Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

theodp writes "Programmer Sergey Aleynikov holds the dubious distinction of being the only Goldman Sachs employee since the 2008 financial meltdown to have actually served time in prison. After leaving Goldman, Sergey was accused of stealing computer code from his former employer and sentenced to eight years in federal prison. Exactly what he'd done neither the FBI nor the jury seemed to understand, so Moneyball author and financial journalist Michael Lewis decided to give Sergey a second trial, assembling a jury made up of programmers and people familiar with high-frequency trading, and asking them to level a judgment. Their verdict? Not guilty. 'I think it's quite possible that Goldman itself didn't know what he had taken, the value of it, the purpose of it, or anything else,' Lewis concludes. 'There was such turnover at Goldman, and the system was such a hairball, that I think people knew pieces but they didn't know the whole. Serge might have been as close as there was to an expert on the how the whole system worked. I think the valuable thing that Serge took when he walked out the door was himself.' Aleynikov was released on appeal in 2011, but subsequently re-arrested on state charges the following year, so he's still not out of the woods yet."

Comments

Lemme get this straight

[Opportunist]

Of all the people who wasted and squandered the money of thousands, if not millions, nobody did time in prison, the only person who did was actually not stealing from decent people but from the thieves, and for THAT he goes to jail?

Re:Lemme get this straight

[fustakrakich]

The people who do the actual stealing are holding presidential cabinet positions. Can't touch this... If there were such a thing as justice, Goldman Sachs' charter would have been revoked a long time ago.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Opportunist]

If there was such a thing as justice, I'd make a killing selling rope and pitchforks... literally.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[fustakrakich]

That's vengeance, not justice... Asset forfeiture is sufficient.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Rockoon]

Of all the people who wasted and squandered the money of thousands, if not millions

The closest thing to a currency loss and "squandering" was when the FED started rapidly printing money well beyond what the GDP growth indicated was needed.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[fustakrakich]

If it would recover all the stolen money, I would be all for it. "The best revenge against a rich man is to make him a poor man"

Re:Lemme get this straight

[gmuslera]

If you count the hundreds to millons that lost job, houses, fell into poverty, prostitution, or died at consequences of them getting richer, in all the world, i think that rope and pitchforks below what justice should do. But if you want to point exactly who died, i'd say justice. What happened with them (and the rest of that mafia) is just the death note for anything that resembles justice in US.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[pla]

That's vengeance, not justice...

Sometimes justice means both.


Asset forfeiture is sufficient.

Tell that to all the people who died of starvation because Goldman saw profits in artificially inflating the hard red spring wheat futures market.

No, sometimes "justice" does mean torches and pitchforks. Real monsters just don't take the hint otherwise.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Seumas]

Exactly what I clicked on the story to say. Of all the people at Goldman Sachs (and facilitating shadiness on the government-end of the symbiosis), this is the guy they go after?

How about Henry Paulson

Re:Lemme get this straight

[fustakrakich]

Real monsters have learned that society rewards their behavior. Taking away those rewards will go a very long way to correct the problem.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[noh8rz10]

i htink this is a chance for rehabilitation rather than incarceration, you know? the us justice system is too punitive in my book. why not have all these poeple contribute to society by doing programs for inner city youth or something?

Re:Lemme get this straight

[mwvdlee]

Asset forfeiture is not sufficient; it does nothing to compensate for consumed assets like holidays, rentals and such.
Nor does it prevent repeat offending.
Nor does it compensate victims.

As a result, any sufficiently large financial crime can never be fully repaid by it's offender.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[bkmoore]

If there was such a thing as justice, I'd make a killing selling rope and pitchforks... literally.

As a believer in nonviolence, a nice hot barrel of tar and a lot of feathers would do.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Rockoon]

This is in sharp contrast to the "new" (really asset swapped) money from QE, which is "real" government money which can't simply disappear the way private credit can.

Tell this to the people with savings. Tell them how the FED creating $80+ billion per month doesnt make the value of their savings disappear.

Re: Lemme get this straight

[OECD]

You want to change the prison system? Introduce some rich people to it.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[girlintraining]

Of all the people who wasted and squandered the money of thousands, if not millions, nobody did time in prison, the only person who did was actually not stealing from decent people but from the thieves, and for THAT he goes to jail?

Actually, that's not even entirely accurate. First, he was borrowing open source software. Goldman Sachs liked this because it meant faster development times, which meant faster profits. They didn't re-release modified code, even if it was only a few lines, of course, violating the licensing terms. Parts of the code he was working on he uploaded to an external server, because his company didn't have a proper code versioning system -- there was no way to track changes being made, and so he utilized an open source repository to store changes to chunks of code he was working on. This wasn't publicly available, it was simply put "in the cloud".

Unfortunately for him, overzealous managers and clueless FBI agents didn't understand what any of this meant, and frequently, and horribly, misinterpreted or misunderstood, what their own experts were telling him. His own attempts to explain what he had done weren't any better understood and were perceived as a confession.

This is a story of how law enforcement was criminally stupid, and believed what a middle-manager with no expertise in the subject and about five layers removed from what he was panic-striken over... that some immigrant they hired was "up to no good", when in truth, it was business as usual. Naturally, the FBI swung into action, believing the worst possible thing -- he was a terrorist, he was trying to destroy america, he was some kind of muslim radical... because the software he used was called Subversion, and when you add in terms like delete, modify, copy, remove... suddenly it looks like a bona fide CSI episode full of shadowy men exchanging pen drives with knowing winks and nods and death to america would surely follow if their crack investigative team didn't interrogate the suspects while brainy people in the forensics lab tossed around complex terminology and zoomed in on single pixels before saying "AH HA! We've got you now! This single pixel here proves he was the murderer!"

Criminal. Stupidity. That was the only crime here. It was CSI: FBI Edition... only without the special effects and soundtrack, and by people with their sense of humor surgically removed, rather than having actual personality and interesting dialogue.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Holi]

So your for cruel and unusual punishment. A painful and violent one at that.

'In a typical tar-and-feathers attack, the mob's victim was stripped to his waist. Hot tar was either poured or painted onto the person while he was immobilized. Then the victim either had feathers thrown on him or was rolled around on a pile of feathers so they stuck to the tar. Often the victim was then paraded around town on a cart or wooden rail. The aim was to inflict enough pain and humiliation on a person to make him either conform his behavior to the mob's demands or be driven from town. The practice was never an official punishment in the United States, but rather a form of vigilante attack."

That you can say your a believer in non-violence and then approve of mob violence is the height of hypocrisy.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't re-release modified code, even if it was only a few lines, of course, violating the licensing terms.

Ok, I'll pull a "Citation required" card. Please show an OSS license that requires releasing code modifications if you have only just modified a private copy of the code and have not redistributed it. So far as I know, it's usually if you redistribute the software or made a copy publicly available are you to provide the changes.

I mean, is this whole thing a GPL-is-viral kind of blowup on Goldman's part? Does it boil down to Goldman fearing Serge Aleynikov violated GPL (or whatever license) by adding Goldman proprietary changes and pushing the changes to an SVN server outside of Goldman? And they feared it would've required redistribution of the entirety of their trading platform?

Goldman fearing GPL violation more than causing the global financial meltdown? Seriously?

Re: Lemme get this straight

[dragonsomnolent]

I wish I had mod points, but in lieu of that, I will say ABSOLUTELY! The criminal justice system in the country is completely messed up. The programs don't work (especially 3 strikes laws) and especially with the treatment of addicts (which is a medical condition) being locked up along with rapists and murderers. The fact that prison rape has become a punchline of jokes shows just how screwed up it all is. The entirety of the system needs an overhaul, from laws to prison conditions.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[reve_etrange]

Their savings are held as bank deposits at private banks. The "money" the Fed is creating is held by the banks as reserve balances at the Fed itself. In our financial system there is only one operational pathway for reserve balances to enter the economy separately from their role in settling interbank payments, which is as physical U.S. currency AKA Federal Reserve Notes. Physical currency represents only a very small fraction of total reserves. Thus, the total size of all reserve balances held at the Fed has no bearing on the traded value of bank deposits denominated in dollars but held in the private sector (that is, the value of your and my savings). Like I said, Canada's banks typically have overnight reserve balances of ZERO, but that doesn't mean Canadians have no deposits at their private banks or that those deposits have infinite value.

