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Programmer Admits Stealing US Gov't Accounting Software Source Code
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from NetSecurity.org: "A Chinese computer programmer that was charged with stealing the source code of software developed by the U.S. Treasury Department pleaded guilty to the charge on Tuesday. The 33-year-old Bo Zhang, legally employed by a U.S. consulting firm contracted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, admitted that he took advantage of the access he had to the Government-wide Accounting and Reporting Program (GWA) in order to copy the code onto an external hard disk and take it home." Just such things make me think that the default setting for software created with public money should be released with source code anyhow, barring context-specific reasons that it shouldn't be.
That seems like less harm then depriving the rightful owners of the code access, the american taxpayer.
Just such things make me think that the default setting for software created with public money should be released with source code anyhow, barring context-specific reasons that it shouldn't be.
So that countries who have not spent money can use it for free?
I, for one, do not want the overpriced, often delayed, over managed & under performing software my taxes pay for to be 'free' for anyone, any company or any country. Let them overpay and wait for their own.
The ownership of the code can often get a little muddied, as the company who is paid to develop it may use their own funds at times too--or extend an existing product the company has for the government's needs--meaning some of it is proprietary and privately funded. This is why most such software is available for use within the government, but the private company maintains rights to continue to develop and sell it commercially as well.
A Chinese national who used to work at my company lifted our proprietary code and fled back to China as well.
Normally, works of the US federal government are in the public domain, and not protected by copyright. How is this not the case here?
On another note, Slashdot editors, please stop using the word "stealing" for immaterial right infringements.
Given the way our government seems to run its accounts, perhaps we should hope that all potential competitors / adversaries steal it.
That's making the false assumption that "physical property" and "intellectual property" are the same thing. Hint: they are not.
Any work of the United States government, or an employee of such working on government time, is automatically in the public domain. Everything from NASA photographs to recordings of the Marine Corps Band to every boring office memo are public domain. I don't see why that should not apply to program code.
Note also that "classified" and "public domain" are separate things - technically, even the ultra-top-secret "list of nuclear launch codes" is public domain, in that no one can claim copyright or trademark on it. So the "fire ze missiles" program can be (and probably should be) classified. But the accounting programs?
The 33-year-old Bo Zhang, legally employed by a U.S. consulting firm contracted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, admitted that he took advantage of the access he had to the Government-wide Accounting and Reporting Program (GWA) in order to copy the code onto an external hard disk and take it home.
Sweet.
Mother.
Of.
GOD.
NOT THE ACCOUNTING AND REPORTING SOFTWARE!!! Oh God no. Oh God no. Oh God no. Now the terrorists have access to the TPS REPORTS!!! They'll know how a PT-44 revision 8b (as amended by the New Management Initiative Subcommittee 79a-b, 1967) audit works! And — may God have mercy on our souls — they might figure out how to copy the entire submanagement structure of the Greater Boise Area (Excluding Outlying Suburbs and Farms) Processing and Distribution Department!
That's it. We're doomed. They have our bureaucracy. THEY HAVE OUR BUREAUCRACY, PEOPLE!!! THESE ARE THE END TIMES!!!
No, that he was Chinese, not American is why it made the front page. He's clearly part of the Chinese conspiracy to steal our IP, even though there is absolutely no mention that he sent the code back home to some Chinese corporation. In fact if they had proof of that I think he'd be facing a bit more than 1.5yrs, even with cooperation and you can bet your ass they looked. In this case his story makes sense, he's probably not the only person to do this.
I'm not sure how many American engineers and developers make copies of the work that they did while an employee of some company, but I know the number is greater than 0. Almost none of them are using it for industrial espionage or in allegiance to some foreign power. But it is almost always against your employment agreement, and if caught you likely will be sued or worse.
When the employer is the government, everything just gets escalated a few steps.
... it was written in Ada, so nobody knows what to do with it anyway.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Not quite. It's true that a work of a U.S. federal government employee, performed as part of their official duties, cannot normally have copyright in the U.S. HOWEVER... most software developed for the government is developed by contractors, at least in part, and those parts DO have a copyright. (There are even a few exceptions for government employees, but they practically never apply.) Also, the term "public domain" has multiple meanings, presumably you mean public domain in the copyright sense (not the export control sense, which is different).
To see when contractors or the U.S. government can currently release software as OSS, see Publicly Releasing Open Source Software Developed for the U.S. Government by David A. Wheeler (me), Journal of Software Technology, February 2011. That's the current state of affairs.
I agree with the poster above: When "we the people" pay for software, then by default "we the people" should get it. I even posted an entry about that in 2010. Sure, there need to be exceptions, but they should be exceptions; it's not obvious why accounting software developed by the government is treated this way! I also agree that we should use clearer terms like intellectual rights (and intellectual works) - not "intellectual property" - because "intellectual property" is a fundamentally misleading term.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
That seems like less harm then depriving the rightful owners of the code access, the american taxpayer.
Simply out of curiosity:
of what possible use is internal accounting software designed for enterprises on the scale of the US government to the average American taxpayer?
The software in question keeps track of money exchanged between US government agencies and, according to the authorities, its development cost nearly $10 millions.
Programmer pleads guilty to US govt software source code theft
He said to the FBI that he did so that the code would be available to him in the event of losing his job, and to use it for his private business, which is teaching computer programming.
Ummm - am I the only one that would wonder why anybody would want this?
You'll see that the main reason they went after him was because he took the source code in order to use it for his personal profit, and it hadn't gone through the proper channels to make it public-ready. In other words, what he did with the accounting software was roughly equivalent to taking classified missile control software home in order to either start a competing business or use it to help his current one. Technically, the software is "public domain," but the Federal Reserve had not actually gone through the process of making it ready to be released to the public.
I have no problem with him doing a few years for that because what he did is no different than taking a work-for-hire work home to use for a customer who didn't pay for it nor was authorized by the paying customer to have it. That's for-profit copyright violation in the private sector, and since he intended to derive private benefits from it, I don't see much of a difference. It's not like he took it home, modified it to be attractive to the Department of the Treasury and tried to demo it to another part of the government (since the Federal Reserve is a quasi-federal agency, taking their code to show to the Treasury would have been less legally problematic)
I know a lot of decent Chinese people... Also a lot of people of Chinese descent.
"US Government Accounting".
Have gnu, will travel.
But for security reasons there are some good things about closed source.
Lets be real here, we're talking about root financial systems. Neither individuals nor most corporations have any interest in this software. This is the prevue of nations and huge trade alliances.
Keeping the code secret makes it more secure. Yes, it can't be used as the only level of security. It must be on TOP of everything else. I don't think giving the chinese access to our treasury accounting software is going to make the world a better place.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.