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FBI and DOJ Drop Case Against Chinese-American Physicist
Required Snark writes: The FBI and Department of Justice have withdrawn their prosecution (or more accurately persecution) Dr. Xi Xiaoxing, former head of the Physics Department at Temple University, according to the New York Times. He was accused of attempting to transfer technology about a "pocket heater" to China. It is used in superconducting research.
The case fell apart because the evidence that the FBI had was not about a pocket heater. "In a sworn affidavit, one engineer, Ward S. Ruby, said he was uniquely qualified to identify a pocket heater. 'I am very familiar with this device, as I was one of the co-inventors,' he said." Apparently nobody in the FBI or DOJ bothered to verify that the information referred to the device in question: "Dr. Xi's lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, said that despite the complexity, it appeared that the government never consulted with experts before taking the case to a grand jury. As a result, prosecutors misconstrued the evidence, he said."
Dr Xi was forced to step down from his position as the head of the department during the investigation. He was unable to work on his ongoing experiments and was branded a spy. What are the odds that anyone at the FBI or DOJ will face any personal or professional repercussions? If recent history is any guide they will not even issue a statement. When the case was withdrawn the option to refile was retained, a blatant attempt to save face and deny responsibility.
The case fell apart because the evidence that the FBI had was not about a pocket heater. "In a sworn affidavit, one engineer, Ward S. Ruby, said he was uniquely qualified to identify a pocket heater. 'I am very familiar with this device, as I was one of the co-inventors,' he said." Apparently nobody in the FBI or DOJ bothered to verify that the information referred to the device in question: "Dr. Xi's lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, said that despite the complexity, it appeared that the government never consulted with experts before taking the case to a grand jury. As a result, prosecutors misconstrued the evidence, he said."
Dr Xi was forced to step down from his position as the head of the department during the investigation. He was unable to work on his ongoing experiments and was branded a spy. What are the odds that anyone at the FBI or DOJ will face any personal or professional repercussions? If recent history is any guide they will not even issue a statement. When the case was withdrawn the option to refile was retained, a blatant attempt to save face and deny responsibility.
Just remember everyone, the problem isn't our intelligence services, it's America's "deep cynicism" over our intelligence services!
A recent Pew Research Survey shows that the common man has very little understanding of basic science. Such things come as a result.
Mission accomplished.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So, there was a mistake made in this case, so the implication is that the problem really isn't that bad, and the government is overzealous, and we shouldn't worry — and definitely shouldn't be so watchful over unfettered Chinese espionage, because we might sometimes make mistakes. That about sum it up?
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/09/08/fbi-investigates-osus-star-of-mapping.html
http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/chinese-and-russian-cyber-espionage-the-kaiser-would-be-jealous/
Don't be an asshole. It interrupts the productive discussion. Fact is that guys life was screwed up and it's a good thing someone is reporting on it.
So.. what was he sending schematics of? The article just has a statement from his lawyer that "The technology discussed was not sensitive or restricted"
It is hard to have a discussion when the summary is so biased. It should be like a real news report - report the facts. Don't report an interpretation of the facts. That crap at the end about an attempt to save face, no apology coming, etc. - all non-facts (although possibly correct). "News for Nerds" not "Opinion loosely based on facts for Nerds".
So... he's still a spy, just not as good at it as we thought?
The government should have to pay for the lawyers when they erroneously arrest someone and get caught, regardless of whether the person is living in poverty or not. Or at least a part of the cost--like coinsurance, make them pay *something* to encourage them to be a little more careful before they go destroying people's lives and using lots of government resources.
I am not an AC - just can't drive /. I am Charlie Merritt.
I was in a big to-do re PGP. Persecuted was Phil Zimmerman, and anyone who helped with PGP.
Everybody knew "Special" Agent Robin Sterzer of customs (ICE today).
She was amazing - knew absolutely nothing about crypto.
Even less about the difference between source and compiled machine language.
She was the "prosecutor's" assistant in nailing this crime down.
[Would a FOIA re Sterzer work? 'Prolly not - personnel privacy and all.
My lawyer said (at that time) said DOJ *NEVER* announces a drop in investigation.
[They used to let you figure out the statutes of limitations]
I read the law, witnesses are under NO obligation to keep quiet.
I Posted case number and names on Internet.
And the questions they asked, and the fact that I asked
how many of the Grand Jury read what news groups on USNET.