Yet, QE does negatively affect the future value of our savings, not by harming the traded value of the dollar, but by reducing our interest income. During QE, the Fed exchanges reserves (bearing an 0.25% interest rate since 2008), which it "prints" (into a database), for securities (bearing ~3% in the case of Treasuries). The net financial assets of the private sector is unchanged, but its average rate of interest is decreased, negatively impacting its future income. Basically, the Fed is helping the government refinance at a lower rate, which is like a wealth tax on the government's creditors (including us, pensions, foreigners, companies, etc.).

TL;DR: QE is a Bad Thing, but because it decreases the amount of money we have and not the opposite.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[overlordofmu]

You said it. Incarceration for non-violent crimes is detrimental to the individual and collective society. Shooting oneself in the foot, so to speak.

Only the violent belong in cages. Nice ones too.

We are a wealth society. Only violent people go to prison and even then the cages should be nice.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[mrlibertarian]

The Fed isn't "printing money," they are conducting asset swaps in which the private sector exchanges one government debt instrument for another with a lower interest rate.

Are you talking about Operation Twist? That began in September, 2011 and ended in December, 2012, and that was always in addition to QE. QE, or quantitative easing, is when the Fed buys fixed-income securities on the open market. So, you are correct that the Fed is swapping assets, if you mean they are swapping "newly printed money" in exchange for "mortgage-backed securities/U.S. Treasuries".

Anyway, have you seen what has been happening to the monetary base since 2008? If that is not "rapidly printing money", then what is?

Prior to the financial crisis, private credit expansion (facilitated but not initiated by Greenspan) led to inflation.

Greenspan caused interest rates to fall by printing money. Low interest rate, in a system rife with government-created moral hazard (FDIC, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, etc.), is a recipe for disaster. The Fed is really less of a firefighter and more of a pyromaniac.

Of course, all of this money printing hasn't led to a big spike in consumer prices, nor has it been able to push the unemployment rate below 7% for almost 5 years now. But, we'll have to see what happens when the Fed starts tapering. My guess is that the economy will start tanking, and then it will be time for QE4. And, much like a drug addict, we'll need a larger dose if we want to stay high. How many doses do we need before stagflation begins? I'm not sure, but I know we'll find out.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Opportunist]

I'd say they have a lifetime to try, it's a good start.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[jedidiah]

The only problem with this is that you will also gleefully cripple Tort law at the same time. The end result is that White collar criminals and corporations are left with no meaningful consequences for their harmful actions. It's not even a theoretical possibility.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[girlintraining]

Ok, I'll pull a "Citation required" card. Please show an OSS license that requires releasing code modifications if you have only just modified a private copy of the code and have not redistributed it.

Er, this programmer took a copy, made some modification to it, and kept a copy of those modifications for himself. Under the terms of most open source licenses... this is a permissible act that cannot be restricted in any way. Whether he chooses to publish such a modification or not is a secondary issue. This alone should have provided legal immunity from prosecution in this fashion... it is the company in breach of contract, not the employee. Any such NDA signed by the employee would be legally unenforceable, ergo, not proprietary or trade secret, ergo not covered by the laws he was prosecuted under. IANAL however... maybe the law was just very badly written (or interpreted by people who have no technical training).

That said, "they" loaded multiple copies of his program onto internal servers, thus satisfying the requirements of the term 'distribution'... and obviously this was not for personal/private use... it was placed on a server that executed trades, a rather public thing.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[UnknownSoldier]

You're surprised that banks almost get away with murder and have a fall guy take the blame? This stuff has been going on at _least_ since 2001.

- - -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Birkenfeld

In October 2001, Birkenfeld began working at UBS in Geneva, Switzerland, handling private banking, primarily for clients located in the United States. In 2005, he learned that UBS's secret dealings with American customers violated an agreement the bank had reached with the IRS.

He resigned from UBS in October 2005 and provided written whistleblower complaints to Peter Kurer, Head Counsel for UBS, and other UBS senior executives regarding the illegal practices of U.S. cross-border business.

He is the first person to expose what has become a multi-billion dollar international tax fraud scandal over Swiss private banking.[2] Despite his unprecedented, extensive and voluntary cooperation, and registering as an IRS whistleblower, Birkenfeld is the only U.S. citizen to be sentenced to jail as a result of the scandal.

- - -

The fundamental problem is that the majority of people just don't give a crap about Accountability and Transparency and would rather watch their (un)reality TV so they don't have to think or do about how the government -- which is an extension of themselves -- is screwing up one of the greatest nations.

Re: Lemme get this straight

[Connie_Lingus]

... The entirety of the system needs an overhaul, from laws to prison conditions.

right... with all the different entities (lawyers, police, clerks, judges, guards etc) making big big money on the backs of these "criminals", and add to that the fact that lawyers and judges control the "system", do you really imagine that they are interested in the reforms you are talking about?

the only reforms they are interested in are one's that will be put more money (ie more laws more criminals) into their already well lined pockets.

Re: Lemme get this straight

[O('_')O_Bush]

Typically, sociopaths don't feel guilt, so what makes you think they would try to repay, rather than continue what they were doing?

Re: Lemme get this straight

[noh8rz10]

solution? go back to a time tested techniques -- minimum security, transportation to elsewhere. eg an island or somethign? one of those aleutian islands in alaska? that would be pretty sweet. maybe the prisoners could run it with their own local gov't and services and such? sounds pretty good to me...

Re:Lemme get this straight

[the eric conspiracy]

The monetary base is defined as the portion of the commercial banks' reserves that are maintained in accounts with their central bank plus the total currency circulating in the public (which includes the currency, also known as vault cash, that is physically held in the banks' vault).

The money supply generally far exceeds the monetary base and of the total currency circulating in the public plus the non-bank deposits with commercial banks.

The two are disjoint sets. They are related to each other through something known as the money multiplier. The money multiplier crashed during the recent economic crisis.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MULT

Since at present the value of the money multiplier is low, and excess reserves are high the US Fed has little ability to cause the money supply to increase. All it can do is decrease the money supply.

This is why the current contractionary fiscal policy is so bad. The Fed has shot all it's arrows, and the government is cutting spending.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[reve_etrange]

QE, or quantitative easing, is when the Fed buys fixed-income securities on the open market

Which is exactly what I described. Treasuries and Reserves are both government debt instruments. The only difference between them is the interest rate, because in general Treasuries are highly liquid.

Anyway, have you seen what has been happening to the monetary base [stlouisfed.org] since 2008? If that is not "rapidly printing money", then what is?

Call it whatever you want, but it remains a simple fact there is no mechanism in our system for these reserves to enter the economy. Reserves do not constrain bank lending and adding reserves does not increase bank lending.

Of course, all of this money printing hasn't led to a big spike in consumer prices, nor has it been able to push the unemployment rate below 7% for almost 5 years now.

For reasons expressed by me and by the_eric_conspiracy, there is no reason to expect the so-called money printing to do either of those things.

But, we'll have to see what happens when the Fed starts tapering. My guess is that the economy will start tanking, and then it will be time for QE4.

This statement is obviously an explicit contradiction of the statement immediately preceding it. If they taper while maintaining a low target rate, there will be an initial shock due to expectations which will quickly fade as the market realizes its mistake (thinking that QE is either inflationary to prices or expansionary to the money supply).

How many doses do we need before stagflation begins?

You misunderstand the cause of inflation in the 1970's, which was the OPEC oil price hike. It ended when we deregulated natural gas. This explanation is the only one which accounts for the fact that the 70's inflation began and ended at nearly the same times in all countries.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, this programmer took a copy, made some modification to it, and kept a copy of those modifications for himself. Under the terms of most open source licenses... this is a permissible act that cannot be restricted in any way.

