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U.S. Drops Charges That Professor Shared Technology With China

149 points by el_benhameen 11y ago

hackuser 11y ago
The key point of the article: The government discovered that the head of Temple's physics department had transferred to China schematics for a 'pocket heater', which is used for semiconductor research and for which he had signed some sort of NDA (I don't know with whom). The FBI arrested him, handcuffed him, led him away; and the U.S. attorney charged him. You can imagine the effect on his job, reputation, etc. We pick up the story here: But months later, long after federal agents had led Dr. Xi away in handcuffs, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence at the heart of the Justice Department’s case: The blueprints were not for a pocket heater. Faced with sworn statements from leading scientists, including an inventor of the pocket heater, the Justice Department on Friday afternoon dropped all charges against Dr. Xi, an American citizen. My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability?
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  The key point of the article, to me, is really not in the article at all but in one of the comments. Tobin Worcester 22 minutes ago Once again, the government is demonstrating that we cannot trust it to wisely use the evidence that it is collecting on us. It just goes to show how we as private citizens are accountable to our government, but the reverse is never true. Rest assured no heads will roll over this. No lawsuits will be won or even be permitted. No elections will be lost, no careers ruined. The prosecutor's office will continue to run 100% open-loop, as usual.
  - cariaso 11y ago
    See also the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    That's because you'll continue to vote for the same party that's responsible for it. You can blame the government all you want, but almost everybody in America is to blame for either voting for it or not voting for anyone else.
    - rhizome 11y ago
      How in the world are you able to interpret this as a partisan issue?
      - bpodgursky 11y ago
        Uh, because the actions of the Justice department are a direct function of whatever the Executive branch wants to focus on. The Attorney General is nominated by the president. They decide who the federal government prosecutes. It is absolutely political.
        mistermumble 11y ago
        The surveillance state machinery has been a long time building, under the aegis of both parties. I think the Republicans push this with more vigor than the Democrats, but Democratic administrations such as the current one keep the machinery running.
        bpodgursky 11y ago
        This is not a greater debate about the vague idea of a surveillance state, it's about a very concrete case the federal government could either choose to prosecute or choose to drop. The current administration chose to prosecute. That decision was a decision entirely up to the executive branch, which is entirely up to the electorate. Making (not well supported) assertions about "republican adminstrations pushing a surveillance state" does not change those facts.
        nitrogen 11y ago
- smtddr 11y ago
  >>My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability? There should be a minimum $500k USD awarded to anyone who's arrested by USgov but then found innocent. Of course the problem this will cause is that if USgov arrests you... they will try their hardest to find any kind of violation on you. And as we know, the law is so complicated that chances are if USgov looks hard enough they can find dirt on anyone. So... as much as I wish they were held accountible, the pain they'd put you through to make sure they're not found in the wrong makes me hesitant to levy anything on them. I want it to be much easier for them to admit being wrong than going forward with pressing charges.
  - jrs235 11y ago
    "Of course the problem this will cause is that if USgov arrests you... they will try their hardest to find any kind of violation on you." No the problem with that is tax payers are punished for shitty government official decisions. The officers and officials don't have to pay, they have "endless" funds. Individual actors need to be held accountable. The DoJ is now focusing on criminally charging executives at companies, not just the companies themselves, for breaking laws. Government officers and officials should also be held accountable.
    - MaulingMonkey 11y ago
      > No the problem with that is tax payers are punished for shitty government official decisions. Which would hopefully motivate the tax payer to hold their government officials accountable while helping restore those harmed. Hopefully... > Individual actors need to be held accountable. Agreed.
    - SapphireSun 11y ago
      Guess who is ultimately responsible for shitty government decisions in a representative democracy... If the people are technically the source of government power, the people as a whole should bear the responsibility of ensuring that good government is elected. Punishing the taxpayers broadly ensures accountability from the top (the people).
