GE Engineer With Ties To China Accused of Stealing Power Plant Technology (thestreet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TheStreet: General Electric stock was little changed on Friday, August 3, as a GE engineer with ties to China who has been accused of stealing proprietary power-turbine technology has been released on bond. Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, has been in custody since Wednesday when the FBI raided his home in Niskayuna, New York, near Albany. A federal judge on Thursday set a $100,000 bond; Zheng offered his family's home as collateral and was released on Friday. He was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device and limit his travel, according to multiple media reports.

Zheng, who is a U.S. citizen, was hired by GE in 2008 to work as a principal engineer for the company's power division, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent filed in federal court in Albany. Zheng is "suspected of taking/stealing, on multiple occasions via sophisticated means, data files from GE's laboratories that contain GE's trade secret information involving turbine technology," the FBI said in its affidavit. He also took "elaborate means" to conceal the removal of GE data files. "The primary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's action in 2018 in which he encrypted GE data files containing trade secret information, and thereafter sent the trade secret information from his GE work computer to Zheng's personal e-mail address hidden in the binary code of a digital photograph via a process known as steganography," the FBI said. "Additionally, the secondary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's actions in 2014 in which he downloaded more than 19,000 files from GE's computer network onto an external storage device, believed by GE investigators to have been a personal thumb drive."

Zheng's attorney disputed the allegations, saying Zheng "transmitted information on his own patents to himself and to no one else."

Comments

Innocent until proven guilty

[Okian Warrior]

China is waging an all out war on the West, stealing every bit of IP it possibly can, while militarizing the South China Sea as part of its "One belt, one road" initiative, along with its 2025 and 2050 roadmap. It's about time America started recognizing that and responded appropriately.

Firstly, it's not an "all out" war, that phrase is trying to use extreme rhetoric to gin up divisiveness. It's the same thing that the Russians (and others) are accused of doing in the US. An "all out" war would include military actions; in fact, a true "all out" war would include nuclear strikes.

Dial back the rhetoric into a more accurate description.

Secondly, the employee disputes the charges, and frames his explanation in a credible way. We have essentially two conflicting stories: the FBI and the employee, and we have no idea who is right.

Jumping to conclusions, in this case espionage, is unwarranted at this time. It's calling for "mob rule" based on perception of guilt or innocence, said perception being made (by the FBI, and the employee) with no standards of accuracy.

We have "innocent until proven guilty" for a reason, it's one of the basic rights, and we need to get back to those.

People keep talking about "fake news" and "divisive tribalism", and we only get that when people have an emotional reaction to something they take as un-skeptically true and rhetorically pushed to the limits of outrage.

Let the evidence be introduced and examined in the legal process, where a much higher standard of accuracy and relevance is enforced, and let a court decide.

We don't need to get all outraged and mob-like about this incident, at least not yet.

Re:Innocent until proven guilty

[drinkypoo]

Secondly, the employee disputes the charges, and frames his explanation in a credible way.

What's credible about it? If the rights to the patent are assigned to his employer, as they certainly are, then it's not really his patent at all. There's no legitimate reason for him to transfer any of the information to himself. If there were, he wouldn't have to use steganography. All he needs to do is write down the patent numbers if he wants to refer to the patents later as his work, which if he has no right to the patents, is all he has the right to do "with" them.

Re:Steganography though...

[jwhyche]

If he was just using password protected zip files, I might be more inclined to believe his story, The fact that he was trying to hide what he was doing cast his story in a bad light.