]

The Federal Reserve does not print or issue money. Never have and hopefully never will. Those bills are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the coinage is minted by the United States Mint.

The Federal Reserve only puts them into circulation when the Board of Governors authorizes it to do so. It is a bit complicated, but the Federal Reserve itself is a private entity that happens to have a board of publicly appointed figures.

Re:Lesson 1

[icebraining]

He had a contract with the organization from whom he copied the code, which (implictly or explicitly) covers that he couldn't do this.

People downloading from Megaupload haven't signed anything agreeing not to copy such files.

Re:Lesson 1

[ThatsMyNick]

The Board of Governors are appointed by the President and their salaries are set by the govt, but the input with which the Fed takes decisions is largely from the member banks. Its one of those strange public-private partnerships, that I would consider mostly private.
 
  And It goes without saying that the board of governors are usually former Wallstreet barons.

Re:Lesson 1

[Lando]

No, the Fed is an independent organization within the government and it's run like a corporation in many ways, but it is still part of the government and acts as the central bank for the government. The fact is that there is a meme that says it is not a part of the government, but that is false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System

Re:Lesson 1

[ThatsMyNick]

From the wiki (the one you linked) : The Federal Reserve System has both private and public components, and was designed to serve the interests of both the general public and private bankers. The result is a structure that is considered unique among central banks. It is also unusual in that an entity outside of the central bank, namely the United States Department of the Treasury, creates the currency used.[12]

Also from the wiki "According to the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve is independent within government". Just because the board of governors consider themselves to be part of the govt, doesnt mean they are part of the govt. Its like IBM saying it wants to make peoples life better.

Re:Lesson 1

[Pharmboy]

In addition to your comment, the source code was never available for sale to any other party. It wasn't "infringement" in that it cost the Fed lost sales, it lost them exclusive access to sensitive data that they only wanted a limited number of people to have access to. The financial loss isn't related to lost sales, but in potential security implications. Apples and Oranges.

In this case, it was more like theft because the Fed lost exclusive use of the software, something that can't be given back once it is in the wild. Piracy is completely different, where 100 copies of a file can cost lost sales of 1 or 2 actual copies, but no loss of use or security is involved, only revenue. With music and movies, you WANT many people to have access to the product, but at a cost. With exclusive software, you want NO ONE to have a copy. Neither is ideal if you own the "property", but they aren't the same.

Re:Lesson 1

[s73v3r]

No, that's bullshit. That's like saying you're free to kill anyone you like, as you haven't signed anything saying you agree to laws against murder.

NOTE: I am not comparing copyright infringement to murder. I am simply comparing choosing to disobey one set of laws to another.

Re:Lesson 1

[Lando]

No they are one of the 9? independent agencies within the government that are directly overseen by congress and not a secretary or member of the executive branch. Wikipedia is a starting point, not an authority on any subject since anyone can go in and change things however they want. I provided the link as a place to get started, not as part of my argument. I barely glanced at the information on the page having researched this a couple of years ago. If nothing else the link to the official government webpage should be there somewhere or the associated pages linked to the article. I don't really have the time to argue the point either way. If you are interested in it, read up on the subject, don't just read to confirm your own viewpoint.

Re:Lesson 1

[icebraining]

I was merely explaining the difference between the actions, not claiming one should be free from the legal consequences of such actions.

But defending file sharing doesn't necesseraly mean one defends breaking the law; it may also mean on defends the abolishment of copyright laws, which would make the action legal.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most are economists. The true Wall Street barons would never take the drastic pay cuts to work on the Board of Governors or the FOMC. Those guys are getting paid under 300K a year, which ain't bad but is nothing close to the millions you can rake in on Wall Street.

Re:Lesson 1

[nedlohs]

So if the Federal Reserve doesn't "issue money" can you explain the word issue in:

Federal reserve notes, to be issued at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the purpose of making advances to Federal reserve banks through the Federal reserve agents as hereinafter set forth and for no other purpose, are authorized.

- US Code, Title 12 Chapter 3 Subchapter XII Section 411 - http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/411.html

Or are you just sticking to a technically that the Board isn't the Fed, so the Microsoft Board of Directors doesn't count as Microsoft for example.

Or that having the power to direct something to be done isn't the same as doing it - so that whole gulf oil thing a while back has isn't BHPs problem after all they just told their contractors and employees to do it.

Re:Lesson 1

[causality]

NOTE: I am not comparing copyright infringement to murder. I am simply comparing choosing to disobey one set of laws to another.

Why do this? Why bother trying to accommodate the knee-jerk crowd who have problems with reading comprehension? Let them get their panties in a wad. They need it. The humiliation they store up for themselves is good for them. They don't deserve to be comfortable and neither does anyone else who is reactive, impulsive or tries to put words in your mouth (and proceeds to blame you for those words as if they didn't just put them there).

Besides, Slashdot has taught me one thing: even if you had ten lines of disclaimer for each line of your actual post, it won't stop them. They refuse to notice what you didn't say in addition to what you said, or that there might be a reason for it. They won't notice either if you explicitly tell them that you did not, in fact, say something. They'll just act like lawyers and find the one little loophole your disclaimer didn't cover. That's what they do. Just like lawyers, they don't actually produce anything useful or interesting. There's no point in catering to their tastes. It's power they don't deserve and don't actually have.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The Federal Reserve does not print or issue money

The Federal Reserve issues money all the time, but it issues the money as debt .. how all modern money is issued.

The Federal Reserve only puts them into circulation when the Board of Governors authorizes it to do so

This is talking about currency, not money. There isn't anywhere near enough currency in circulation to cover the figures recorded in the computers. The Board of Governors is only authorizing the circulation of currency so that people have something to stuff their mattresses with, ie. we don't run out.

Money and currency are different beasts. Essentially money is debt and currency is a physical representation of what money would look like if it actually existed.

Re:Lesson 1

[theNAM666]

>Fed is not part of the government. Its a private entity controlled by the members.

That is incorrect.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Bank.

The Fed is not a Federal Entity for some purposes (such as torts); it is clearly a Federal Entity for many other purposes, legal and otherwise. If you don't understand the distinction of "for the purpose of a legal theory," then you should study some law. From Wikipedia:

>>The Federal Reserve Banks have an intermediate legal status, with some features of private corporations and some features of public federal agencies. The United States has an interest in the Federal Reserve Banks as tax-exempt federally-created instrumentalities whose profits belong to the federal government, but this interest is not proprietary.[2] In Lewis v. United States,[3] the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that: "The Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA [the Federal Tort Claims Act], but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations." The opinion went on to say, however, that: "The Reserve Banks have properly been held to be federal instrumentalities for some purposes." Another relevant decision is Scott v. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City,[2] in which the distinction is made between Federal Reserve Banks, which are federally-created instrumentalities, and the Board of Governors, which is a federal agency.

Re:Lesson 1

[HikingStick]

The Federal Reserve Banks are not government, and are owned by member banks in their respective reserve bank districts.

The Federal Reserve Board is a governmental agency with certain powers delegated by Congress. It, in turn, delegates some of its regulatory authority to the member Reserve Banks.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

From a list of candidates prepared by those at the Fed. So basically they tell the president who he can choose between so they still get all the control while he gets to LOOK like he has some say in the matter.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The Fed is a bank with an enormous balance sheet. It doesn't print or generate money, it manages assets and makes loans to the branch banks. The interest rate it charges those banks is the primary mechanism through which it is able to affect national interest rates. It's other primary function is to serve as the lender of last resort to the Federal govt. What this means in practice, is if the govt cannot sell bonds below a certain rate, the fed will buy them. It is an esoteric institution and almost anyone you ask will have difficulty explaining what it does -- myself included.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

for the last point I think you know the answer if not ask your lawyer for advice as the BP cavalry may becoming your way.....

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

So if the Federal Reserve doesn't "issue money" can you explain the word issue in:

Federal reserve notes, to be issued at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the purpose of making advances to Federal reserve banks through the Federal reserve agents as hereinafter set forth and for no other purpose, are authorized.

- US Code, Title 12 Chapter 3 Subchapter XII Section 411 - http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/411.html

Or are you just sticking to a technically that the Board isn't the Fed, so the Microsoft Board of Directors doesn't count as Microsoft for example.

Or that having the power to direct something to be done isn't the same as doing it - so that whole gulf oil thing a while back has isn't BPs problem after all they just told their contractors and employees to do it.

FTFY

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

And I guess because the people appoint the president, that means the people control the president.

It's the same as the election of the president: You get to change the players, never the game.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the Fed could be abolished

Don't think Americans are smart enough to elect Ron Paul yet.

They will continue to submit to their masters, the Wall Street overlords, falsely believing the financial elites to be their only chance to survive in an increasingly competitive world economy, endorsing the finance sector to manipulate the market, until China owns the country.