Citation needed. This is completely, and dangerously wrong (anyone who acts in this manner is exposing themselves to serious legal liability).

OSS licenses (with the exception of oddball ones like Affero GPL) dictate that anyone who receives a copy of a software program must also be provided with the source code for said program. That's it. The software that the programmer took was the property of his employer. He was not entitled to receive a copy of the software; therefore, he wasn't entitled to the source code either.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[mrlibertarian]

The money multiplier crashed during the recent economic crisis.

Yes, because of the Fed. The Fed inflated the monetary base like crazy, and then paid interest to the banks to hold on to those excess reserves. Because of that, excess reserves went from 2 billion in 2008 to 1.8 trillion now.

So, what happens when interest rates start to rise and the economy starts to improve? Suddenly, the Fed's 0.25 interest rate is not going to be enough to keep the banks from loaning out all of those excess reserves. And that's when the inflation crisis is really going to take off. Check out this article if you want to know more.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[dbIII]

admitted that he was leaving with a copy of the code in order to provide him with an advantage in his next job

And that's worth how long in jail?

Re:Lemme get this straight

[the eric conspiracy]

Yes, that is one theory. However there is a problem with this idea - the MM started its dive BEFORE the monetary base was increased via QE. It started crashing in Sept 2008, when Lehman failed while QE started in November 2008.

It is pretty obvious that the cause was the banks were crapping there pants due to the fact that they were most all BK because of bad loans and were to highly leveraged. As a result they started building reserves like crazy, and put an end to almost all lending. The Fed tried to counteract that with QE, which is really a weak tool. Still it's better than what would have happened otherwise - the MM crash would have ended up decreasing the money supply, and we would have had a major deflationary episode.

THAT sort of thing is what led to the Great Depression.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[ebno-10db]

Perhaps you should save your sanctimony for criminals, and those authorities that conspire not to prosecute the ones wearing bespoke suits, instead of someone blowing off steam on the Internet.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[ebno-10db]

Asset forfeiture is sufficient.

Asset forfeiture is sufficient punishment for criminal acts? Ok, let's start with car thieves and the like. See how that works with small time crooks and how people accept it. If that works out, we can work up to the major criminals in bespoke suits.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[ebno-10db]

>>the FBI swung into action, believing the worst possible thing -- he was a terrorist, he was trying to destroy america, he was some kind of muslim radical.

OR just because Goldman had enough connections UP THERE, made some phone calls, and had FBI pick him up. All because they wanted to teach the programmer a lesson.

Once federal judges acquited him, they had their friends in the State go after him.

If the State too is forced to acquit him, they will get someone else to go after him.

Let any other employee think twice before leaving the Brotherhood.

In fact NSA is tracking those who are commenting in his favor here and passing the list to Goldman.

With Goldman, anything's possible.

At least the Mafia does their own enforcement instead of squandering government resources.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[evilviper]

Tell them how the FED creating $80+ billion per month doesnt make the value of their savings disappear.

Considering that inflation is still staying well below the usual 3%, I'd have to say it doesn't have much if any impact.

Artificially keeping interest rates ridiculously low is having more of an effect on most people, including myself, as the 0.1% interest I'm earning on my cash doesn't keep up with ANY amount of inflation.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[rtb61]

So formulating wars to inflate the profits of the military industrial complex would be a 'white collar crime' even when those wars kill millions. How about pharmaceutical corporations pushing toxic medicines that kill tens of thousands another 'white collar crime'.

So violent, hmm. Lets say I come to your home, grab you and your family toss you out on the street and then confiscate your belongings, if you protest, I assault you and any members of your family that join you and throw you in a confined space for an extended period. This pretty much destroys you life, destabilizes you whole family likely breaking it up and exposing your children to considerable risk. This is called the non-violent crime of bankrupting families to generate corporate banking profits, and not just one family but hundreds of thousands even millions globally. For this the corporation and it shareholders should get fined and I the criminal get to wander off with millions in bonuses, THIS IS FUCKING FAIR?!.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[mrlibertarian]

Treasuries and Reserves are both government debt instruments. The only difference between them is the interest rate, because in general Treasuries are highly liquid.

It sounds like we have a very basic disagreement here on the definition of words. I mean, I don't understand why you would say that Reserves (with a capital R?) are a debt instrument. Reserves are not a debt instrument. They are money, ready to be loaned out at any time. And if money is not "highly liquid", then I don't know what is.

Also, this entire thread started because you claimed that the Fed doesn't "print money", and I still don't understand how you can say that. If I go to a printing press and print money, then I have "printed money". And if I do the same thing electronically, then I have still "printed money". If I spend that money to buy assets, you can call my transaction an "asset swap", but clearly my "asset swap" was preceded by "money printing".

Call it whatever you want, but it remains a simple fact there is no mechanism in our system for these reserves to enter the economy.

What? We do have such a mechanism. Reserves enter the economy whenever banks loan out those reserves. After all, the word "reserve" means "Something kept back or saved for future use or a special purpose." If a reserve can never be used as a loan in the future or in the case of an emergency, then in what sense is it a "reserve"?

Reserves do not constrain bank lending and adding reserves does not increase bank lending.

Reserves do not constrain bank lending, but lack of reserves do in a system with minimum reserve requirements. Adding reserves does not necessarily increase bank lending, but adding reserves immediately increases the potential amount of lending.

Re: Lemme get this straight

[NotSanguine]

solution? go back to a time tested techniques -- minimum security, transportation to elsewhere. eg an island or somethign? one of those aleutian islands in alaska? that would be pretty sweet. maybe the prisoners could run it with their own local gov't and services and such? sounds pretty good to me...

cf. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Re:Lemme get this straight

[serviscope_minor]

I'm not conviced your interpretation is correct.

Clearly private copies count as copies otherwise no company would pay for more than one copy of Office.

The GPL is also somewhat quiet on the matter of copies and focuses on distribution. It therefore appears you can copy as freely as you like, it's only distribution which is in any way restricted.

Certainly for private use, you can put in proprietary code, copy it as many times as you like and everything is fine. You just don't have permission to -redistribute- the GPL portion without releasing your changes too.

Setting the ground there, but I suspect we would agree on the above points.

What seems to be the case is that the company (i.e. agents of the company) has added proprietary code. Any entity which is not the company has no right to copy those parts. It seems that "internal" distribution is OK because you're not redistributing to people as private individuals, but to agents of the company acting as a single entity.

IOW the private individual still has no right to copy the code.

IANAL, but this seems to be how the interpretation of it goes. I can't cite any precedent or the applicable law, but no one has ever attempted to uphold the GPL as meaning that internal redistribution meaning that anyone who touches a copy has permission to release it (or that the company has no right to redistribute internally).

Would be great to hear a real lawyer chime in with a completely non-binding opinion.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Lennie]

They are knowingly responsible almost single handedly causing multiple financial crisis or plummeting whole countries in severe dept (just look at Greece as an example).

Re:Lemme get this straight

[ArsenneLupin]

the only person who did was actually not stealing from decent people but from the thieves, and for THAT he goes to jail?

He did not even steal from the thieves, but was merely incredibly naive. Using a subversion repository outside of his workplace, not for stealing the code, but simply because it was more expedient to do it like that than going through the corporate bureaucracy to set one up internally...

An blue-eyed innocent error which would go unpunished at a telecom, but not at a paranoid financial company...

Re:Lemme get this straight

[man_the_king]

That's vengeance, not justice...

If I understand correctly, then in that case, even the death penalty is a case of vengeance. At its most basic, it provides the victims (or the victim's relatives) a measure of the "an eye for an eye" feeling. It even allows them to sit and watch as a criminal is being killed (going by my "knowledge" of such from movies and TV shows).

Re: Lemme get this straight

[X0563511]

They already did that, and it did not turn out for the better.

