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US Levels Espionage Charges Against 6 Chinese Nationals
Taco Cowboy writes: The U.S. government has indicted five Chinese citizens and arrested a Chinese professor on charges of economic espionage. The government alleges that they took jobs at two small, American chipmakers — Avago Technologies and Skyworks Solutions — in order to steal microelectronics designs. "All of them worked, the indictment contends, to steal trade secrets for a type of chip popularly known as a “filter” that is used for acoustics in mobile telephones, among other purposes. They took the technology back to Tianjin University, created a joint venture company with the university to produce the chips, and soon were selling them to both the Chinese military and to commercial customers."
It's interesting to note that the Reuters article keeps mentioning how this technology — used commonly as an acoustic filter — has "military applications." It's also interesting to look at another recent case involving Shirrey Chen, a hydrologist who was mysteriously arrested on suspicion of espionage, but then abruptly cleared five months later. One can't help but wonder what's driving the U.S.'s new strategy for tackling economic espionage.
It's interesting to note that the Reuters article keeps mentioning how this technology — used commonly as an acoustic filter — has "military applications." It's also interesting to look at another recent case involving Shirrey Chen, a hydrologist who was mysteriously arrested on suspicion of espionage, but then abruptly cleared five months later. One can't help but wonder what's driving the U.S.'s new strategy for tackling economic espionage.
Back when I learned about this stuff, companies basically had two options to protect their technology: patents and trade secrets.
- If you file for a patent, the theory is that you tell the whole world how it works, but get the exclusive right to produce it yourself, or license it to others. Yes, the patent system has problems, but that's theory. This is supposed to help technology advance, because you can build on other people's work.
- If you go with a trade secret (think: the secret recipe for Coca Cola), that means that you don't want to publish the information, so you receive no protection from the government. Protecting the secret is up to you; if someone steals it, that's your problem. This lack of protection is deliberate, providing motivation for filing patents and publishing information.
What I didn't know is that in 1996, the government passed the Economic Espionage Act. This essentially grants government protection to trade secrets, not only by criminalizing their theft (but that is likely a criminal act anyway), but also by criminalizing the use of the trade secrets by another company.
Of course, the act also explicitly exempts the government; the government can spy on you as much as it wants.
The act also funds the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. You've gotta admire the US Congress - they never miss an opportunity to include pork.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
All german parties except of the CDU/CSU (which are "sister parties"), led by the leftists, who were created from the remaining parts of the totalitarian SED that governed the GDR, and, out of this "tradition", have a very anti-US and pro-russia position (nicely observable in the debate about ukraine), agree that this form of espionage is far too much. There has been some critical politicians before too, but now, after two years of snowden, we finally see something really moving inside political berlin. This is largely thanks to the SPD, the other party of the coalition that forms the government, which has positioned itself against espionage inside the last voting season, and, until now, mostly broken their promises in this regard. Now, thanks to them, and the pressure from the press, there is some activity at least.
In the current debate, it has turned out that the CDU/CSU has lied about a planned anti-spy treaty in order to get votes in the elections. Its seldom that you have it this crystal clear that a politician is lying.
Also, it became public that, in inter-state cooperations, where german agencies give US agencies data about terrorist suspects, the US side has requested data not just about criminals, but also about diplomats of befriended governments, including the french, which are the best buddies of the germans, and the austrians, close to germans due to history and shared language. Now the BND found out about it, and it came to the press. Now the german government (the leading CDU/CSU part) seriously first wants to ask the US agencies whether it may share those hostile and reputation-hurting requests (only the names!) with a special section of the german bundestag, which has the task to oversee germanie's secret agencies.
I'm really ashamed of my government here in this case. Germany isn't a colony. Directly after the war, where there was a high comitee of the allies that oversaw german politics and other parts of the state, this might have been understandable, but not 70 years after it.
You didn't read your own linked story. The USA snoops on powers but doesn't hand that over to corporations. OTOH, the Chinese snoops #1 priority is to steal everything nailed down so that they can duplicate it for economic gain. Pretty much complete opposites.
I really hope you are being sarcastic or something, and you don't really think that...
The German airforce has over 200 front line offensive aircraft in its inventory, 109 of them being the Eurofighter.
The German army has over 230 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, a tank commonly held as one of the best in the world, and over 150 PzH 2000 self propelled guns, again commonly held as one of the best in the world.