You deserve this for your cowardice, America.

Re:Lesson 1

[Hatta]

So is the government.

Re:Lesson 1

[sourcerror]

"is if the govt cannot sell bonds below a certain rate, the fed will buy them"

So, why exactly does the government pay intrest for that money? And what does the intrest is spent by the FED?

Re:Lesson 1

[Pope]

Agreed! Cupcakes are yummy!

Re:Lesson 1

[Oligonicella]

"In this case, it was more like theft because the Fed lost exclusive use of the software, something that can't be given back once it is in the wild. Piracy is completely different..."

Nope. Piracy is the loss of your right to distribute your material as you see fit because some numbnuts thinks his desires trump your copyright. Copyright is not about revenue. Once disbursed into the wild, it can't be called back either. More same than not.

Re:Lesson 1

[bzipitidoo]

More like theft? But the action still is not theft. See, there's this website called "Wikileaks" not "Wikithefts", and no one has any problem comprehending the name. I don't hear anyone saying it ought to change its name either. Why do people continue to accept this incorrect characterization and conflation? You even say "piracy is completely different". Then why are you trying to say this action isn't completely different from theft? It's a leak, not a theft. It's hard to say that this even really counts as a leak. Were others being told what the code was for? Is it worthy of being considered a valuable secret? Doesn't sound like it.

What I see is the typical hysteria of keepers of secrets who have been compromised, or think they've been compromised, or feel someone has demonstrated a way in which they could be compromised. They're very free with that hot button concept, theft. Ironically, the fuss has likely attracted the attention of the very people they wanted to keep in the dark. They've triggered a Streisand Effect. One of the more annoying things about government work was their desire to classify everything as secret. Mostly it was paranoia about keeping their own butts covered, hiding problems or favoritism behind a veil of secrecy, but it was also paranoia that anything could be valuable information. They tried to lock down basic science. You'd have some idiot bureaucrats who, after being introduced to a basic algorithm, something simple enough that they could understand it without a lot of study and training, such as Quicksort, and being impressed with its power, would demand that it be considered a national secret. No enemies were to know that their fantastic project relied upon the awesome power of Quicksort, or know of Quicksort itself! That kind of crap makes collaboration impossible. No one can share anything with anyone else. Remember the fuss over encryption technology. Netscape had to have 2 versions of their browser, and was not allowed to let foreigners download the version with stronger encryption. A t-shirt with a few lines of code counted as a munition. The government harassed the author of PGP.

The poor bastard who is accused will be railroaded if the Fed has its way. I hope for his sake that the courts are calmer and cooler. Sandy Berger's punishment, for what was probably far more valuable information, was largely to his reputation. He was fined $50000 (probably peanuts to him), and put on probation and ordered to do some community service. No jail time.

Re:Lesson 1

[nedlohs]

Woops...

I do that all the time since I gre up with a lot more exposure to BHP as a name than BP - and fingers seem to add that H without my brain noticing...

Re:Lesson 1

[Cyberax]

"So, why exactly does the government pay intrest for that money?"

To discourage extra spending.

"And what does the intrest is spent by the FED?"

That's an awkward bit - it turns its profits to the US Treasury. Does that make sense to you? Me neither.

FED is a bit of arcane entity - it's a public institution that uses private banks as its components. A lot of other countries simply have a specialized central bank, but the US has this distributed system.

Re:Lesson 1

[Forty Two Tenfold]

You get to change the piece sets, never the game, the players and you're stuck with the board.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think Americans are smart enough to elect Ron Paul yet.

They will continue to submit to their masters, the Wall Street overlords, falsely believing the financial elites to be their only chance to survive in an increasingly competitive world economy, endorsing the finance sector to manipulate the market, until China owns the country.

You deserve this for your cowardice, America.

While I couldn't argue about the US's plutocracy. I'm not sure Ron Paul and his warlord philosophy would be any better. That is, in a world without government laws/regulations, the guy with the most guys willing to kick your ass wins. Not sure that's any better than the guy with the most money/lawyers winning (in fact, I'm thinking it's probably worse). It is certainly a world with more opportunities for physical bravery. But historically, it's also a world with a lot more physical suffering and death.

I'd certainly like to fix the flaws we currently have with the political system, but moving on back to even the 19th century standards (much less earlier) with its company stores, hired guns, heavy pollution, child labor, 7 day 12 hour/per work week, etc. is not an improvement.

Re:Lesson 1

[Pharmboy]

Nope. Piracy is the loss of your right to distribute your material as you see fit because some numbnuts thinks his desires trump your copyright. Copyright is not about revenue. Once disbursed into the wild, it can't be called back either. More same than not.

Um, nope to you. If I pirate the latest "Britney Spears" album (shudder....) then she can still distribute it all she wants. She can continue to sell CD's and online copies at iTunes. Her song wasn't a "secret", the software was. And once she has distributed ONE copy, even for cash, it is "in the wild".

You are missing the entire point. It isn't about having control over distributing, it is about having control over NOT distributing that was lost. As to the value of the software, I have no idea and it is meaningless, but the mechanism involved is the exact opposite of music or video piracy.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The Federal Reserve is the largest corporate tax payer in the US. Anything not used for operations and held in reserve for market purchases gets transferred to the Treasury Department.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Fed is not part of the government. Its a private entity controlled by the members.

The GWA was funded by the U.S. Treasury. U.S. Treasury systems connect directly to the U.S. Federal Reserve Banks which are considered fiscal agents of the U.S. government.

Re:Lesson 1

[sourcerror]

Thank for your informative reply.

Re:Lesson 1

[petermgreen]

The Fed is a bank with an enormous balance sheet.

More than that though it's a CENTRAL BANK

It doesn't print or generate money

In our current banking system all banks "generate money" in a sense. It's just a case of whether it's pseudo-money or "real money" (so far as any fiat currency can be "real").

A regular bank creates pseudo-money. When you deposit $1000 at the bank the bank keeps $100 of it (assuming a 10% reserve requirement) as "real money" (either cash in a vault or a deposit at the central bank) and invests the rest (either in making loans or otherwise). However to you your bank balance looks and acts like money. Therefore the bank the bank has effectively created $900 of pseudo money.

The amount of pseudo-money a regular bank can generate is limited by reserve requirements. With a 10% reserve requirement for every $900 of psuedo-money the commercial banks generate they must keep $100 of "real money".

Plus it's still pseudo-money. If an unexpectedly large proportion of the bank's customers suddenly tries to withdraw their money the bank needs real money to pay those withdrawals. As long as the bank is financially healthy this isn't too much of a problem, the bank will just borrow money from either another regular bank or from the central bank but if the bank is not financially healthy (liabilities too close to or even exceeding assets) then it has a BIG problem and in the absence of government intervention it is likely to go bankrupt.

Central banks on the other hand create "real money", there is no reserve requirement on them, deposits at the central bank are considered legally equivalent to cash and if an unexpectedly large number of institutions (individuals don't usually have deposits at the central bank) withdraw their deposits then the central bank will simply issue more cash to cover them, it cannot go bankrupt (unless it's stupid enough to take on significant liabilities in foreign currency). Central banks are created by and get their authority from the government.

Re:Lesson 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPWH5TlbloU

The American Dream By The Provocateur Network

Citizenship not required?

[magarity]

Every government IT job like this I've ever seen has US citizenship required, not even green card required. How did this guy get in?

Re:Citizenship not required?

[ewanm89]

Okay, it's not government technically. And why can't he have citizenship?

Re:Citizenship not required?

[ackthpt]

Every government IT job like this I've ever seen has US citizenship required, not even green card required. How did this guy get in?

Perhaps most other COBOL programmers are retired?

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is obvious this guy was not a citizen, right..

Read TFA? Yeah, I did, thanks, I really trust some fucktard with an article where "Chinese..." is the beginning of the headline.

Fuck off.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[ToadProphet]

The Bloomberg article states that he's a Chinese citizen in the US on a work visa

Re:Citizenship not required?

[MrEricSir]

Initech has had trouble finding people who can write bank software lately, especially after their building burned down.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, people that are not U.S. citizens should not be working government jobs or jobs at companies/organizations vital to national security.

Guess somebody slipped up..

Re:Citizenship not required?

[PPH]

He knows COBOL? Pardon him and hire him immediately!

Re:Citizenship not required?

[stephanruby]

The story says that he's Chinese, not that he's a Chinese citizen. Usually, the FBI labels Chinese non-US citizens as "Chinese nationals". In this case, since only the "Chinese" label is being used, it probably only means that he's of Chinese born, or of Chinese origin, but nothing else.