  - 11y ago
- dylanjermiah 11y ago
  >My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability? Who's going to hold them accountable? Those who fund them have no choice in the matter, so it's naive to expect accountability in the first place.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    A small change I would make would be to allow appellate courts to ban prosecutors and police officers. A ban meaning they can't bring cases before the court or testify. Bans could be temporary or permanent.
    - Beltiras 11y ago
      Yellow and Red cards, just like soccer. This idea actually has some merit.
    - neltnerb 11y ago
      wow... this is really clever. personal accountability and an incentive to not pursue any charges not clearly backed up by the facts.
- a3n 11y ago
  > My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability? Never worked in the FBI, but just based on how rabid the US govt appears to be over prosecuting and winning, threatening people with ruin so that they can get any win ... No, not a single head will roll. At most, relevant supervisors will console the investigators and prosecutors. "Well, bad break kid, the guy was innocent." I really don't think it's about enforcing the law, or protecting the public or the Constitution, it's about annual reviews and advancement. We are resources for law enforcement.
  - mig39 11y ago
    No, they won't say "the guy is innocent" -- they'll say "bad break kid, the guy got off ... on a technicality."
- downandout 11y ago
  Nothing will roll. In fact, Dr. Xi won't even receive an apology or acknowledgement that something wrong happened here. He probably can and should sue in this case, as they destroyed his reputation over a "mistake". The government either a) brought these charges due to extreme negligence, or b) brought the case in bad faith, knowing that their case was fatally flawed from the beginning and were looking to use the charges to extort Dr. Xi into cooperating against his Chinese counterparts. Either way, the government is liable for the damages its actions caused.
yeukhon 11y ago
I can understand Temple's decision to put him on leave, but stripping away his chairman title seems like too far. Either Xi resigns or appoint an interim chairman until the end of the trial would be a better option IMO. So far, I haven't seen statement from Temple. By the way, there is another charge against another Chinese-born U.S. professor (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3227518/Renowned-U-S-scientist-worked-NASA-Mars-missions-resigns-disappears-FBI-investigates-suspicions-shared-defence-secrets-China.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3227518/Renowned-U-S...). In this case the "evidences" so far seems very strong against the professor from the public opinion, at least raising suspicious. Of course, his fate remains unknown until the court decides.
staunch 11y ago
> In Dr. Xi’s case, Mr. Zeidenberg said, the authorities saw emails to scientists in China and assumed the worst. > About a dozen F.B.I. agents, some with guns drawn, stormed Dr. Xi’s home in the Philadelphia suburbs in May, searching his house just after dawn... How did they see the emails? Was it mass surveillance or did someone complain to the FBI? Arrests based on the mass surveillance of millions of people is far scarier than arrests based on sincere accusations from concerned citizens.
- zhemao 11y ago
  I'm guessing that since he was a) Chinese-American and b) working on a high-tech research project involving classified information, the FBI was already suspicious of him and monitored his email and other communications.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    What classified information? The article says it was "sensitive" and that he had "signed an agreement promising to keep its design a secret". That sounds like an NDA. How many techies have signed an NDA?
    - Beltiras 11y ago
      Everyone? It's been boilerplate text in my last 3 employment contracts.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    The FBI isn't typically allowed to do that without a warrant, which would require probably cause. They or the NSA could do it anyway, but the evidence would never be let into court. The most likely answer if they got emails from whoever they were sent or forwarded to. Chinese spies looking for this information would, presumably, pose as experts or students and get involved in academic discussions at conferences and email chains/listseves. So hypothetically the FBI could bust a real spy, then see emails from Dr. Xi sending technical information and they suspect the worst. The FBI could have even infiltrated these groups themselves directly, which doesn't require a warrant or any oversight. One other way I just thought of is that public school employees, like Temple, don't own their work email. A regular person can use FOIA to get professors emails. I wonder if the FBI is allowed to use FOIA.