Re: Lemme get this straight

[Opportunist]

I'd assume they enjoy eating and living.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[ak3ldama]

Tell that to all the people who died of starvation because Goldman saw profits in artificially inflating the hard red spring wheat futures market.

I try to be as bleeding heart as I can be, but how in the world can you make a statement like that? No consumer is owed anything, if they (as a consequence of the markets) cannot afford wheat, then they need to grow/buy/eat something else! Think about what the fuck you just said. Furthermore wasn't there significant wheat problems in Russia recently? Wheat is an amazing crop for "feeding the world" but it isn't perfect, so shouldn't the price be allowed to go up? Those farmers that sat on it in grain bins deserve to be rewarded for the patience, and not just give it away because you think they should.

Re: Lemme get this straight

[pakar]

By introducing some rich people to it was probably not to make them run the place but be "guests" in a few of the facilities. ;)

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Justice != Vengeance.

Vengeance is when a person is punished for something he did without regard of what the person will be be transformed into or how it affects the rest of his life.. Example. Person with a $100k salary gets caught buying cocaine for personal use. Person gets sentenced to prison for 1-4 years. Person gets out and have lost his job, residence and maybe family.

Justice is trying to make sure that the person will never do anything similar again while still allowing the offender to return to be a productive member of society.

Example:
Person X goes out and steals a car-radio because he has no money and no education so he can get a job.
Vengeance: Putting him in jail for 2 years and then letting him out without any real help.
Justice: Putting him in jail for 2 years where he will be forced to go to school so when he gets out he will be able to get a job and return as a productive person.

There is a big problem in most countries, but the US is the worst, in prisons and that is that you put young people with no previous criminal history together with people that have done things for many years.. This just causes the young non-experienced criminals to gang up with the experienced criminals and it just results in more crime.

1. House-arrest. Person can go to work and live his life, but is severely restricted.
2. Minimum security prison. Allowed to go to work during the day and must pay rent to the prison.
3. Medium security prison. Companies are allowed to have factories in or around the prisons. Salary 30% lower than anyone outside of prison. Must pay rent to the prison.
4. High security prison. Companies are allowed to have factories in the prison. Salary is 30% lower than anyone outside the prison. Must pay rent to the prison.

Rent should be pure cost of running the prison and divided by number of cells.

Anyone in 2-4 must save 25% of their disposable income for when they are released. If they have money to live for 1-2 years after getting out they don't really need to steal stuff and can actually have some time to try and find a real job.

So taking the above example here too:
Person with a $100k salary gets caught buying cocaine for personal use. Person goes to court and is found guilty. Judge looks at the crime and sees that it was only for personal use and the person have never been to jail before. Person gets fined (say 10% of his yearly salary) and sentenced to 3 month's of house-arrest.

Ie, the first thing was to scare the person. If he keeps repeating this he will then face higher fines + higher on the scale of the prison-system.

The thing when doing it this was is that you scare people away from some things and it also makes the first-time offenders not to associate with repeat-offenders on their first round. Second thing here is that if you have a % scale of fines it will be much more in line with what people can pay... If you have a person earning $30k per year a $10k fine is really allot. If you have a person with $150k per year $10k is not that much..

While 1 out of every 142 Americans is now actually in prison, 1 out of every 32 of us is either in prison or on parole from prison, according to yet another report on Americans behaving badly from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Go read : http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aainjail.htm

Re:Lemme get this straight

[vakuona]

We live in a world where it is nest to impossible for many people to produce their own food, get access to water without having to pay someone. Heck, you can't even just build a house without falling foul of some building codes in some places.

So yes, there is a definite problem if people can manipulate prices for basic commodities, because we are dependent on those farms to produce food at reasonable prices for us.

Don't forget that the Russian revolution was triggered by the price of bread!

Re:Lemme get this straight

[dl_sledding]

Person with a $100k salary gets caught buying cocaine for personal use. Person goes to court and is found guilty. Judge looks at the crime and sees that it was only for personal use and the person have never been to jail before. Person gets fined (say 10% of his yearly salary) and sentenced to 3 month's of house-arrest.

...and is required to "get clean", either through a program, or by proving cleanliness for a period of time (a year? 2 years? How long does it take to break a coke habit?) through the use of blood tests (or any other acceptable means).

FTFY... you forgot your "improve the person" point (as alluded to in the portion of the comment "...where he will be forced to go to school so when he gets out he will be able to get a job and return as a productive person.")

Re:Lemme get this straight

[reve_etrange]

I don't understand why you would say that Reserves (with a capital R?) are a debt instrument.

Because they are debt instruments. They are government liabilities which are redeemed in satisfaction of our tax obligations. In the past they could also be redeemed for gold or silver. Modern Reserves even pay interest (capital R for clarity, I guess).

I think "money" is anything that is "current" enough that we can use it to satisfy general obligations in the course of market exchange. Debt instruments can certainly be money and historically, informal credit systems predated other forms of money including shells, bullion and coin. Our disagreement then is not because I don't think Reserves are money, but because you don't seem to think Treasuries are money. Yet Treasuries are, like Reserves, non-convertible, interest bearing liabilities of the Federal government which are highly liquid in transactions within the private sector and between the public and private sectors.

If I go to a printing press and print money, then I have "printed money". And if I do the same thing electronically, then I have still "printed money". If I spend that money to buy assets, you can call my transaction an "asset swap", but clearly my "asset swap" was preceded by "money printing".

Fair enough, but the point is that the net financial assets (NFA) of the private sector are unchanged by the transactions. It's needlessly inflammatory and misleading to say that they are irresponsibly printing money when the new money is just being swapped for other forms of money. The money supply is only increased because we arbitrarily decided that some government liabilities are money and others are not.

Reserves enter the economy whenever banks loan out those reserves.

This is a common misconception. In a single bank model, loans do not affect the bank's reserve balance; in a multiple bank model, loans do not affect the reserve balances of the banking sector as a whole. The reason is that loans create deposits. For example, say that my bank gives me a $100 loan. This creates the following bank balance sheet (where the negative sign goes is just convention):
Reve: +100, Bank A: -100; Bank A: +1000, Fed: -1000
Since the $100 loan created a $100 deposit, the Reserves don't change.
Now, I withdraw the money as cash. Vault cash is part of Reserves.
Reve: +100(cash), Bank A: -100; Bank A: +900, Fed: -1000
Then I buy $100 of product from you. You promptly deposit the money at Bank B.
Reve: 0, Bank A: -100; Bank A: +900, Fed: -1000
MrLib: +100, Bank B: 0; Bank B: +100, Fed: 0
At some point I am going to have to earn $100 to pay back my loan. Say you pay me $100 to do some work, via electronic bank transfer.
MrLib: 0, Bank B: 0; Bank B: 0, Fed: 0
Reve: +100, Bank A: -100; Bank A: +1000, Fed: -1000
Notice how the total reserve balances don't change throughout this process? They would though, if either of us were to pay taxes. Reserves are almost exclusively used to settle payments between banks, or between banks and the government.

lack of reserves [constrain lending] in a system with minimum reserve requirements.

Another misconception. Reserve requirements don't apply to individual loans, they just say that at the end of the day each bank has to have such-and-such amount to hold overnight in their reserve account. But a bank can always obtain the needed Reserves by borrowing from the Fed; the Fed must satisfy their demand or its interest rate target will fail (the rate will go up).

Put it this way. If a bank sees a profitable loan opportunity, it will make the loan. If it needs more Reserves to cover its requirements, it will deal with that later, sure in the knowledge that it can obtain the Reserves in the regular way (no QE or excess reserves needed). The Fed can affect the potential profitability of loans by modulating the ra

Re:Lemme get this straight

[redlemming]

Any entity which is not the company has no right to copy those parts.

Be careful when you find yourself temped to put the words "no right" into a sentence in any discussion of how the law does work (or should work).