Also, since he "stole" the code for his own private training business, I wonder if it's not just the code he authored that he stole. I'm not trying to excuse his actions, I'm just trying to explain why would someone be so cavalier about teaching a class with such materials (usually, programmers teaching classes have to list the examples they're going to use in the agenda they advertise, otherwise nobody shows up).

Zhang faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000, or twice the financial gain derived from the offense or twice the gross financial loss to the victims.

Also, I wonder how they're going to calculate the gross financial loss to the victim (unless the real victim here is the middleman between the government and the individual doing the work, not the government itself). It's not like the government was planning to sell that software. So even if it paid 9 million dollars to get that code written, it doesn't sound like they lost anything by his actions (unless they can prove they have to do additional work trying to make it more secure because of him).

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Nerdfest]

It's pronounced 'retarded'.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[RenderSeven]

The story says that he's Chinese, not that he's a Chinese citizen.

The Bloomberg article states that he is in fact a Chinese citizen

since he "stole" the code for his own private training business

No, he claims he stole it for his own private business. May or may not be true, but it sure sounds better than admitting espionage.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[WindBourne]

Not slipped up. Since 2001, we have allowed Chinese into our vital systems. That is why they quit asking for access to our tech. They are simple stealing it.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why can't he have citizenship?

I assume you suspect a racial inference based on the guy's name? Read the article, he's Chinese. As in, from China.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[pclminion]

Seriously? I've heard many bad things about COBOL, a lot of it from my own mother who coded in it for many years... But I've never heard a bad word about a COBOL programmer. Can you imagine having to work with that? They're anything but retarded.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[WindBourne]

Zhang is a Chinese citizen, said a person with knowledge of the matter who didn’t want to be identified because the information wasn’t public.
The software system relates to the “tracking of the billions of dollars that are electronically transferred every day in the U.S.’s general ledger,” prosecutors said.
Zhang has been in the U.S. on a work visa since 2000, said another person familiar with the matter who also didn’t want to be identified because the information isn’t public.

Kind of destroys your theory there.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[CAIMLAS]

You can pretty much be assured that his "private business" was actually state business - Chinese state business, to be exact. It's pretty damn well known that any Chinese national you've got on your network is likely to be trying to steal passwords and fish for holes in your network to report back to the homeland government...

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

my Mother? coded COBOL? sheesh now even _I_ feel old

Re:Citizenship not required?

[ackthpt]

Seriously? I've heard many bad things about COBOL, a lot of it from my own mother who coded in it for many years... But I've never heard a bad word about a COBOL programmer. Can you imagine having to work with that? They're anything but retarded.

Of course I'm joking (mostly, though a lot of COBOL programmers are retired by now) banks were extremely slow to ditch code which was written (largely in COBOL or RPG) in favor of the Flavor-of-the-Month, un-tested, un-vetted server languages of the internet age. When Y2K loomed they brought in legions of old COBOL programmers (many of whom were compensated quite well) to review millions of lines of code and patch where necessary. Likely a lot of that code is still there, interfacing with Federal Reserve System or as part of it. Just because it's old code doesn't make it bad code.

While COBOL isn't my thing, if I were doing purely financial work I might give it another look. Java, Perl, PHP, etc, aren't what I would really trust, even now, for financial transactions which could happen in the millions daily and hit decimal numbers in the hundreds of billions, where every digit integrity is essential. That was something COBOL was good at.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true. The Chicago Fed enforces this policy. I work in a department that develops and supports software there and we won't hire anyone who is not a U.S. citizen, not even anyone with a work or student visa. Security first.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[flyneye]

He's probably going to get an extended visa now as the contending U.S. Waterboarding champion as they begin to question him more deeply about his unauthorized possession of code from our money clowns.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how you Americans blindly trust any person who just states he "has knowledge of the matter" but "doesn't want to be identified".
Just like you believe churches when they say "God said X. And God is the expert.".
Yet you always scream about "facts" ...as if you knew any. ^^

Oh, wait. You only do so, when it fits your agenda.
Yet you scream even harder about "neutrality". Where "neutrality", again, means "fits my agenda".
Which it must, since in reality, "neutrality" is physically impossible. But you don't want anyone to realize this. Not even yourself. So you censor them. (Watch me getting modded down. ^^)

It's fuckin' hilarious!
All you do is scream bullshit at each other. That you oh-so-strongly believe in. Over pointless shit. All day long.

Yes, you always scream. I don't think you even have a normal voice. And when you try, like with NPR, it's more like a parody and everybody hates it.

You put shame to everything your country ever held as ideals. But it's OK, since you are not influencing "your" country in any way anymore anyway.
And you destroy and enslave yourselves. But it's OK. Since that only means more Earth for me.

You. Fail. At. Life.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet we're still the dominant nation. That means that every other country sucks worse, including yours.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[petermgreen]

Read the article, he's Chinese. As in, from China.

The article just says chineese it doesn't clarify the exact meaning (racial, country of birth, current citizenship etc).

As I understand it there are some hoops to jump through but generally anyone who has lived in the US as a lawful permanent resident for more than 5 years can become a citizen and afaict it is generally advisable for them to do so.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[petermgreen]

Re-reading the article it seems the article does in fact say he was on a visa not a citizen but it attributes that information to "a person who did not want to be identified", not to any official statement.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Pionar]

Also, I wonder how they're going to calculate the gross financial loss to the victim (unless the real victim here is the middleman between the government and the individual doing the work, not the government itself). It's not like the government was planning to sell that software. So even if it paid 9 million dollars to get that code written, it doesn't sound like they lost anything by his actions (unless they can prove they have to do additional work trying to make it more secure because of him).

Financial loss isn't just lost revenues, it could be the cost of re-engineering parts of the system in which the private, proprietary algorithms are no longer private and proprietary.

It could also be the cost of extra security measures needed to combat any holes that were exposed by the source being "in the wild."

Re:Citizenship not required?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, did Timothy McVeigh ever work there?

Re:Citizenship not required?

[WindBourne]

Not for much longer, unless we change things.

Re:Citizenship not required?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Every government IT job like this I've ever seen has US citizenship required, not even green card required. How did this guy get in?

The Federal Reserve is as much of a government agency as Federal Express is. OK, Federal Express if the Chairman of the Board were chosen by shipping magnates by then officially appointed by POTUS.

Just being stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure in his boilerplate contract, there are articles and clause that prohibit what he did. Of course, he didn't read it. Now he'll pay the price for doing this.

With people like these...

[sethstorm]

Is it a wonder that there is a growing contempt for China and its actions?

I believe we've gone way past the "three times is enemy action" for incidents like these.

Re:With people like these...

[EEPROMS]

1. this has nothing to do with China 2. USA is just as bad as China when it comes to covert internet access, just that China doesn't run around complaining like a little girl when it happens.

Re:With people like these...

[ackthpt]

Is it a wonder that there is a growing contempt for China and its actions?

I believe we've gone way past the "three times is enemy action" for incidents like these.

Sensationalism by the author, playing to the xenophobic among the indigenous readership. It should have been 'Programmer Steals Code ..' Not 'Chinese Programmer Steals Code ...'

Now, if he were an agent of the PRC, a point of nationality would be highly relevant, but in this case it does not serve fair news reporting.

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we all know Western European countries do not perform espionage and intelligence on the US. And industrial espionage does not exist within US borders, right? I follow you correctly, you xenophobic piece of shit..

If the chinese are guilty of anything, it is that they just not very good spies. considering they are behind most of the rest of the world by over 100 years in some cases they're actually doing pretty good.

I'm not a white knight for the fucking Chinese, but this type of idiocy doesn't help anyone's cause (anti-China or not). I care about US national security, but I don't care for twats like you. Actually if your indignation was over how poorly the Chinese perform espionage, I might actually accept your opinion on the matter, but you're just a, you know, moron.

Re:With people like these...

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

2. USA is just as bad as China when it comes to covert internet access, just that China doesn't run around complaining like a little girl when it happens.

I can't decide if this is misogynist, bully-ist, antidemocratic, or just silly.

Your other point is good, though. It's a guy teaching. I don't have any problem with him using the code, he just should have asked permission and they should have been willing to give it to him. Problem is they see it as something it's worth making an example over--possibly destroying his life because he didn't see a problem with using a snippet of code that, in all likelihood, it was not a problem to use.

Re:With people like these...

[Osgeld]

I have more contempt for the fuck that hired a Chinese contractor to work on government systems while people are begging for jobs here

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I agree! It's time we wipe out everyone that isn't American on the map!

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most people have more contempt for the banks and the federal reserve than they do for china.

Re:With people like these...

[Gadget_Guy]

Is it a wonder that there is a growing contempt for China and its actions?