ap22213 11y ago
This should be an important topic of conversation in technology. Similar to other real threats to U.S. companies and citizens, Chinese espionage is the real deal. It's unfortunate that Mr Xi was caught in the crossfire. But, it's not like he was held in prison without justice. In this case, the justice system worked itself out, and Xi was shown to be innocent. He was not, as far as I can tell from reading the article, deemed guilty until proven innocent. He was suspected of a crime, the evidence showed that he had not committed a crime, and the charges were dropped. But, generally, I think the U.S. is much too lax in its patrolling of Chinese espionage. Things have been out of control for many years, at least for the couple decades that I've worked in research and development. Too often, at conferences and trade shows, have I seen the roving groups of Chinese with their video cameras and notebooks, blatantly stealing ideas and IP. Several times, I've witnessed suspicious Chinese citizens coming to work for tech companies, straight from China, being overly interested in details of IP, then mysteriously quitting, without a trace. It's a real problem.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  Not really. This wasn't a speeding ticket. Serious money was spent on this investigation and equally serious money was spent by the accused on his defense. The worry is best expressed by the Dr. Xi's lawyer... "If he was Canadian-American or French-American, or he was from the U.K., would this have ever even got on the government’s radar? I don’t think so,” Mr. Zeidenberg said." The implication is that investigators are targeting Chinese-americans under the assumption that Chinese-american's are sending information to china and so must be scrutinized. That sort of thinking leads to dark places. Imho money a far greater motivation than family history or racial affiliation. That should be the focus.
  - Torgo 11y ago
    Everybody in the West seems to think that everywhere else is just like them when it comes to lack of racial and national solidarity.
    - sandworm101 11y ago
cantrevealname 11y ago
So many obvious questions are unanswered in the article: 1. What does a pocket heater do in general terms? (Saying that it has something to do with "coating one substance with a very thin film of another" is pretty thin.) 2. Why did they target him, and how did they get his emails? 3. So the blueprints weren't of a pocket heater. Then what were they blueprints of? The story would be much better if they explained those. If the New York Times doesn't know, they should at least say something like, "We asked the prosecutors, but they refused to tell us".
- tdaltonc 11y ago
  It sounds like a tool for CVD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition
- natch 11y ago
  Yes unanswered, and as you suggest later, even unasked... if even the NYT is this pathetic then that just underscores that journalism is still ripe for disruption. Also it's bizarre they don't mention the case of Wen-Ho Lee, who earlier became a scapegoat for leaks at US nuclear sites, in part due to shoddy reporting by the NYT itself, which they later unwound in a still misstatement-ridden long article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/04/us/the-making-of-a-suspect-the-case-of-wen-ho-lee.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/04/us/the-making-of-a-suspect... /vent
  - cinquemb 11y ago
    That's the high quality NYT for you… I hope we see more high quality investigative journalism like this on HN! /sarc I think the only good thing about these type of whitewash pieces on HN (of which I don't even bother to click on) are the comments here that do the work of the journalists… but NYT history is pretty suspect when it comes to things surrounding corporate and government reporting so that's not surprising.
  - wfo 11y ago
    I agree with you about the quality of this article, but I find it odd that for many people here and in SV culture, the moment anything in any industry behaves in a way which you don't approve of or don't understand it's immediately "ripe for disruption". Maybe journalism is just genuinely hard and there are plenty of very smart people working hard at NYT but it isn't always perfect, and "disrupting" the industry -- a weasel word which means nothing except "I am a libertarian and I support new things so long as they completely exterminate a non-libertarian established power structure" -- isn't smart, possible, helpful, or in fact any of the three.
kelukelugames 11y ago
Sad part is a lot of Asians go into tech to avoid racism. Joke's on us?
- dba7dba 11y ago
  yup. no marketing, sales, project management, product manager, or any other field that doesn't somehow involve math/science.
- 9872 11y ago
  There is no such thing as avoiding racism.
- a3n 11y ago
  I'm white native-born American, so grain of salt. I don't think this was racism, just fear, ignorance and bureaucracy. We happen to be in a low-grade technology/security conflict with China at the moment, so that's where investigators and prosecutors are going to pick up their annual review points at the moment. I think the same thing could have happened with a white or Chinese Russian-American professor. But maybe not with a white or Chinese Canadian-American professor.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    And white people get killed by police too! #AllLivesMatter!!!