In order to deal with the objections made by the Anti-Federalists to the Constitution, James Madison created an open-ended Bill of Rights, providing for unspecified rights not explicitly stated but nevertheless "retained by the people" (9th Amendment) and "reserved to the people" (10th Amendment). With respect to the US legal system, it is always incorrect to make statements to the effect that "y is not in the Bill of Rights (or the Constitution, or state law, or city law, or whatever) therefore there is no right to do y", where "y" refers to some issue or potential right under discussion.

All legal professionals, all government executives and law enforcement officers are required by their oaths to recognize the existence of such rights, as a precondition for holding such positions. Obviously there are many situations where it will be inconvenient for persons in these positions to remember this.

For that matter, a strong case can be made that it is inconvenient for the entire legal profession, as a class in society, to remember this, which may account for the fact that there are relatively few court cases in which these rights are explicitly discussed (with a few notable exceptions such as Roe vs. Wade). Of course, the fact that issues such as ethical conflict of interest might make it inconvenient for legal professionals and others to remember these rights exist in no way removes them from existence.

To complicate matters further, US Copyright law provides for something known as "fair use" rights which authorizes copies to be made without infringement. A list of example criteria regarding situation in which "fair use" may apply is part of the written law code, but the list is not, of course, limiting or all inclusive as a result of the word "such as" in the statement of the this.

Thus, it is simply not possible to say that there is "no right to copy" without careful considering of whether or not such a right might reasonably be asserted as "fair use".

In one case I dimly recall reading many years ago, a judge decided that an appropriate penalty for attempting to remove by contract "fair use" rights was complete loss of the copyright. I don't have a legal database on hand to try to find the particular case reference for you. But, it certainly can reasonably be supposed that "fair use" rights will supersede a written contract (including employment contracts) in at least some situations.

Indeed, it would not be hard to go further and assert that "fair use" rights exist as an expression of one or more underlying rights "retained by the people" and thus are an example of rights are protected by the 9th and 10th Amendments, which would cause the use of this right in typical circumstances to supersede laws (whether passed by Congress or the State Governments), executive orders, court orders, and even the "usual practices of law".

For example, a right to long term public oversight over businesses and government might reasonably be asserted as arising under the 9th Amendment.

It would certainly be a reasonable consequence of such as right to make copies of any materials that might be needed for such long term oversight and which otherwise might be lost or "accidentally misplaced". Such a right, as a fundamental right, would naturally supersede the authority of government to create laws such as "industrial espionage", "trade secret", or "intellectual property" laws which might otherwise prevent certain actions (another point that doubtless many parties associated with the legal system would find inconvenient to acknowledge).

The assertion of such a right would not, of course, be in the interest of a certain class of business executives (namely the unethical ones), so I suppose in any case where such a right was aire

Reminds me of the 'range check' patent war

[michael_rendier]

When a judge, who coded as a hobby, looked at the attorneys and said that any 9th grader could have written a 'range check'... Jury selection is never to get the most intelligent person in a seat...they want the ones who they can paint the picture for, and have them accept it...

Re:Reminds me of the 'range check' patent war

[bfandreas]

...a jury of people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

What baffles me is the stupidity involved. First the poor sap who got jailed. I NEVER take any code with me between two gigs. I NEVER even take my personal notes with me. I tell them to change my passwords the moment I'm through the door. And I do a clean sweep on all my private equipment. While I do have my own tool kit I do inform my employers that this is mine, it will stay mine and I will never charge them to use it in whatever way they please as long as I get to keep using it myself and I give no guarantees for it. It's mostly stuff to copy and paste and example code so there is very little value to it. It is ok to take ideas and concepts with you because it is very hard not to remember those. That's called work experience. But never ever take source with you. Even if you think that it is open source. What you could do is blow the whistle that they are in breach of the OSS license in question and that's it.

The other side of the stupidity is that cleaning your bash history now is considered incriminating. If you have typed your password on the CLI and you don't clear your history then I would consider this criminal negligence. I would very much be surprised if Goldman-Sachs doesn't have a policy for this. Also if their system is such a hairball then it is very unlikely that you can directly integrate any code into another system. You propably don't even want to do so. And he didn't take the predictive stuff. So what he took with him couldn't have been more than general code involving efficient comparison of values, net code, sorting code and so on. Most of which wouldn't even be original enough to be worthy of a software patent.

While he deserved a slap on the wrist for being awefully cavalier with stuff that GS considered their property(rightfully so or not) he certainly didn't deserve 8 years in prison. If a jury can't understand the case and simply goes with the guy with the biggest words and the most expensive suit then it needs to be dismissed.

There a couple of problems I see in the US justice system:
1) DAs get elected which subjects them to a popularity contest and is a high motivator to get your name into the papers. They need to make a lot of noise and they need to get high-profile convictions that impress those who are worthy of impressing. Easy tearjerk cases for the public, specialised cases for campaign contributors.
2) DAs too often have political ambitions beyond the justice branch. This aggravates the problem in 1)
3) The practice to throw as much at a defendant as you can possibly muster makes plea-bargains a very powerful tool. You get a worst case of 136 consecutive years in prison. You get an offer to sign here and only go to prison for 8 years. Given how often plea-bargains are taken this is plain wrong. And it needs to be abolished. If you throw the phone book at a person you should be willing and able to get a conviction for all and also be willing to see it through. Either a person is guilty and deserves 136 years of prison or he is not. Willingness to go for less only demonstrates eagerness to get something but not to the full extent of the law. This practice needs to be banned. Now.
4) He didn't get a jury of his peers. I would have found him guilty of breaching his NDA and nothing more. Those bozos were all high-school graduates who never had a chance to understand a word that was said and went with a presumably flamboyant and sensationalistic prosecutor.
5) He didn't get good counsel. How a jury of high-school graduates got past the selection process we will never know. Why no real expert with practical knowledge was heard we will never know. On the one hand you have the state throwing lots of resources at one guy and on the other hand we have a private person who has not even remotely the means to match that.

The whole thing was lopsided from the start and it will always be.

Dumbass Slashdot Editors

[Anonymous Coward]

"Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging "

Goldman Sachs can bring criminal charges? Really?

Re:Dumbass Slashdot Editors

[ls671]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they could.

Re:Dumbass Slashdot Editors

[gmuslera]

They have the DOJ and most of the government in their pocket, they can bring law to whoever they want for whatever reason they want. Now, justice, thats another topic, in which country you try to use that word?

Re:Dumbass Slashdot Editors

[gl4ss]

well you can too, if you claim that someone stole something from you... even if it was just ideas, or an algorithm or.. thing is, they couldn't even define what he "stole".. it certainly wasn't money or anything tangible.

Re:Dumbass Slashdot Editors

[jedidiah]

> well you can too, if you claim that someone stole something from you...

If YOU personally did this, your local police department and the FBI would likely IGNORE you. They may or may not even humor you about taking the charges seriously. They may tell you to your face that they "aren't going to bother".

When you have a lot of money to throw around and a senator or two in your pocket, THEN they listen to you.

Re: Dumbass Slashdot Editors

[Hognoxious]

In England it's possible for an individual to bring what's called a private prosecution. For the benefit of all the DeVry JD's here I'm *not* talking of a civil case; the usual criminal sanctions apply, including imprisonment where appropriate, and the higher bar of reasonable doubt must be overcome. It is, however, rarely used and very rarely successful.

I don't know if the US (or any states thereof) have a similar thing, given that they shamelessly cribbed Ol' George's legal system. But as you say, if you've got the right people in your pocket you don't really need it.

Justice

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmer walks out with his brain and gets sent to jail.

Employer rips off and fucks entire economy, gets bonuses.

It's great being a 1%'er in our feudal economy!.

I'm working REAL hard to get born to a better class of parents who will send me to prep schools where I can get a fast track into Harvard , get my Wall Street job, and get my billion dollars.

Re:Justice

[the eric conspiracy]

No, it isn't zero.

Rajat Gupta, ex GS board member is serving time.

Re:Justice

[ebno-10db]

No, it isn't zero.

Rajat Gupta, ex GS board member is serving time.

That's like arresting one Mafioso and claiming you've destroyed organized crime.