If all it takes is for one citizen to copy a bit of code for you to hold his country in contempt, then you must really hate America after all those people lost billions of dollars in the Enron scandal. Of course, I chose the Enron example at random, but there are probably thousands of criminal acts occurring across the country every day. If you are going to just single out the ones committed by people of Chinese decent then think that says more about you than China.

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if he was the best for the job?

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

If he were an agent of the PRC, would the media know?

Besides, there's another error in the headline: it should be 'Programmer Copies Code ...'. Unless he deleted the original.

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, the cheapest.

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then, this story wouldn't exist because he wouldn't have stolen code from the Federal Reserve's systems.

Now, your turn!

What if he was an interdimensional traveler with tourette's?

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "best" you mean "was willing to work for peanuts" then you would be right.

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are in favor of the state doing welfare for highly skilled and highly paid software developers, asshole.

Re:With people like these...

[hitmark]

then USA has a very serious problem on their hands.

Re:With people like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if he was the best for the job?

Evidently he was not.

The point is this: whatever "system" these HR assholes are using is broken. The overall brainpower of the US is going down because assholes are in charge of hiring, and really bright people are doing much lesser jobs and not contributing to development and innovation. I know this for fact.

Re:With people like these...

[Mitreya]

It should have been 'Programmer Steals Code ..' Not 'Chinese Programmer Steals Code ...'

Well, to be fair, the fact that he is not a US-citizen seems relevant. I am not the first to express surprise that a foreign worker was hired and had access to something so sensitive. I seem to remember that even federal internships often require citizenship. A lot easier to check US-citizen background when hiring, I imagine.

Re:With people like these...

[lgarner]

Apparently, he wasn't.

Why?

[Cyphase]

Why would he want that crap code?

Re:Why?

[tomhath]

FTA: "he used the GWA Code in connection with a private business he ran training individuals in computer programming" Training individuals who are interested in the Fed's software? Now who (cough) would be interested in that?

Lesson: read what you sign

[RightwingNutjob]

I work in a place that makes you sign an NDA. Betcha he had to sign one too. Whether blueprints or code, industrial espionage is a real crime, both morally and legally.

Re:Lesson: read what you sign

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. There's nothing more immoral than the idea that information which allows humanity to advance can be owned and kept secret.

Could be worse, I guess - could be information controlled by a private company with special control over the money supply. And worse, could be information related to accounting which ensures its systems are being operated properly.

Re:Lesson: read what you sign

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd never sign such a thing, unless I owned a stake in the company.

Intelligent business owners know that skilled software developers are worth their weight in pure platinum.

Re:Lesson: read what you sign

[HornWumpus]

I know something more immoral then that: Letting a sucker keep his money.

Re:Lesson: read what you sign

[Anonymous Coward]

Legally, yes. Morally, maybe not. There's a good case to be made that corporations, not being people, shouldn't have any right to privacy.

Re:Lesson: read what you sign

[Anonymous Coward]

Industrial espionage is a real crime, both morally and legally.

But this is not industrial espionage. It's not recompiling the code to steal the functionality it provides, it's using snippets or real code for educational purposes. The response is extremely heavy handed and only serves to illustrate the fact the those working at the Fed do so for entirely tyrannical motives. Freedom demands that the Fed be abolished and the gold standard be brought back.

And dude, why don't you go and move to Nth Korea so you can live with like-minded individuals?

Re:Lesson: read what you sign

[ShakaUVM]

Morally? It sounds like he was just using snippets of code he wrote there to teach people CS.

That doesn't sound especially morally bankrupt to me. I know I've had professors who have done work for the DoD who have given lectures on how certain things were done within cruise missiles, etc., which seems a lot more ambiguous than code for the bloody fed.

Re:Lesson: read what you sign

[Hognoxious]

Morally? It sounds like he was just using snippets of code he wrote there to teach people CS.

If you belive that I've got a bridge to sell you.

If you were looking to teach CS, would you get your code snippets from:

a) One of the plethora of open source projects out there
b) An O'Reilly book
c) Commercially sensitive software that belongs to your employer and that you agreed to not spread around
d) Something very secret that runs something very scary and boomy-bangy on the B2. %$
* @
&
no carrier

Really?

[wbr1]

Zhang said that he used the GWA Code in connection with a private business he ran training individuals in computer programming.

Correctly edited version: Zhang said that he used the GWA Code in connection with a private business he ran training Chinese Hackers in Reserve Bank Code.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess at Fox that's correct editing. Meanwhile the original properly attributes the statement to the defendant, and anyone with reading comprehension skills can tell a defendant's statement is only that, not fact.

But what the hey, if you want to declare fact and guilt before the investigation it presented to a judge, I hear that's pretty big in China. You'd do well there.

Re:Really?

[wbr1]

I guess at Fox that's correct editing. Meanwhile the original properly attributes the statement to the defendant, and anyone with reading comprehension skills can tell a defendant's statement is only that, not fact.

But what the hey, if you want to declare fact and guilt before the investigation it presented to a judge, I hear that's pretty big in China. You'd do well there.

It was meant as sarcasm. Grow a sense of humor.

Re:Really?

[whoever57]

Correctly edited version: Zhang said that he used the GWA Code in connection with a private business he ran training Chinese Hackers in Reserve Bank Code.

That's all right then. Otherwise he would probably have been in violation of the work visa that Bloomberg says he held.

Nothing Interesting

[brainzach]

“Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program” (GWA), a software system owned by the Department of the Treasury that is used mainly to manage central accounting and reporting functions and processes associated with budget execution, accountability, and asset management.

Just sounds like some average bloated corporate code that was stolen. Nothing noteworthy.

Re:Nothing Interesting

[ackthpt]

“Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program” (GWA), a software system owned by the Department of the Treasury that is used mainly to manage central accounting and reporting functions and processes associated with budget execution, accountability, and asset management.

Just sounds like some average bloated corporate code that was stolen. Nothing noteworthy.

He was probably using it as an example of obfuscated code You can't beat code writtent to government specifications for cruft, obfuscation and general unuseability.

Re:Nothing Interesting

[HornWumpus]

Sounds like governmentese for general ledger.

I'm guessing it was a huge mess of import and mapping, one per government accounting system 'incorporated'. Awful soul draining work. Decades of government accounting tricks to unscramble, unify, and apply standard book cooking to present a unified coherent lie.

Use it like a club on the students: 'Do you want to end up maintaining this?'

Re:Nothing Interesting

[theNAM666]

Heh, yeah. Most likely he was using it as an example of "how not to write code."

The source code might look like this..

[teknx]

private class LeechAmericanPeople{}

meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[Osgeld]

There is an unemployed American programmer begging for minimum wage temporary night shift job, and eating spaghetti for the 4th night in a row, meanwhile these shits are hiring Chinese contractors

God bless America!

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an unemployed American programmer begging for minimum wage temporary night shift job, and eating spaghetti for the 4th night in a row, meanwhile these shits are hiring Chinese contractors

God bless America!

Wait, what's that I hear? The sound of misplaced sense of entitlement?

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the desks, chairs, rugs, and clothing are all from China, so why not the person using them?

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[sdguero]

Where is he? Because we are hiring. Unless he expects to sit in his cube and eat spaghetti for 4 days in a row, not writing code. Because that seems to be a recurring theme among our candidates.

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[Anonymous Coward]

You should at least provide a keyboard. Writing COBOL by blowing into a straw must be really hard!

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[s73v3r]

There's absolutely no sense of entitlement at all. A country should be putting the employment of it's citizens ahead of those of other countries.

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[ironjaw33]

There's absolutely no sense of entitlement at all. A country should be putting the employment of it's citizens ahead of those of other countries.

You got it. I applied for a job in Canada recently and it was stated on the application under no uncertain terms that Canadian citizens would be given preference.

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[happyhamster]

Surely smells like bs. You can't find decent developers? In THIS economy?

A few things to check:
- are your expectations realistic, or are you looking for PhD with tons of experience while advertising for recent grad to "save some money"?
- are you paying above $10-$15/hr or whatever minimally decent rate is in your area?
- do you provide a semi-decent work environment: hardware, software, atmosphere?
- are you running a sweatshop (be honest)?

Your attitude is disgusting. I hope that your "company" never finds those hypothetical employees and quietly folds like it should.

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should move a handful of hours to another city. This person moved many hours away to another country.

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[Reigo Reinmets]

Please do send me an ad / job posting about what you are hiring as I'm looking for a job?

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[sdguero]

Despite your negative comments I will answer you questions...