The German navy has 81 commissioned ships in service, 43 of them front line offensive in nature.
Germany isn't exactly a nation I would want to currently face in battle, not even with a top tier military such as the US, France, UK et al - those military's would almost certainly win any competition, but they wouldn't come out unscathed....
I have no problem with going after people who steal trade secrets, anything more than I have a problem with going after people who steal nuclear secrets. The only thing is that the FBI has a long history of racist paranoia about Chinese scientists, from Quan Xuesen in the early 50s to Wen Ho Lee in the 90s.
Rhwew may well of a legitimate case against these guys and if they do I hope they nail the bastards. But I'm not jumping to any conclusions based on FBI say-so.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I really hope you are being sarcastic or something, and you don't really think that...
The German airforce has over 200 front line offensive aircraft in its inventory, 109 of them being the Eurofighter.
The German army has over 230 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, a tank commonly held as one of the best in the world, and over 150 PzH 2000 self propelled guns, again commonly held as one of the best in the world.
The German navy has 81 commissioned ships in service, 43 of them front line offensive in nature.
Germany isn't exactly a nation I would want to currently face in battle, not even with a top tier military such as the US, France, UK et al - those military's would almost certainly win any competition, but they wouldn't come out unscathed....
Dude, you might want to check this: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns (Feb, 19, 2015)
Or this older article from 2014: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-german-military-faces-a-major-challenge-from-disrepair/2014/09/30/e0b7997c-ea40-42be-a68b-e1d45a87b926_story.html
Hell, just google "Germany military equipment problems". When German soldiers have to use broomsticks to hide the facts they did not have heavy machine guns during a NATO exercise, I have to say your post is full of uninformed baloney. This particular incident, that is the kind of crap I would expect from an underdeveloped nation, not from the fourth largest economy.
I wonder if this is a byproduct of the general corporate tendency to look at "innovation" as a way to get a patent which is then used to enforce a monopoly and collect rents. Collecting rents is a disincentive towards more innovation, product improvements and other business efficiencies. Why compete when you can just charge rents?
If there wasn't a patent-and-monopoly mindset, perhaps there would be greater effort put into innovation as a means to more rapidly improve products (as well as a focus on other business efficiencies). If somebody "stole" your IP in this model, it would matter less because your pace of innovation may render the stolen IP retrograde by the time it was turned into useful products, and your sales would be driven by the strength of your products not because you had a legalized monopoly.
[Proof needed]. What fucking sense does it make for the NSA to spy on Brazil's deep-ocean oil drilling technologies if not for giving that info to American* companies?
* Gee, I wonder if Bush's family wouldn't benefit from that info. Noooo, that kind of corruption does not exist, the government is pristine.
There was a similar case like this in Australia where the Australian Federal Police were spying in order to gain advantage in a gas resources deal with poor - and recently "liberated" - neighbor East Timor. When it came to light, the Australian lawyer representing East Timor was roughed up and had documents seized.
These are just the cases we hear about. Presumably the secret service manage to keep their operations secret some of the time.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
The USA snoops on powers but doesn't hand that over to corporations.
[Proof needed]. What fucking sense does it make for the NSA to spy on Brazil's deep-ocean oil drilling technologies if not for giving that info to American* companies?
Monitoring violations of the Benthic Treaty.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
They outsource it
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
"two small, American chipmakers — Avago Technologies and Skyworks Solutions"
Avago has a market cap over 30 billion, and Skyworks is almost a 20 billion dollar company. They're not exactly garage start-ups, and everyone in the RF world recognizes them as being quite big players.
Greece has 353 Leopard 2 MBTs. Russia has 930 T-90s, 4500 T-80s in reserve, 8000 T-72 MBTs in reserve.
Russia also has 443 Su-27 derived aircraft.
Greece actually has an enemy right on its border that it might plausibly go to war with in the not too distant future... Germany not so much.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
What enemy is on Greeces border?? Turkey is a Greek ally, they are pledged to defend each other
Russia does not border with Greece, but Kaliningrad is right near to Germany, just a quick hop over the Baltic
Turkey and Greece are both members of NATO but, while being NATO member states have still almost gone to war! The border is still full of land mines.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Until you see Russians who aren't carrying broomsticks.