Wrong reasoning

[KiloByte]

You're assume Goldman Sachs cares about "is this legal?" or "is this right?". What they care is: "will this improve our PR?", "will this scare people from going against us?", "will this scare people from working for us?".

Seryozha was at that point no longer working for Goldman Sachs, and he dared to do something hostile, so he was an enemy who needed to be punished. Extra bonus for telling the masses "another crooked banker in jail" which makes the uninformed feel as if there's a shred of justice left.

Re:Wrong reasoning

[Jane Q. Public]

You're assume Goldman Sachs cares about "is this legal?" or "is this right?". What they care is: "will this improve our PR?", "will this scare people from going against us?", "will this scare people from working for us?".

This is the whole reasons corporations worked to try to make "non-compete" agreements enforceable: to lock in their control of an employee.

And that is why non-compete clauses or agreements are no longer enforceable in California. California did a good thing for a change.

They need to get it through their heads that they do not control the contents of a mind. If they want somebody to "not compete", then the PROPER way to do it is to give them better pay and compensation than the other guy. That's called capitalism.

Re:Wrong reasoning

[Billly Gates]

I think if you owned a company your opinion would change very rapidly. Especially if you spent your hard earned savings and shareholders money making this new cool product only to have an employee use the IP to start his or her own company based off your money.

It takes years to patent and it is difficult to prove in court until after your product is released.

Yes, some try to be assholes and say you may not longer work in the I.T field again! But, these are almost always stroke down by a judge as unenforcable if you study business law.

What they state is if I work at Microsoft on search engine technology. I can't work at Google next week. It doesn't mean I can't work at Amazon or CreditSwiss FirstBoston or any other I.T. job. After 2 years the technology should be used or if not then fuck it then it has no bearings.

The fact that California made this non enforcible means the state is dead last if I wanted to start a .com. How do I know employees wont steal my ideas?

Re:Wrong reasoning

[Jane Q. Public]

"I think if you owned a company your opinion would change very rapidly."

No, I would not. Period.

Keep in mind that a "non-compete" agreement is NOT THE SAME as protection for your "intellectual property". They are 2 different things.

"What they state is if I work at Microsoft on search engine technology. I can't work at Google next week."

I know what they say. I'm not an idiot. I've signed them in the past... and refused to sign them, more recently.

Re:Wrong reasoning

[dbIII]

I've signed one after I was given advice that it was completely unenforcible in my country and a Judge would tear strips off any employer that dared to bring one to court, signed or not.

Re:Wrong reasoning

[khallow]

I think if you owned a company your opinion would change very rapidly.

I agree with Jane Q. Public. I wouldn't change my mind over such a thing. There's always adequate countermeasures even in the absence of no compete.

The fact that California made this non enforcible means the state is dead last if I wanted to start a .com. How do I know employees wont steal my ideas?

Because that theft opens up whatever business employs them to lawsuits from you, even if the theft was relatively minor.

Re:Wrong reasoning

[indeterminator]

The fact that California made this non enforcible means the state is dead last if I wanted to start a .com. How do I know employees wont steal my ideas?

If your great idea suddenly stops working when it is revealed to someone else, then it's fundamentally flawed. Anyone "stealing" it would still have to implement both the technical and business sides of it himself, unless he actually steals the implementations from you (in which case you have something to sue with). Just do it better, or lose the competition. Or have them sign an NDA with a nice big penalty.

Pfffft

[jeff13]

Being called a crook by Goldman Sachs is like being called an anti-Semite by Hitler!

now we know

[Connie_Lingus]

fta...

" “The whole point of the Internet is to abstract the physical location of the server from its logical address.”

so *that's* the point...finally!

and for all this time i've thought its for lolcats and pr0n...

Re:now we know

[Macgrrl]

Hrm... now considering the intersection of a Venn diagram with two overlapping circles, one for lolcats and the other for pr0n.

Lolcat pr0n - It's more than just Ceiling Cat watching you masturbate.

He was obviously guilty...

[runeghost]

Guilty of somehow offending Goldman-Sachs. In corporate America, that's more than enough to get him thrown in jail. Anyone who doesn't understand this is deluding themselves about the nature of 21st century American's government and legal system.

Just wait for other plcaes to try this BS

[Joe_Dragon]

BOB if you don't work 80 hours week we can give you put in lock up for taking all the stuff that you know about us in your head out side of this office and there will no more OT pay.

NO

[mjwalshe]

Goldman Sachs didn't charge him with anything the state charged him.

Re:NO

[Black Parrot]

Goldman Sachs didn't charge him with anything the state charged him.

The state is merely an instrument of our financial-pharmaceutical-defense-burgerflippial complex.

Re:NO

[mjwalshe]

remind me again is it the lizard men or the alien space bats that are the ones behind the NWO

Re:NO

[bunratty]

I hope so. Without that complex, we wouldn't be able to grow and distribute food and other necessities. I would certainly hope all world governments do their best to make sure the complex works even better, and then we can all enjoy a higher standard of living. Why is this "complex" the enemy? Where do you think you get all your nice stuff that our ancestors didn't have? Let me know when you no long purchase any products made from the evil "complex".

Re:NO

[the eric conspiracy]

Yes, but the parent is still correct.

Re:NO

[bfandreas]

It should have been GS suing him. He broke his NDA and that's a contract thing. Instead it was turned into a criminal offence and netted him 8 years in prison.

Time for Tech / IT unions

[Joe_Dragon]

Some places have gone way to far and works have no one to stand up for them and even quitting can be seen as planting an time bomb even if all it is stuff that you do day to day that after you quit does not happen and it's leads to an big fail.

Re:Time for Tech / IT unions

[Lumpy]

IT highly paid? What drugs are you taking?

Re:Time for Tech / IT unions

[Billly Gates]

Unions are for people with no bargaining power. Either do X for Y pay or I will find someone else who will !! ...etc

As a programmer if some asshole boss tells you that you have the power to say OK and walk out the door. There is a shortage of I.T. workers across North America if you read the news outside of slashdot. There is demand and employers reluctantly paying as high as $55k a year plus health benefits! If your jaw dropped reading this because that sounded waaay too low and laughable ... go be a teacher instead?

See how much a teacher earns? Or a policeman? Or any white color job outside a few MBAs or Lawyers? You all have the bargaining power and if you choose to work hard and specialize you can charge $150,000 as a consultant too after 10 years of experience and an advanced degree.

You do not need a union. If you were foolish enough to dare try it and demand every JR programmer get 5 weeks off a year plus $80,000 starting off you would find Indians coming to your office the following week on H1B1 visas and you and your buddies being handed pink slips out the door while they sit in your cubicles. Don't be silly. True you can argue your work is higher quality but no one is willing to pay more than $100,000 a year for it (That is how much a $60,000 a year employee costs + taxes + obamacre + other fixed cost expenses).

This programmer got greedy and wanted to earn $180,000 a year and go into some shady things. Yes HFT is shady and the risks are great and you have a ton of liability on your head if you fuck up! That is why they pay a lot and why many such as myself would not do it.

 

Re:Time for Tech / IT unions

[Billly Gates]

IT highly paid? What drugs are you taking?

Programmers can earn as high as $60,000 a year! FYI that is how much an CPA accountant earns iwth a masters degree.

If you think that is oddball go talk to the HR ladies or teachers and policeman or your neighborhood grocery store manager and ask how much they make? I guarantee you it is lower and many work 60 - 70 hours a week just to keep their $36,000 a year jobs!

That is the new norm for wages right now in the US. Executives and directors get paid more but they are a minority. I.T. pays good and goes who just answer phones all day can make up to at least $36,000 a year which is excellent for help desk departments too which is the lowest of all I.T. jobs.

Re:Time for Tech / IT unions

[Anonymous Coward]

I make $38,000 a year with no benefits.

Times have changed in this new economy. In Florida no one wants to pay anything and they base their wages off of Indian workers as they figure an h1b1 visa can work that low if I will not.