I work in a QA offshoot so our team isn't actually hiring devs right now, but the company is (and I could potentially refer people for those positions). I can speak in more detail about salary for the QA openings we have been trying to fill for over a year though...
-The team hired me two years ago. At the time, I had a bachelors degree in History, 6 years experience in QA, some of that doing a similar type of testing, and I had worked with one team member before (that's how I found out about the opening).
-The salary is in the six figure range. As it should be for a senior QA engineer in California.
-It's a large public company, so yes.
-I averaged 40 hours a week in 2011, 50 during crunch times and 35 when it's slow (like now). And I'm on /. chatting with someone who has semi-insulted me already, so obviously I have time to screw around.

Anyway, thanks for the well wishes hamster. I will offer a piece of advice. I have a cool team right now, and attitude plays a big part in the people we chose to work with. Negative people are simply not welcome (in fact, I replaced a guy that carried a lot of angst around with him, he was demoted to standard QA dept doing less interesting work). I recommend you find something that puts you in a good place mentally before trying to join an engineering organization. It takes more than hard tech skills (although these are def required) and long hours (these shouldn't be needed) to be a good engineer.

Re:meanwhile just a handful of hours away

[sdguero]

http://www.websense.com/content/careers.aspx

"WEAR IT UNTIL YOU LOVE IT!" -- hollywood enema

[Anonymous Coward]

Carlin - The Real Owners Of America

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying  lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers  people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

"This country is finished."

Maybe better background checks?

[Karmashock]

Seems every other day we're hearing about some chinese scientist or programmer that steals US proprietary secrets of some kind. Why does this keep happening? I thought the whole point of a background check was to avoid this sort of thing. Review where you f'ed up in the background check. See what you knew at the start that should have been a red flag and then add it to the disqualified list. If you were fooled at that point or didn't get enough information then see to it that you're harder to fool and gather more information. This is just sad.

Do your damn background checks.

Re:Maybe better background checks?

[Nerdfest]

You can do all the background checks you want. If a representative of the Chinese government says "Here's 20K$ to hand us some code", a very large percentage of people will say "Deal". If a representative of the Chinese government says "hand us the code you work on, or your relatives in China disappear", a very large percentage of people will say "what sort of media would you like it on".

Re:Maybe better background checks?

[ironjaw33]

You can do all the background checks you want. If a representative of the Chinese government says "Here's 20K$ to hand us some code", a very large percentage of people will say "Deal". If a representative of the Chinese government says "hand us the code you work on, or your relatives in China disappear", a very large percentage of people will say "what sort of media would you like it on".

Part of the process for some of these checks, especially for security clearances, is to find and weed out the candidates who are likely to disclose confidential information. It probably wasn't too rigorous in this case since security clearances and the extensive background checks that go with them are reserved only for US citizens. Getting a clearance, however, can be quite extensive, with investigators running down and questioning everyone you've lived and worked with for the past decade, administering polygraphs, and analyzing your behavior and personality to see if you are likely to keep quiet or blab to the first foreign agent you see. Of course, some still fall through the cracks.

Re:Maybe better background checks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing can beat the massive HUMINT campaign the Chinese have been developing for the last two decades. Estimates of losses for 2011 are $500BN.

No background check system in the world is capable of catching all the baddies in the supposedly superior workforce of H1B visa workers. The smart move would be to quit insourcing, for national economic interests, and for a safer base of potential spies to be hiring.

Follow the news. If its espionage, you can almost bet your life on it being of Chinese origin.

Re:Maybe better background checks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans have fought tooth and nail to get cheap foreign labor to replace skilled, valuable American workers. Why? Because the employers can spend less to pay them. That's why nobody is doing background checks and letting people into sensitive areas of our government.

Big Business is all about doing things as cheaply as humanly possible no matter what the cost is, and Republicans bring Big Business skills into the government.

It's why we shit on veterans, withhold education from the poor, overcharge taxpayers for projects that go nowhere, and let Chinese nationals get access to our banking software. It's cheaper that way.

Re:Maybe better background checks?

[Karmashock]

Background checks scan for both qualities.

First, they look for people that don't have pride in their personal honor and integrity. Ideally, you're looking for people that will not violate their oaths because they have deep seated principles. This is detectable.

Second, you disqualify anyone that has weaknesses. Drunks, drug addicts, gamblers, womanizers, people with family in countries where pressure could be put on them, connections to organized crime, any connection to fringe political organizations, membership in weird religions, odd personal beliefs of any kind... etc.

And that's just the start of it. Do background check and don't be afraid to simply bump people out for not meeting them. It's not like you've said they're bad people. You've just disqualified them from that position. Get lax about it and you're going to have problems. Simple as that.

And his other client, of course

[Gothmolly]

WAS THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT.

All part of the plan.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Zhang said that he used the GWA Code in connection with a private business he ran training individuals in computer programming" I wonder if anyone asked him if he was teaching them the code so that they might be able to create an exploit that would use elevated security from the system to worm about the treasury dept gathering all sorts of very important information . Which once collected sounds like it could create a situation where a foreign government might be able to force a default by calling for dept repayment which could collapse the world economy. Read about the program http://www.fms.treas.gov/gwa/index.html

Not good at all.

Or like Alonzo Harris said in Training Day: "This shit's chess, it ain't checkers".

No

[florescent_beige]

He didn't steal a pattern of symbols, he copied it.

Seems obvoius

[Anonymous Coward]

[insert joke about Source Safe here]

Blown out of proportion

[Anonymous Coward]

My initial reaction is that this is blown way out of proportion. Sure, maybe what he did was technically against the law, but all of us do things that are technically in violation of the law every day. In the state I live in, it is technically illegal to ride a bicycle without making proper hand signals, but it is also illegal to remove your hands from the handlebars while the bicycle is in motion. This doesn't mean that nobody rides bicycles, just that we rely on a little bit of common sense when the laws are applied so the people who do things that are really morally wrong get punished and other people don't.

Honestly, taking some snippets of source code from a proprietary project and showing snippets as code samples to aspiring programmers doesn't seem morally wrong. At least not 10 years in jail and $250k fine wrong. It seems like the type of thing that maybe you get a small fine for and a stern talking to.

Now, I might be wrong here. The article really has very little details about what standards were like on the project-- it's possible that every day workers had to swear an oath not to steal code, and they had to work in Mission Impossible style clean rooms with booby-trapped floors, and everybody knew how extremely sensitive the code in question was. In that case, sure, what he did is morally wrong and 10 years seems reasonable.

But I suspect that it's more likely that the environment was relaxed. Maybe lots of programmers took their code home with them because there were stupid security protocols in place that prevented real work from getting done, and management intentionally looked the other way because they knew that's what the developers needed to do in order to be effective at their jobs. And the code in question is probably some module that does some boring shifting of numbers from one column to another, nothing that seemed particularly sensitive. In that case, well, I'd expect that justice would demand a much less harsh sentence, closer to a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to than a life-ruining multi-year prison sentence.

I think that it's especially telling that the article says that "stealing is stealing, it doesn't matter what the intent was". That's the kind of argument you make if you know that you have a morally flimsy case where somebody violated the letter but not the spirit of the law.

Of course, naive and idealistic opinions like these are probably why I am neither a judge, nor a lawyer, nor a politician.

Re:Blown out of proportion

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe the Fed and the FBI know more that they care to say publicly about this guy's past. Been in in the US for over ten years, worked at some pretty big financial institutions...just saying

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-18/man-said-to-be-charged-by-u-s-in-federal-government-computer-data-theft.html

Zhang has been in the U.S. on a work visa since 2000, said another person familiar with the matter who also didn’t want to be identified because the information isn’t public. Zhang worked previously at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Bank of America Corp., the person said.

Re:Blown out of proportion

[WindBourne]

The same Goldman Sachs and BOA that were cracked after he worked there?

oh dear

[Anonymous Coward]

can you imagine what would happen if someone got hold of the federal reserve's pin number? they should probably call the bank and have them change it and maybe even issue a new card. this is the federal reserve, they should not leave this to chance!

It was the subroutine ...

[PPH]

... that implemented, "One for you. One for Goldman Sachs. One for you ...."

Mr. Bo Zhang-gles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he steal the code and dance out of the place?

Re:Mr. Bo Zhang-gles?

[tqk]

Did he steal the code and dance out of the place?

I always email myself a copy of my final submitted code, to cover my butt, to serve as a backup, and to optimize my ability to support my work. This is wrong? Why?

As for dancing out, damned right!

Re:Mr. Bo Zhang-gles?

[Anonymous Coward]

er, well i've done that too, not the dance tho'. but then i'm amazed how those guys came to know of his taking(would'nt call that stealing) the code. prolly a troll in one of the classes he conducted for training?

why isn't it open anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the Federal Reserve have interally-developed, proprietary software? What is the reason that this source code cannot be open? I don't mean to imply that it is some big secret, but perhaps the Fed should ask itself whether or not any damage has been done?