EVERYBODY could "testify" - I am surprised it took so long with this pocket heater thing.
Where were his fellow physicists?
After reading the article on the NYTimes, I went to whitehouse.gov and made a petition to:
"Apologize to Dr. Xi of Temple Univ. for the FBI's wrongful accusation and prosecution of him on charges of spying."
The complete text reads:
After reading this article in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09...
I was appalled and upset that another Chinese-American citizen had been wrongly accused and prosecuted for spying when even a basic check could have exonerated him. That this even got to this point not only speaks to the incompetence of the FBI but a pervasive bias and distrust of Chinese American CITIZENS.
President Obama should, at the very least, on behalf of the U.S. Govt. apologize to this distinguished professor who has seen his reputation shattered and loss of various posts and titles. This will be an important symbolic act.
If you believe that he (at least) deserves an apology, follow this link and "sign" the petition:
"https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/apologize-dr-xi-temple-univ-fbis-wrongful-accusation-and-prosecution-him-charges-spying-0".
For those of you unfamiliar with how this works, once it reaches 150 "signatures" then it is publicly viewable. If it then reaches 150,000 within a month then the white house promises to respond.
Please note: when I mentioned "another Chinese American" I did not mean that I am a Chinese American. I am not. Rather I was talking about the other Chinese American CITIZENS (like Wen Ho Lee) who have been charged and prosecuted apparently for no other reason than they are of Chinese origin. They were found innocent.
In this case they where only accused as the process just felled down.
It is hard to have a discussion when the summary is so biased. It should be like a real news report - report the facts.
Did you just arrive on the Unicorn bus? Do you even know where you are?
Did you accidentally switch your browser from 'The Sound of Music"?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
For the next year or two, the principal actors who demonstrated professional incompetence may miss out on promotion opportunities and they may not be picked for "choice" assignments in the workplace.
As a result, their final pay grade at retirement may be a step or two lower than if they hadn't been involved in this case at all.
But we'll never know, and they probably won't either.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Somalia has its own problems too, you fanboy.
Somalia has its own problems too, you fanboy.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Accused, defamed, and suspended from his job.
And if it's one thing we all know about them, they like to smoke opium and sell secrets. If it wasn't a pocket heater then it was something else, like maybe a very, very large pocket dildo. They can use that kind of stuff.
The U.S. Government doesn't apologize until ~50 years have passed and most of the victims have died. This has been the standard practice since what they did to the Americans of Japanese ancestry during WW2.
So what were the blueprints he sent over?
It wasn't a pocket heater. TFA is clear on that. So what was it? TFA made some handwavy claim that it was part of the usual collaborative correspondence that universities encourage ... which is fine too.
But I at least, am curious to know what it actually was.
Don't be an asshole. It interrupts the productive discussion.
Expecting anonymous posters on the Internet to 'not be an asshole' is like the fox not expecting the scorpion to sting it once he's carried it to the other side of the river. There are several different circumstances in which you find out what people are really like, and the ability to post things anonymously on the Internet is definitely one of them: without the feedback loop of some sort of consequences for their actions, some people show no restraint whatsoever because unlike a mature and reasonable person, they have little or no internal feedback loop to self-regulate their actions, and they default to the lowest common denominator of behavior.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
People who complain about the Japanese prison camps rarely have heard of the Niihau incident. They tend to be ignorant of history, and have trouble imagining what things were like at the time.
I have worked with Xiaoxing. We have written papers together. He is an excellent physicist.
It is deeply saddening to see yet another scientific researcher attacked by his own government. Shame on the FBI (again).
He probably lost a personal fortune defending himself against kangaroo-type allegations. If you are American, you can be certain that a chunk of your tax dollars went towards this disgusting, McCarthy-esque buffoonery.
âoeIf he was Canadian-American or French-American, or he was from the U.K., would this have ever even got on the governmentâ(TM)s radar? I donâ(TM)t think so,â Mr. Zeidenberg said.
