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CEO Catches Stranger After Hours, Prompting Espionage Charges (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Samuel Straface thought he was the last one out the door one recent evening at the medical-technology startup he leads in suburban Boston. But as he passed a glass-walled conference room on the second floor, Dr. Straface says he saw a man he didn't recognize, sitting by himself in front of two open laptops and a tablet device. He continued walking a few steps toward the exit, but then, feeling uneasy, he turned back (Editor's note: the submitted link could be paywalled; alternative source). The man was later identified as Dong Liu, a dual citizen of China and Canada. And his after-hours computing at Medrobotics is at the center of an economic-espionage case brought by U.S. prosecutors. Mr. Liu is in federal custody, charged with attempting to steal trade secrets and trying to gain unauthorized access to the company's computer system, prosecutors said. If convicted of both charges, he could face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. "Mr. Liu adamantly asserts his innocence and we fully expect he'll be exonerated after a careful review of the evidence," said Robert Goldstein, Mr. Liu's defense attorney. The U.S. attorney's office for the District of Massachusetts declined to comment on the case beyond details in court records. Before his arrest, police said Mr. Liu told them he was there to discuss doing business with the company -- but Dr. Straface says no one had scheduled a meeting with Mr. Liu.
I don't understand why we have paywall-ed links on the front page.
Came here to post that he wouldn't have got a second look if he was wearing a hardhat and reflective vest. Yes, even on the computers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
While I agree with the principle of some form of financial/economic penalty along the lines of what you propose, I am unclear as to how this could be implemented effectively.
The problem with simply voiding any US debts to China (or any other sovereign nation) because we catch their agents committing corporate or military espionage, at least in my own naive understanding, is that it basically sends a signal to the world that the repayment of our debts is conditional and uncertain: should the US government simply decide "we don't like something you're doing so we will refuse to pay you back," this would have clear repercussions with respect to the ability for the US to borrow money. It's a bit like saying that because Volkswagen was caught manipulating vehicle emissions in some of their models, you don't have to pay back the loan on your vehicle whose emissions are compliant and therefore whose market value was not affected. There's no contractual basis for that unilateral decision on the borrower's part.
But again, I absolutely agree that such flagrant actions (and let's be real here, there is and has been widespread and pervasive and extremely successful corporate espionage committed by China for decades) should be punished so severely that it should cost significant amounts of money to ensure mere compliance. I just don't know how it could be done.
When Western countries were tripping over themselves to help China build high speed trains eagerly agreeing to conditions like doing the fabrication in China, I just shook my head at their naivete. And predictably, after China had gleaned enough knowledge to build the trains themselves - either by direct observation of the construction machines and plans, or by outright theft - they booted the Western companies out and began building the trains themselves. The Western reaction is "that's not fair!". The East Asian reaction is "how stupid can these guys be?"
To be fair most citizens and employees fully expected the Chinese to steal the plans and copy the trains and were generally these deals. The CEOs who got paid well to sell out the company are almost as guilty as the Chinese. Certainly accomplices. The politicians who turn a blind eye to forced technology transfers should be punished as well.