Re:why isn't it open anyway?

[TheMathemagician]

Of course you're correct. The Fed isn't in the business of software development and all their code could be open (as opposed to their data). It would be fun project to force this to happen in all goverment departments because of all the screaming and invalid arguments that would ensue but forcing a clean separation between code and data would be extremely beneficial.

China thanks you

[WindBourne]

America is LOADED with Chinese spies. China is in a cold war with the west, and the west is disregarding it. Sad.

Re:China thanks you

[Anonymous Coward]

Every country that is not in complete shit has spies everywhere. The US especifically has a fuckton of spies, so pot meet kettle - I bet you two will have a fun time together. Anyhow, the guy could very well be just a criminal and not a spy (although I suppose you could classify spies as criminals, in which case he'd be a criminal either way); not every single Chinese citizen spends their whole life trying to bring down other governments you know?
It's really sad that the news always say the country of origin of the evil Chinese, or the race of the always criminal black people. In this case saying it once would be fine, but in the title it's obvious they're trying to paint China as evil and the US as incompetent (which would be fine, but when it's back-handed it is not ok).

Re:China thanks you

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

America is LOADED with Chinese spies. China is in a cold war with the west, and the west is disregarding it. Sad.

No, it is something to be proud of. That such things can happen is a necessary consequence of a free society. It's one of the many things encompassed by the saying that, "Freedom isn't free."

We've already destroyed far too much of our freedom because of an irrational fear of practically non-existant terrorists, we should not sacrifice any more of the fundamental principles that make american society superior to chinese society. Unless, of course, civil liberties aren't inherently better than authoritarianism.

Re:China thanks you

[WindBourne]

Civil Liberties does NOT require a lack of security. In this case, a foreigner, esp. a Chinese national (and yes, he was chinese national) should not have access to this code. Likewise, I have had 2 jobs where I have dealt with chinese spy. In one case, they OPENLY admitted that they wanted to take our work to China. Even spoke of how to get it out of the nation.

And what threat is non-existant? AQ? They are very real. I DO think that we have acted overboard to them, and what the neo-cons did was INSANE. However, the threats are real.

Re:China thanks you

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The idea that america is "loaded" with spies implies a call for change in government policy. Even your anecdotes don't rise to the level that requires government action - if you knew that guy was plotting espionage than tell your boss, get him fired and the problem is solved.

And yes, AQ's threat to the US is and has been effectively non-existant. They shot their wad on 9-11 and since then the best they could muster has been incompetents like the shoe, underwear and times square bombers - even if they had been competent the sum threat they all posed was less than a week's worth of traffic fatalities, or 12 hours worth of heart disease.

Re:China thanks you

[Vitriol Angst]

Not just Chinese spies ... America is LOADED with Mossad and AIPAC agents. Turkish agents. Saudi princes ready to party. Ukrainian mafia probably put about a Billion dollars in the coffers of the Bush family -- likely they are rolling in Opium today. It's all up for grabs...

Nobody is going to attack America if they can merely bid for the Speaker of the House. I'm wondering when Christies is going to quit playing with the chump change million dollar art auctions and organize this mayhem into a profitable enterprise.

Via looking the other way because EVERYONE was corrupt, Washington has become the fricken' UN. I can imagine that most of the work for Chinese intelligence is sifting through the crap that they already stole, and sorting that from the crap that already came in a diplomatic pouch.

When Sibel Edmonds blew the whistle about Nuclear weapons secrets that she translated from Turkish intelligence communications -- she was ignored and told to sit down and shut up. Going higher only got her in trouble. She also claimed that Dennis Hastert was on Turkey's payroll -- nothing happened. Now D H is a highly paid consultant for Turkey -- he's probably giving them million dollar history lessons like Newt gave Fannie Mae.

Re:China thanks you

[Vitriol Angst]

The idea that america is "loaded" with spies implies a call for change in government policy. Even your anecdotes don't rise to the level that requires government action - if you knew that guy was plotting espionage than tell your boss, get him fired and the problem is solved.

I'm a Progressive, and I figure MOST wars are for profit and a scam. I'm not big on the Security State or the Pentagon.

Having said that... are you fricken' kidding me? The only reason nobody cares if some Chinese national is stealing their stuff is if the whole thing is corrupt and security is a farce for our benefit.

Why are we bothering to spy on every American and sniff every shoe traveling on an airplane, if ANY imported worker could be working against a company that is doing work that is vital to national security? And by any measure, the Fed is vital to national security.

If nobody cares, that means they already have one foot out the door and don't care who does what. I'd say this was an instance of arguing over deck chairs on the Titanic -- but someone already sold them.

Re:China thanks you

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's weird that you think no change in government policy is equivalent to "nobody cares."

They did arrest this guy didn't they?

Re:China thanks you

[WindBourne]

Actually, I took it to the FBI. And we need a massive change in our employee security policies, as well as how sub-contracts are handled.

No, we have been stopping AQ. They continue to make attempts. Constantly. I can tell you about this. My little sister works for an airline at an airport. She knows a number of TSA folks. She has been there when they pull ppl aside of weird things. Regularly, it is muslims that have oddly shaped items such as plastic toy knives, hidden in weird areas. Basically, they are trying to figure out what can be gotten through security. In addition, do you recall that situation in which 4 muslims were taken off an airline? The one where the muslims said that they did knot know each other? Well, some info did not make it out to the general press but was known by the airlines. All 4 tickets were purchased by the same person and all 4 had same address. IOW, they lied. These men were mapping security, which is why TSA is constantly changing to deal with issues.

There is little doubt that AQ is VERY active in the west. And it is not just USA. They are making constant attempts in EU and UK. The reason why Obama has not changed a number of policies is because they are keeping America safe.

Now as a person who has worked on PATRIOT act, I can tell you, that I have issues with it. There need to be more safeguards put into place. In particular, it is being grossly misapplied. Right now, the vast majority of 'terrorists' are not terrorists, but drug criminals. The fact that we have to use PATRIOT act to catch them, and still not making a dent actually shows how badly the republican-created and pushed drug war is going. So, the PATRIOT act can also be used against the politicians (mostly pubs) that push this insane war. IOW, if we had some bright politicians, they would be able to point that out. They seem to miss that point. They also miss the point that it is being misapplied.

Re:China thanks you

[WindBourne]

While I do not know about other nation's spies, I KNOW that they exists. That is a given. However, with the chinese, they are pressing like there is no tomorrow. Upwards of 10% or more of Chinese are either outright spies, or are fronts for spy operations and will gladly send tech out of the nation. That includes those that have been naturalized esp. over the last 20 years.

But, I fully agree with you about CONgress. So many are on the take from China, Foreign nations, Groups representing illegals, unions, businesses, etc.. Everybody EXCEPT for the citizens (except for the wealthy ones). SO many ppl scream that it is the other party, when in fact, it is BOTH parties.

That is why I back rootstrikers. Even as a Libertarian, I have to say, that It is obvious that we need massive controls back on CONgress. Then perhaps, CONgress will represent America, and not all of the others outside of here.

Re:China thanks you

[WindBourne]

oh, the guy was not an employee. He was attempting to invest into our company. Basically, he claimed to be from Taiwain years ago. He made his money in multiple chinese restaurants. One of the conditions buried in it was that our equipment became his if he decided that the company was not worth anything. When he turned down the offer, then he wanted to 'rent' the equipment for a time to take to China. Promised 10 million. Then 50 million. Said that he had ways to get it out there. The FBI is looking into the case.

There was a another individual, but it was hard to tell if she was a spy or not.

Re:China thanks you

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Lol, the whole terrorists are "probing" our security is such baloney. The TSA regualrly trumpets their useless accomplishments like confiscating drugs and guns but not a single person has even been indicted on terrorism charges, much less convicted, due to a TSA interdiction. Furthermore, if the TSA really was effective at stopping terrorists, they would just go somewhere else like a shopping mall or movie theater or sabotage the train tracks out in the boonies where there is nobody at all much less anybody actually watching for them. Yet none of it happens, ergo their ain't anything going on.

The reason why Obama hasn't changed "a number of policies" is because of things like inertia and irrational freak-outs like what happened when he tried to close gitmo and move the prisoners to a maximum security prison.

Re:China thanks you

[virg_mattes]

Can you supply some verifiable citation of any of this stuff? You make an awful lot of assertions but I haven't seen any proof of any of the things you've said from any credible source. "My sister said..." and "Some info did not make it out to the general press..." are the hallmarks of the tinfoil hat set. Back it up or pack it up, please.

Virg

Racists

[digitallife]

Holy f#ck people are racist on here.
The dude was using some code he wrote to train people. Can we assume guilt of something *after guilt has been proven*? Pretty please?