Is the above statement true? Yes. Our over-zealous, control-freak-infested FBI/CIA/NSA/DoJ came in with guns blazing, maybe imagining they'd uncovered a Chinese intelligence operative stealing American secrets. However, the above quote can be seen another way: If the Chinese government wasn't adversarial (on a good day) with the U.S., and downright hostile to it (on a bad day), and didn't perpetually demonstrate that they can't be trusted, then this wouldn't have happened, either. While I fervently believe that the Chinese populace is no different from people anywhere else in the world (they just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace!) and that they (if allowed to speak up!) have many, many very valid complaints about their government, I also know that it's not the Chinese people we have to worry about, it's their government, and I wouldn't put it past their government to play the long game to get a government-loyal scientist into the U.S., naturalized as a citizen, for the sole purpose of spying on us and stealing from us. Is this the case in this instance? Who knows. The evidence presented here points to it not being the case this time.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It is hard to have a discussion when the summary is so biased. It should be like a real news report - report the facts. Don't report an interpretation of the facts. That crap at the end about an attempt to save face, no apology coming, etc. - all non-facts (although possibly correct). "News for Nerds" not "Opinion loosely based on facts for Nerds".
Yes, it should be more like "real news" where the bias is implemented by convenient omission of "undesirable" facts and certain stories just plain don't get reported at all. From reading/watching mainstream news, one would think that people with conceal-carry permits never use them (typically without firing a shot) to stop a crime in progress. The news story will say something like "the suspect was subdued until police arrived" and that is all it will say, because citizens who legally carry firearms is not something the mainstream news wishes to promote ("why" is a good question, but they clearly don't). They aren't technically lying, though I call this lying by omission because the intent is obvious. Meanwhile any criminal act committed with a gun gets full coverage.
However you feel about guns, the idea that certain facts are selectively reported or not reported at all means that your "real news" is not really news either. If they can do this with a topic you don't care about, they can also do this with a topic you do value. Look into the Fox BGH affair if you want to see the degree of censorship that happens. Last fall/winter I remember seeing a story about influenza that strongly encouraged people to get the flu vaccine. Nowhere did it mention that there is no real proof of efficacy supporting this vaccine. Hell, Dr. J. Anthony Morris, at the time the Chief Vaccine Officer of the FDA plainly came out and said this, but I didn't see that reported anywhere. How many people even know that this happened? Only those who researched it themselves. In practice, that's a small minority. Most of the rest are trusting the authority of those official news sources.
One would think that would be newsworthy, except that the biggest sponsors who purchase advertising happen to be pharmaceutical and food companies. The people watching the news are consumers. The ones buying ads are the customers. It's simply not good business to piss off your customers.
I'll take an obvious editorial that never claimed to be otherwise, any day.
There is just one free country and it is Somalia. Therefore you can call him fanboy. \s
Go figure what free means.
Seems similar to the Wen Ho Lee case.
They really do *not* like physicists at the FBI, do they?
If it had more power it could stop this lunatics doing all those things?
You have to realise that there are different forms of power:
* Power to resist corruption
* Power to screw the people
There are many more but those two are enough to make you look completely wrongheaded.
this distinguished professor
FYI, "Distinguished Professor" is an actual title.
I don't think they're talking about this http://www.amazon.com/Zippo-Wa...
You have to realise that there are different forms of power: * Power to resist corruption * Power to screw the people
Both of which can and will be abused, because power is always abused. It's in its nature.
There are many more but those two are enough to make you look completely wrongheaded.
The only certain way to reduce the abuses of power is to reduce the total amount of power available, in any form. It also helps to make power more difficult to use (for example, this is the idea behind requiring police to obtain warrants for certain actions). That you can come up with categories and call these multiple forms of power does not, in any way, change this.
Many police forces conduct a form of intelligence testing as part of the hiring process. If you are too intelligent then you will be booted because they think that police work will be too boring for you and you'll quit. The police departments across the land provide much of the "talent" pool for the FBI, DOJ, DEA and other three letter agencies which naturally leads to the three letter agencies brimming with fools.
Using computers and lack of due diligence often replaces real police work. That's unfortunate. The FBI pays well and has highly intelligent agents. This should never happen with such people in place. The downward slope of the quality of government actions needs to reverse. Agents and other government employees need to start thinking at a higher level and working hard again with a concern for accuracy and a respect for individual freedoms.
> There is just one free country and it is Somalia. Therefore you can call him fanboy. \s
> Go figure what free means.
It means on the Freedom scale, Somalia is next above the USA (with some 200 countries having more Freedom).
Also, maybe the poster has no resources(*) to leave the US; for him, any part of the world would be hard to reach -- just like Somalia. Perhaps even Canada and Mexico are "Somalia" for him.