$60,000 a year is unheard of from a kid fresh out of school. To me your post confirms you do not need a union. I know many college grads making $22,000 a year at a starbucks because they graduated in 2009 and no one wants to hire them for anything more.

You sir live in a bubble.

Re:Time for Tech / IT unions

[Anonymous Coward]

You are in IT, not computer science. There is a difference, not just the pay.

Re:Time for Tech / IT unions

[Lumpy]

So I am talking about IT, and you quote Programmer salary.

By your logic, Taxi cab drivers are the highest paid, Because F1 race car drivers get on average $150,000 a year.

Do you know the difference between IT and Programming? Do you really think that MS office was written by Microsoft's IT department?

Morale of the story

[Registered Coward v2]

Always get a lawyer before talking to the law.

Re:Morale of the story

[fustakrakich]

No, the moral of the story is: become well connected (too big to fail/jail) and don't get caught.

Re:Morale of the story

[hawguy]

Always get a lawyer before talking to the law.

No, the moral of the story is: become well connected (too big to fail/jail) and don't get caught.

That's a bit like saying "Become rich", easier said than done. But the parent poster is correct when he says "Don't talk to the law". It can do nothing to help you, and as the police will tell you when they arrest you, anything you say can and will be used against you".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Should we have tech jurys and more jury pay

[Joe_Dragon]

First off jury pay is slow that for some people it costs more to go to jury duty then it pays.

also who really want to be on a long trial when you can make more working at mcdonalds then the jury pays?

Now for big tech based trails do you really want AOL's, people who fail for the geek squad up sells / monster cables and others to judge on stuff that is way over there head.

It's a motherfucking joke

[WOOFYGOOFY]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216

Says it all.

I used to agree with them...

[LordNacho]

But I'm in two minds. The old rationale was that code is just code, and he was merely getting his hands on something he could have typed out himself given enough time. Which is probably true. The guy's an expert, and he knows how the thing works, so maybe he's saving himself a few weeks of work (In fact, he says he wasn't even going to use it...). I don't buy the whole thing about gaining an advantage in the market and all that. Whatever strengths and weaknesses are in GS's system would be clear to any expert, and they probably have enough staff turnover that more than a few people knew how it worked.

So I don't think GS was made all that much worse off by him doing this.

My objection to his behaviour is very little to do with the technical stuff. Simply put, you have an agreement to behave a certain way when you're employed. If you break the agreement, there should be some sort of restitution. Suppose you're a chef at a bakery, and you move on to a steak restaurant. Well, you shouldn't take the cookie recipe with you, even if you're not going to use it. Was it common practice to send code home? Maybe, I don't know. I suppose there's a question of whether he was told not to.

One thing that does smell is that GS seemed to want to make an example of this guy. Which of course they should if he's done something wrong. But then all the programmers there will now be wondering whether they'll come after them if they decide to leave.

Moral of the story...

[Lumpy]

DO NOT work as a programmer for the Financial world. Screw those crooks, let them rot and die in technology hell.

Re:Moral of the story...

[Billly Gates]

One of my moral ethical rules for myself (others should adopt) is not to do business with bad people.

How many of you know better than to deal with a crocked used car salesmen who sales he is a bad guy to the seller so he can give you an even better deal! You know he will screw you too.

Many who work in the financial industry know this and feel they can screw others back and still get ahead. Many programmers feel they can win and get paid $180,000 a year by being a shark themselves as big money can be made for their bigger sharks above.

But in the end it is a gamble where it is set against you. You didn't think the big sharks with vacation homes in the Caymen Islsands got there from being nice guys and rewarding those who got them rich did you? No, they get it from taking their money.

Mob owned businesses, payday loan places, cigarette companies, and places like this I avoid and so should every slashdotter whether they want to work for them or do business.

Re:Moral of the story...

[Lumpy]

What is the difference between a financial Corporation and the MOB?

The Mob is honest and straight with you. You know what you are getting into with the Mob.

financial companies lie to your face and do everything they can to screw you.

Re:Moral of the story...

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yes exactly. Deprive of them your talents. Encourage others to do the same. Maybe it will become structural article of faith amongst really good programmers. Perhaps even develop a license which forbids the software from being used by the financial industry.

Wait, what?

[whoever57]

He pulled up his browser and typed into it the words: Free Subversion Repository. Up popped a list of places that stored code, for free, and in a convenient fashion. He clicked the first link on the list. The entire process took about eight seconds. And then he did what he had always done since he first started programming computers: he deleted his bash history. To access the computer he was required to type his password. If he didn't delete his bash history, his password would be there to see, for anyone who had access to the system.

What? It is possible to put your password on the command line with subversion, but why would you do that if you are going to delete your history? Why not just let subversion prompt for a password (or use a keyring to store it)?

Re:Wait, what?

[hawguy]

He pulled up his browser and typed into it the words: Free Subversion Repository. Up popped a list of places that stored code, for free, and in a convenient fashion. He clicked the first link on the list. The entire process took about eight seconds. And then he did what he had always done since he first started programming computers: he deleted his bash history. To access the computer he was required to type his password. If he didn't delete his bash history, his password would be there to see, for anyone who had access to the system.

What? It is possible to put your password on the command line with subversion, but why would you do that if you are going to delete your history? Why not just let subversion prompt for a password (or use a keyring to store it)?

I've deleted my bash history after inadvertently or purposely typing a password into a command line -- sometimes putting the password on the command line is the most expedient way to get work done, despite it being a bad idea from a security standpoint -- and sometimes I'll mistype a hostname on an ssh command, but have already typed my password or ssh key passphrase and it ends up being entered as a command (good thing I never user "rm -rf /" as a password). Well, rather than delete the whole history, I usually run "history -r" to replace my history with the last saved history.

Though if the company really wants to see what a user has done, looking at the bash history is a very weak way to do it since anyone can edit their own bash history - they should be running something like auditd that sends command execution logs to a separate server that the developer doesn't have access to.

Re:Wait, what?

[hawguy]

According to the TFA Aleinikov had admin rights on the GS systems, which is not surprising considering is responsibilities. If he wanted to cover something malicious he had both the access and the skills to do it.

Even if he has admin rights on the normal production servers, only their internal audit department should have admin rights on the logging servers.

Re:Wait, what?

[bfandreas]

I feel physically sick every time I see my password in plain text written down somewhere that isn't an encrypted keystore. I would also have cleared my history as soon as I had seen it in a way that could be reproduced.

That's also a good password policy and that kind of Pavlovian conditioning can be quite useful.

The big bankers' myth of value.

[whoever57]

The article clearly lays out how the programmers are responsible for the big profits, not the bankers who did not even understand what the programmers were doing. But who got the multi-million dolar bonuses?

Re:The big bankers' myth of value.

[bunratty]

Yeah, that's exactly how the world works. Nice observation. Fair is a temporary amusement park.

Does Betteridge's law of headlines always apply?

[recrudescence]

No.
PS. Note how the title of this post is also a question.

Any libertarians going to defend GS?

[rsilvergun]

Just curious. They're such a powerful organization that it's difficult to imagine anything short of a strong Federal Gov't reigning them in. I know the argument is that they can only survive because of a Strong Federal Gov't favoring them, but I really see that as a chicken/egg situation. In this case I think they GS chicken came first. e.g. the gov't is a convenient tool for them but in it's absence they'd have plenty of other ways to exercise leverage on us all. They control a good chunk of all wealth in this country after all, and in general you do what the Rich guy says because if not you get fired, and in America your entire quality of life depends on your job. The golden rule: He with the Gold makes the Rules.

So I say again, any Libertarians gonna step up for 'ole GS?

free subversion repository?

[grahamsaa]

Goldman Sachs wasn't equipped to host their own repository? For code that is supposedly proprietary, valuable and highly sensitive? That's pretty shocking. Either this guy violated company policy by using a free repo host when he was explicitly told not to, or whoever is responsible for IT infrastructure at Goldman should be fired for incompetence. Hosting your own repo is easy enough, and trusting a free repo host for sensitive code is about as stupid as using a pastebin to share medical records.