Re:Racists

[WindBourne]

Yeah, I can not image why a Chinese national would work on federal reserve, CONTINUE DOING CONTRACTING, but grab code to train ppl, except that he has no students. In addition, a co-worker who knew that he copied the source code to an external drive, later claimed to have lost said drive.

There are times that racism is here. There may be posts here that are racists. HOWEVER, the vast majority are NOT racists, but simply pointing out somebody that very likely is a spy.

Re:Racists

[s73v3r]

In this case, it appears to be fairly warranted. Although I agree with the Innocent until Proven Guilty thing.

Many things that ppl do not realize

[Anonymous Coward]

GSA and BOA are somehow tied to China. In particular, many of their contract employees are paid via Chinese banks. THere is a LOT of weird things going on, that few realize it. Oddly, that little oddity was started back around 2005.

This code should be open-sourced?

[HongPong]

There should be a git repository for all the code used for such core functions as the US Treasury ledger. Of course that would cause reporting to improve -- imagine if each budget operation got spit out in tweets or API-compatible calls. That would really mess up the routine at the Federal Reserve for laundering drug money & creating credit lines for foreign criminal banker arch weasels, so it's going to be closed source as far as they can take it.

they issue electronic money all the time

[decora]

soooooo yeah.

please for the love of god read more books

[decora]

if you would read Henry Paulson's "On the Brink" he specifically talks about how the Russian government tried to do EXACTLY this in 2008 with the help of the Chinese government. But the Chinese government told the Russians to fuck off and die in a fire. Why ?Partly because Henry Paulson had been the CEO of Goldman Sachs and heavily involved in China for the past several years, . . . his book mentions far more discussions with Chinese leaders during the crash of 2008 than he mentions people like Dick Cheney or even George Bush.

none of this has anything to do with 'hackers' or 'source code'.

Needs a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

They missed a trick. They could have called it the GWAR Program.

Re:Needs a better name

[SoundGuyNoise]

Mod up! Mod up!

Bad code sample?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it was a code that he got so he can show his students how NOT to write code.

Unless

[bussdriver]

His mistake was he should have covered himself by stealing a few billion dollars and giving a few million dollars to election campaigns. Or may he should have incorporated as a bank...

"OMG, the bigots were right!"

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not understand apart from the obvious conspiratorial conclusions. Why are positions like these even going to people who don't meed YANKEE WHITE security clearance? Whatever happened to this thing called COMPELLING GOVERNMENT INTEREST? When are people going to learn that all it takes is one look in the mirror to undo naturalization? What calamity must occur before people learn only to mutter under their breaths that "the bigots were right?"

==//==

CALING BS (AGAIN)

[theNAM666]

You've got to be fucking kidding. If I hadn't already commented in this thread, I'd mod down this BS.

Likely he got the job because they couldn't hire any qualified US citizens. (That's a requirement in H1B, etc., right? OK, we know that HB1 is also a bit of BS, but...)

The bottom line is that Chinese kids are willing to work, and they actually learn things. American kids are even lazier than the 70s, when they spent half of their time in College drunk or hight. Today, for the first time in its history, the US is going to have a generation that is less educated than the previous two generations.

An American programmer paid minimum wage? Like hell. Perhaps a wannabee american programmer who can't get shit done. But the reason America is where it is, is because Americans are fucking lazy ignorant xenophobes.

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[Anonymous Coward]

Your hyperbole is quite offensive and very misinformed. First off, I can tell you from my experience as an American Computer Engineer, your opinion strays far from the truth. The most knowledgeable and hard working engineers can come from any nationality, but the majority of American Engineers I have worked with have been very hard working and extremely well educated.

In America, because we aggregate the best Engineers from around the world, we have work places that are diverse and blossoming with creativity and stitched together with the common goal to succeed. I believe it is important to remember, Americans developed and continue to innovate a disproportionately large amount of the technology that we use today, through hard work, creativity and innovation.

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[Osgeld]

minimum wage just to have a job (cause it pays better than unemployment), not a career path you dumb fuck

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[theNAM666]

If you're a real programmer, you can get a job. Maybe a 45k post as well, as job instead of the 70K or 90K or whatever you like, or a short-term position with even less $ or hours, but if you're willing to move or commute, you can find a job well above minimum wage.

I dropped my rant against this being a racist xenophoblic BS, as someone else had already pointed it out, but seriously. With the incompetent "Geek Squad" charging $400 to transfer data from an old laptop to a new one, you can't find work? You're not trying.

And by the way, since you mentioned it, sodomize you up your dumb hole with a sharpened corn cob until perotinitis allows your brains to seep out.

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[Osgeld]

let me know how those magic numbers work in the real world and not in your imagination while your in your moms basement (shit if I lived in california 45K wouldnt buy a cardboard box to live in)

what does geek squad pay? like 8 bucks an hour a whole 50 cents more than minimum wage, and you dont think I already didnt apply? (yea both best buys are full up on nerds after 4 comp usa's in town shut down a few years ago genius)

and there is nothing racist about my statement, this is a government project outsourcing to contracted labor (shit they probably flew the guy in) while its own citizens are begging for work, its boggling. I am not trying? fuck you asswipe, you dont know me, and obiously you dont know the work climate right now, how could you? you havent even finished middle school yet

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[theNAM666]

I might suggest you read my comment history, if you think I'm in middle school, my friend.

I didn't suggest that you *work* for the Geek Squad. I suggested that anyone hungry and with half a clue could steal the Geek Squad's lunch.

More seriously, I get these sort of "jobs" from friends all the time. My bartender approached me last night, and said he took his virus-crashed laptop to Best Buy and they quoted him $400 to move the files off and to his new Mac. He told me he'd give me $200 to do the job-- adding that he had certain files with his wife that were, shall we say, "private" in nature and he didn't trust Best Buy to deal with.

That kind of work is everywhere. If the Geek Squad is charging $100/hr to do very basic tech (setting up DVRs, etc) then you can undercut that-- and provide a professional relationship. It's not work I really want-- but how you beat the big corporate guys, is by providing a better price point, and a better service. Get a $700 suit for $300 on OverStock, treat your customers well, communicate with them in standard written English, establish trust and security. Kiss their rumps if you have to, if you're eating Ramen.

In the end, I don't mean to insult you if your situation is hard. But I'm not going to accept BS, either. If you're not in the sticks where there's no market-- if you are somewhere where there's Best Buy and Comp USA-- then surely, you can still find people with money, who will pay Best Buy if they have no other choice, and take that business. And provide a better value.

As far as this guy-- c'mon. Your proposition is silly. The US Federal government is a damn Dilbert mess, sure, but if they could hire a US-native programmer for the same price (don't assume this guy is a low-ball salary) or even 50% more, they'd probably do so. The talent isn't there.

Of course, that's also a failure of the US Educational system. I'm probably more pissed than you about that, and I understand that the US isn't providing as much educational investment and opportunity for young people, as, for instance, China. But the young in the US also have an enormous sense of entitlement, of wishing and thinking they should get something for nothing.

I worked hard in College and grad school. I put in the 80+ hour weeks, and I still do. I've lived in CA-- if you can't downsize enough to live on $45K in the Mission, or Berkeley (or the burbs), c'mon, $45K is still a lot of money. I've made 100x that in a year, and I've lived on a quarter of that in other years. Adjust to your means and make the best of it-- if you can't pull in $45K, then don't try to live a $45K lifesytle.

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[Anonymous Coward]

You made 4.5 million in a year and 11,000 another??

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[Anonymous Coward]

You've made 4.5 million dollars per year and you are offering to transfer files for your local bartender for $200 ?

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[Anonymous Coward]

I put in the 80+ hour weeks, and I still do.

And I don't envy you, at all. And I hope the person you replied to doesn't, either, because that's just pathetic and I feel sorry for you and your family unless you live alone.

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN)

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked a director and an assistant vise-chancellor who they thought the customers of the semi-prestigious university I work at are. They told me the customers of the university were the students. Most people would agree. Actually, the students are the product and employers are the customers. I'm not sure how this massive misunderstanding came to be but I do know that U.S. employers do not value U.S. educated people, young people in the U.S. are dropping out of high school, U.S. high school student performance is remarkably low when compared to the rest of the world, default rates for student loans are alarmingly high, and there is a general sense of the futility of anyone, young or old, bothering to put themselves through school because employers generally don't value the result. The only time when a degree matters anymore is when an employer is mandated to hire or promote a degreed person to fill a position. U.S. private businesses seem to go out of their way to avoid employing (or contracting) any U.S. citizen with a college degree but when something "difficult" needs to be done, the opportunity is automatically presented to someone from outside the country. You have people seemingly from the U.S. giving excuses why this is so ... like in the parent post. So tell me, why would anyone care to do well in school (not to mention go in debt) if U.S. employers are not going to value the outcome of those efforts, or worse, will avoid hiring anyone who went to college?