(*) resources mean money, knowledge, another language proficiency etc.
Count me as one of those who had never heard of the Niihau Incident before now. What puzzles me is why this incident is not more widely known. I would think that the US government would have a vested interest in telling it's own citizens about this. At the least, it would make their actions against Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens a little more understandable and perhaps even acceptable. However; The US government and the various civilian assembly organizations still need to bear the responsibility for how they handled the internees and their property once the decision to intern them was made. Many families lost everything because of theft and/or corruption and for the longest time the official response boiled down to "no comment" or "tough shit"
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Fuck apologies. People need to be fired and fined. Don't let corrupt incompetent government officials get away with shit. Sorry, my English is not so good.
Many police forces conduct a form of intelligence testing as part of the hiring process. If you are too intelligent then you will be booted because they think that police work will be too boring for you and you'll quit.
Is this even true, or just internet bullshit? Did you make it up as you wrote it?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
No, it's true.
Apparently it has been proven to be true (it was ruled non-discriminatory in court)
The filing gives the government the right to file the charges again if it chooses.
So the schematics were for something else, not a "pocket heater". But apparently he did send the schematics for something back to China. And he still could be prosecuted.
Many police forces conduct a form of intelligence testing as part of the hiring process. If you are too intelligent then you will be booted because they think that police work will be too boring for you and you'll quit. The police departments across the land provide much of the "talent" pool for the FBI, DOJ, DEA and other three letter agencies which naturally leads to the three letter agencies brimming with fools.
It would be more accurate to say that you read about the New London, Connecticut police department and extrapolated from that one case to "many".
old news:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
new news:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
It appears that what the original charges were based on was violating a non-disclosure agreement.
And the new evidence is that a group of physicists hired by the defense lawyers were able to determine that the multiple emails were for a newly invented device that does not violate the NDA.
They don't say what the new invention is, but I'll bet that it was related to thin-film superconductivity because that was his field.
If my supposition is correct, it's not surprising that it required a team of other physicists to determine that the new invention did not violate the previous NDA.
This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that courts and lawyers are for. He was not doing anything wrong, but he was skating so close to the edge that he got arrested. The situation was investigated and he was exonerated without a trial.
I do blame Temple for removing him as department head before a trial. That's just wrong in a case like this.
Wait a minute.
Wasn't 'brandishing a weapon' just recently classified as a crime? From TFA:
"About a dozen F.B.I. agents, some with guns drawn, stormed..."
Hmmmmmmm.
AC
I believe the FBI and DOJ have accomplished what they set out to do. Now that they have harmed him and sent a clear message, mission accomplished. And yes there will be no consequences for the FBI or DOJ, if there were well that might cause the FBI, DOJ and all sorts of other parts of government to start being responsible in their actions and we can't have that.
You don't know what really happened because you weren't privy to whatever negotiations went on behind closed doors. Maybe story we are reading this is what happened. And it may not be. Maybe the feds swung a deal with the Dr. and he is going to or did do something for them and this is a cover story. "gosh we didn't even test the white powder to see if it was drugs your Honor". a form of that is what is being claimed. Sure the run of the mill citizen , fed or otherwise employed, can't sort the technicalities out but I am pretty sure the feds have specialists who can. Were they really not engaged in this take down?
It may all be as reported. All I am suggesting is you have to keep in the back of your mind that the real story may not be what the headlines are telling you.
People who think the Niihau incident is relevant here may not realize that Japanese-Americans were in general not deported from the highly sensitive areas in Hawaii. The deportation and incarceration were unnecessary, objected to by several people with appropriate responsbilities at the time, and seems to have been motivated by racism.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Many police forces conduct a form of intelligence testing as part of the hiring process. If you are too intelligent then you will be booted because they think that police work will be too boring for you and you'll quit. The police departments across the land provide much of the "talent" pool for the FBI, DOJ, DEA and other three letter agencies which naturally leads to the three letter agencies brimming with fools.
It would be more accurate to say that you read about the New London, Connecticut police department and extrapolated from that one case to "many".
In truth, I had heard of this from HR personnel and officers in the LAPD, Sacramento and Seattle PD as well as from corrections departments as far back as the early 90s when I applied. Additionally, the written tests included very obvious personality and IQ testing. The New London case merely brought it out in the public light.