Re:free subversion repository?

[dbIII]

Goldman Sachs wasn't equipped to host their own repository

They are a very strange neo-feudalistic bunch where the execs have to frequently take their wives and kids to a new equivalent of Versailles to remain at their level in the pecking order. Normal rules of sanity do not apply from top to bottom.

Beyond simple theft

[Livius]

If a person is deprived of a very large amount of savings, say an amount that exceeds the lifetime productivity of an average wage-earner, that crime should be put on the level of some lesser version of manslaughter. It's gone beyond theft at that point.

Justice

[Pino Grigio]

How many Goldman executives are currently serving time in prison? If the answer is zero, then I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with the legal system.

Goldman & stupid

[globaljustin]

Goldman should have dropped this at some point...or at least tried to get the FBI to leave it alone...it was obvious that it was OSS...

There is reason to be outraged at Goldman for this....and 'what else do you expect' is not a valid response (we are holding people accountable here...we decide what is to be expected)

Goldman Sachs should have used whatever power they had to end this or at least publicly plea for the FBI to end it. The guy did nothing wrong and nothing was to be gained by turning the FBI loose on him.

Criminal. Stupidity. That was the only crime here. It was CSI: FBI Edition...

So Goldman discovers the employee downloaded several files right before ending his tenure there...Goldman thinks it is criminal and calls the cops...specifically the FBI

The programmer, poor guy, knows he hasn't done anything wrong and...FTA:

Serge waived his right to call a lawyer. He phoned his wife and told her what had happened and that a bunch of F.B.I. agents were on the way to their home to seize their computers, and to please let them in—though they had no search warrant, either. Then he sat down and politely tried to clear up the F.B.I. agent’s confusion.

THAT was also 'stupid' as you say...I feel bad for the guy, but it was stupid.

So yeah Goldman is 'stupid' for not knowing that the employee's file downloads were OSS, FBI was 'stupid' for charging this guy with a crime, and Serge himself was stupid for talking to the cops without a lawyer!

The tone of many responses to GP (who was probably trolling I grant) has been to **defend** or at least shrug shoulders at Goldman in this...wrong...it's binary thinking.

This is a complex situation and all parties had a bit of 'stupid' going on

waived right to attorney

[globaljustin]

first of all, this isn't like a domestic abuse case where the cops **have** to prosecute if they have evidence even if the 'victim' doesn't want it...

jeez...

Goldman could have tried to get the FBI off his back...even gone public...at least send a letter saying after review the files were legal, OSS...

From TFA:

Serge waived his right to call a lawyer. He phoned his wife and told her what had happened and that a bunch of F.B.I. agents were on the way to their home to seize their computers, and to please let them in—though they had no search warrant, either. Then he sat down and politely tried to clear up the F.B.I. agent’s confusion.

The state was handed a case on a platter...I feel sorry for the guy b/c he knew he'd done nothing wrong, but still, as criminal justice goes in the USA in 2013, most jurisdictions will prosecute you as a matter of course if there is something on paper that looks like an admission of guilt.

Some FBI guy, and the US attorney's office, they don't know Erlang or about high speed trading...but they **do** know they have a statement from the suspect that could be a confession.

That's when it goes to a jury.

I'm not saying it is right, but it is fairly common knowledge among people who follow criminal justice topics that this is the case. I want more discretion at all levels...but you're giving Goldman a pass here.

Goldman has alot of sway and credibility...they could have tried to get the FBI off this guy's ass...sent a letter at least!

Re:waived right to attorney

[mjwalshe]

why would GS try to help out some on who had stolen from them both shareholders and current employees would be rightly pissed off

Re:A second trial

[John Marter]

Of course they got to see the evidence. They pulled the hard drive out of the computer and showed it to them. It's in the fine article. I wish I could have seen that.

Jury of your peers

[jbrown.za]

Surely a jury of "your peers" should understand what you do. Cases that involve technology should have juries that have some understanding of technology ...

Re:Jury of your peers

[bfandreas]

Surely a jury of "your peers" should understand what you do. Cases that involve technology should have juries that have some understanding of technology ...

My thoughts exactly. I shudder to think what other professions have to suffer through. Just imagine all those malpractice suits...
The only profession that seems to be fairly safe is lawyers. Go figure.

Headline is a bit misleading

[rowls]

Might just be nit-picking, but in the United States, a private individual or corporation cannot criminally charge anyone with anything. Only the government (state or federal) can bring criminal charges. Now anyone can go to the government and try to convince a prosecutor that someone has committed a crime, but it up to the prosecutor to actually bring criminal charges on behalf of the state. This is what Goldman actually did, and it sounds like they found a prosecutor who was easy to convince, but to say that Goldman criminally charged someone is either being intentionally misleading or demonstrates a very poor understanding of the US legal system.

Re:Headline is a bit misleading

[ebno-10db]

Might just be nit-picking ...

Worse, you're making a distinction without a difference.

Re:Headline is a bit misleading

[Skapare]

Yes and no. A private individual can in some places petition a Grand Jury to bring an indictment, without the prosecutor being involved, or even knowing about it.

Re:Headline is a bit misleading

[bfandreas]

...and I think this shouldn't have been a criminal case to begin with. He was in breach of his NDA and that's what he should have been sued for.

Give the man a medal!

[recrudescence]

Sure!

Some practices

[kilodelta]

I can understand wiping the BASH history. If you logged into databases at the command prompt your password would indeed be preserved in .bash-history so it makes sense.

But for system logins, particularly if they're *NI/UX systems - you just do SSH keys. No passwords in the clear and auto-login if the host is in your Authorized_Keys files.

However the think about Goldman taking open source software, modifying it and then refusing to re-submit it runs into some serious GPL issues.

Re:not relevant

[Macgrrl]

First you have to scan it in (you may have to flatten it out to get it to fit through the ADF).

Two-tiered justice at its best.

[boorack]

Our corporate overlords from Goldman Sachs not only get scott-free from any conceivable fraud. They also have god-given right to put in prison anyone they wish. We - proles - have no rights at all. We're just a cannon fodder for military-industrial-banker-prison complex and we must obey. Corporate fascism with all its "features" (two-tiered justice etc) at its best.

great article

[kwikrick]

read TFA (realy!), makes me so angry! many lessons to be learned from it, but respect for the law ain't one of them.

Re:not relevant

[bfandreas]

Yes and no. He violated his NDA. But that's hardly worth 8 years of prison. The fact that he had cleared his bash history after typing his passord for the off-site Subversion repository was given a lot of weight. Even the name "Subversion" *hushed silence* was given weight. This guy deserved some sort of punishment but not 8 years in prison. What he did shouldn't be a criminal offense. Breaking and NDA is a contractual thing and should be dealt with accordingly.

The US justice system is stupid as is specialised computer law in general.

The French Connection connection

[Squidlips]

Anyone remember the end of The French Connection. All the masterminds walked while the chemist served time....

Incompetence or something else

[internerdj]

The article pointed at it being fear mongering among managment but I wonder since the article mentioned he was one of the top programmers on Wall Street. I wonder if this was an attempt to make him unemployable since he was leaving to go work for a competitor.

And yet...

[oh_my_080980980]

Executives knew they were selling shitting investments to investors and betting heavily against them but somehow that does not constitute a crime....

High Frequency Trading

[bbsalem]

HFT should either be banned or a latency built in. The SEC could institute a thirty second delay on each trade, right now.

b/c they value employees

[globaljustin]

heh...

but seriously, he didn't 'steal' anything...although of course I can see how it could appear that way

Goldman should have investigated it, but after he explained, they should have just let it go.

It's bad business to sue your former employees for doing legal things.

Don't Talk to the Police

[utkonos]

Ever. Don't. If you think its a good idea, or you can clear your name or help them figure things out. You can't. Your case is basically finished and you're screwed when you talk to them for any reason without a lawyer present. If you don't understand why, please watch this video.