And school isn't the only place people learn to do things. If all the on-the-job-training is going to foreigners, how do you expect U.S. born people to acquire the skills that U.S. organizations demand? It's supposed to be that people go to school, get a basic skill level that employers can build on, get a job, build their skill on the job and progress from there. Instead, you get people who go to school because that's the only way they can acquire the skills that are in demand, and then land in jobs that require very little skill (much less any skill learned in school). This sort of thing is not new to the point where the only people going to school are those who are competing for one of those positions where the person hired into the position must have a college degree... and people wonder why there is this sense of entitlement from degreed people.
 

Critical to Security -- what?!?!

[theNAM666]

>FBI Assistant Director in Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk [said] “His intentions with regard to that software are immaterial.
>Stealing it and copying it threatened the security of vitally important source code.”

And what's so important about the security of accounting code? Would it be so bad if this were open source-- heck, the whole process, so that citizens could actually see the financial operations and transactions of Federal Agencies, before tens of millions get embezzelled or spent in boondoggles...

*light comes on.*

Ok, got it.

Merandia? !

[Anonymous Coward]

Within the Obama DoJ there are still emements that have regard to Marandia.

They are under attack, many have been killed by Obama forces.

Still, some hide. Some forage as best they can. Others waite.

Resistance is good. Builds character.

Plans are in making to evaporate central and out to surban W.D.C. and all living within.

GOOD!

PS Its a no-braomer that Obam order the DoJ crackdown in retalliation.

The MPAA and RIAA are withholding Billions of US$ from Obama's re-errection compaign if SOPA/IPA do not go through AS IS.

Looks like the $ has spoken and Obama-kun is All Ears.

Re:CALING BS (AGAIN) YES!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese kids are willing to work, and they actually learn things. American kids are even lazier than the 70s, when they spent half of their time in College drunk or hight. Today, for the first time in its history, the US is going to have a generation that is less educated than the previous two generations.

I know I'm going to get modded right to hell in about five minutes, but I'm going to write this anyway. Every time I happen to drop by one of the CS labs at a well regarded state University on a Saturday night, guess what I see? The Asian students are busy working on their projects at midnight, while most everyone else is out getting drunk. Hell, not even a Saturday night. How about Tuesday? Yes. Everything in this above quote is spot on. And I'm an American. An ashamed one.

What, no Ron Paul jokes?

[Tablizer]

What's up with that? Slashdotters are losing their edge.

Re:What, no Ron Paul jokes?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's the joke"

Re:What, no Ron Paul jokes?

[electron sponge]

Yeah the joke is that there are no jokes. There's really not much to laugh about.

If only people knew what the Federal Reserve was, what it did, and how it affected their everyday life without any oversight from their elected representatives. Around a fifth of Americans are already aware, and that number is growing. They aren't devoted to Republicans or Democrats. They are simply aware. These people may disagree on how to solve the problem but the key thing is, they see there is a huge problem. Things are going to get fixed, eventually.

Whether you frame it around Ron Paul or not, a lot of people can see that our problems seem to be stemming from the central bank, and that before we can even begin to fix the problem we need to know EXACTLY what they've been up to. This has been a big problem for a long time. Our representatives have had very little power to compel the Fed to open its books up. Thanks to folks like Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, and others, we've gotten a very ugly glimpse. We need to see the whole picture, though. Americans need to know why their currency is being inflated. (And before anyone says 'uh inflation isn't happening' let's just remember that we've moved the goalposts on that metric just as we have our cost of living and unemployment. Lies, damned lies and statistics.)

psd to html

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sharing actually that is really useful for me keep sharing with us.....!

psd to html

psd to xhtml

Stole or copied

[Anonymous Coward]

Every piracy discussion I've seen on here eventually has a post saying piracy is copying not stealing. Is this different? Did this guy steal the code or copy it? Does the bank not have a copy left?

Are we nuts?

[Anonymous Coward]

The rationale for hiring Chinese nationals for sensitive positions escapes me.
Seems suicidal, given the hostile relationship.

fixed it for you

[Shakrai]

but is nothing close to the millions you can steal on Wall Street.

I'm surprised he got away with it

[msobkow]

When I worked for J. P. Morgan before the Chase merger and for a year afterwards, security was so tight I can't think of any way I COULD have stolen code if I wanted to. I don't think my PC even had a floppy drive or a USB port, and everything was on servers, not local machines. Even the MS Access '98 code I wrote resided on servers, though I did have edit copies on my local hard drive.

I went through the usual security checks -- fingerprint submissions to police, FBI, and CIA, etc. Those checks are pretty thorough, so even on that basis I'm surprised a thief was able to sneak through the security protocols.

Lack of talent? No, lack of exploitable Americans

[BVis]

After reading comments about how there are no Americans talented or qualified enough to fill this position, I have to point something out:

There are plenty of American software engineers that could do this job. There aren't plenty of American software engineers that could do this job for the crap pay they were most likely offering. It's not a matter of unwillingness, it's a matter of being able to support a family in the current environment. Corporations whine and whine about no talent being available, but what they really mean is 'there's no talent available that will work for the insulting wages we're offering, so let us hire H1Bs for pennies on the dollar who can't complain or they get deported.' Not only do they save money, they get an employee that they can more easily work into the ground than an American citizen.

The H1B system is a cruel joke perpetrated on the American worker. And before some capitalist-is-awesome-fuck-you moron says that it would kill jobs, no, it would just shrink corporate profits to the point where they make 7 kajillion dollars instead of 9.

Also, IMHO, any entity that hires contractors to do mission critical work instead of hiring full-time employees deserves everything they get.

What could go wrong?

[Vitriol Angst]

I'm not talking about guild or innocence here but; They outsourced this important coding job to a Chinese man. Is he the only one who could do it, or was he the cheapest?

If Americans are given good jobs, opportunity and hope for the future -- there's a good chance to expect loyalty and honor from happy citizens.

If you want to replace that model with; "We will bargain you down to the lowest common-denominator on the planet" then you really, really have to beef up security because you can trust them only slightly more than they can trust you. Holy crap!

>> When November of 2008 financial collapse rolled around (inevitably), some Bonds rating companies were giving their consulting clients AAA ratings on whatever they pushed out because consulting made more money than bond rating. The Big Banks got around protections for consumers by using smaller banks to collect the sub-par loans with no questions asked (they were not forced in the SLIGHTEST by anti-red lining laws, contrary to Rush Limbaugh and his minions).

Ultimately, all these "Job Creators" can't really trust each other -- because there are no suckers left. It's only sharks in them thar waters and there is nothing left for bottom feeders but the blood.

>> The Federal Reserve (which has no oversight and isn't government), outsourced a job to a non-American, and likely he already sent a good portion of the code and the Fed's security procedures to China. Dig in fella's, this is how you enjoy just desserts -- and you thought you only had to worry about Occupy Wall Street? Heh.

Stealing?

[mothlos]

So, the DOJ used to have code and no longer does? How much effort is it going to take to recreate this stolen code?

Seriously, folks. We need to start using more descriptive vocabulary to differentiate between 'taking something away from somebody' and 'duplicating something'. These have very different outcomes and should have different name space. 'Copy' is the term that I prefer.

The reason why he was caught..

[Sigg3.net]

He was only suspected for theft after he tried to change name.

Ka Ching!

Oh Yeah, Sure...

[3seas]

Like the government is really doing government wide accounting and reporting...... Since when?

And I guy gets busted for using the code the tax payers paid for to teach? now its starting to sound more real.

Clearly its would have been only a matter of time before some student figured out the flaws in the system which those in government would manipulate to hide where tax payer money is really going.

Ultimately the question is..... Why is it proprietary? Considering its paid for by the tax payers who really do have a right and duty to know what their government is doing with the the peoples tax dollar..

For those who want to question the Peoples Rights and Duty...... When was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence? Maybe its time for you to read it again.

Re:Lack of talent? No, lack of exploitable America

[Shados]

We're having trouble hiring here. The job is fun, the salary is in 6 figures, but we need a lot of people and there's lots of competition. Often, bad candidates get jobs before we even get a chance to talk to them. Out of state candidates usually don't want to move even with generous compensation.

We only have a single H1B, and the guy is really, really good (and paid accordingly. No money saving there).

Just saying that depending where you're located, if the demand is high, it can be REALLY hard to find good candidates. Most devs who think they're good are terrible.

About the turning point

[ale2011]

It is great news that people opt to steal code rather than money, even from banks. I look forward to replacing conservation laws with suitable information-based statements, for a coherent vision of the universe.