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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."
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."
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.
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
Zheng's attorney disputed the allegations, saying Zheng "transmitted information on his own patents to himself and to no one else."
My experience with giant corporations is that I sign away the rights to the things I invent for them as a condition of employment. "My" patents are at home, with documentation that they were all done on my own time, using my own equipment. And even that may be subject to litigation if the patents fall into the same type of things that I develop at work.
The only information he is entitled to relating to his patents are the patents themselves, as published.
https://patents.justia.com/search?q=Xiaoqing+Zheng+General+Electric
Otherwise he is running off with "work", which GE owns. And the patents are assigned to GE as a condition of his employment, so they aren't his either even if he is one of the authors.
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.
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.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Actually, China isn't the only country that does this. US companies do industrial espionage too. The US government uses national security assets to conduct economic espionage against foreign targets, for example against Petrobras and Siemens.
Of course this kind of thing hurts the US more and helps it less than any other country, but that doesn't mean we don't do it when the opportunity arises. Nobody consults the Categorical Imperative or thinks about long term consequences when deciding to do this sort of thing. They simply ask, "Is this advantageous to me right now?" and if the answer is "yes", they do it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/...
The driver had been employed by Feinstein for 20 years. He also acted as a gofer in the senator’s office in San Francisco and as a liaison to the Asian-American community. In this role, he attended multiple Chinese Consulate functions on the senator’s behalf.
After a four-year investigation, the FBI arrested Zheng after searching his home and finding, among other things, a handbook detailing âoeresourcesâ Beijing would grant to individuals providing certain technologies. FBI has been monitoring him for 4 years watching him hit all sorts of sensitive areas. If GE knew it 4 years ago, they never would have allowed him access to sensitive data, even if they were working with GE.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.