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    Here is a snark free reply. Yes, there is a logical explanation. Maybe this single incident is just bad luck. No racism. I would say the odds are 99% bad luck and 1% racism. But it isn't the first time a Chinese scientist ran into bad luck. Do you remember this high profile case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee#Indictment.2C_imprisonment_and_release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee#Indictment.2C_impri... Now it's more like 89% bad luck and 11% racism. There is also strong anti-Asian sentiment in general. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113236377590902105 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113236377590902105 http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vandalism-hate-crime-charges-in-no-more-6497185.php http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vandalism-hate-crime-cha... http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/10/terrorist-go-back-to-your-country-attacker-yelled-in-alleged-assault-of-sikh-man/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/10... 59% bad luck vs 41% racism. Not to mention the countless stereotypes. http://www.bustle.com/articles/106467-jeb-bush-donald-trumps-asian-remarks-only-reinforce-the-stereotypes-we-should-have-left-behind http://www.bustle.com/articles/106467-jeb-bush-donald-trumps... 49% vs 51%. And all of the BS from my co workers, classmates, and random people in public places. Oh yes, so much ignorant, racist BS. The odds of racism is much greater now. Because of the racism I have experienced and witnessed, the benefit of the doubt is rarely deserved.
gluejar 11y ago
I used to work in the same research field as Xi. A very nice guy, did some very excellent work. It's outrageous what's happened to him. You might be asking, what's the FBI looking at his emails for? So here's a random fact. Xi was a Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University up to 2009. Guess who was a graduate student in the Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University from 2006 to 2008, had Xi on his thesis committee, and attracted a huge amount of attention from the FBI. Yep. Ross Ulrecht. https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/paper/9710/4335 https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/paper/9710/4335 The idiots at the FBI must have been looking for Chinese links to Silk Road! Because isn't that in China?
- gluejar 11y ago
  Statement by Professor Xi on the Dismissal of the Federal Indictment and Legal Defense Fund http://www.xiaoxingxi.org/ http://www.xiaoxingxi.org/
makecheck 11y ago
A lot of damage comes from society's tendency to make the following synonymous: "accused of" = "guilty", "being investigated for" = "guilty", "was arrested" = "guilty", "currently on trial for" = "guilty", and so on. It infuriates me how this is done over and over again with the media's help. For starters it should NOT be public knowledge that someone has been arrested. Sweep that under the rug, let the trial happen, make it illegal to announce anything but guilty VERDICTS.
- a3n 11y ago
  Secret trials ensure no protests. The proper solution to this is to not have these misadventures (as unlikely as that solution is). Personal damage notwithstanding, society has an intense interest in following justice from start to finish.
a3n 11y ago
I'm sure Xi had nothing to hide.
lionspaw 11y ago
A lot of people are linking past cases that are similar, but let me just link the biggest one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen The guy went on to lead China's missile and aerospace program, but it was almost certainly because he had his life destroyed in the US first. The 50th Secretary of the US navy, Dan Kimball said, "it was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go."
OliverJones 11y ago
It's obviously political, eh? The US federal government's human resources tracking IT system is thoroughly pwned by a state actor (according to the NYT), under the noses of all the black-budget unregulated and expensive federal police forces. So those same federal police have to try to show the public they're not completely impotent. Gosh, we might insist on seeing, and even, cutting, those bloated black budgets. To prove themselves they go after expatriate intellectuals from the same state who pwned them. Blueprints? Really? has anybody seen an actual blueprint machine in the last generation?
kordless 11y ago
> A spokeswoman for Zane D. Memeger, the United States attorney in Philadelphia who brought the charges, did not elaborate on the decision to drop the case. We seriously need to put protections in place that force prosecutors to pay for the suffering they cause as a result of their efforts.
01002637764 11y ago
الواحد مخنوق يارررررررررررررب

149 points by el_benhameen 11y ago

The key point of the article: The government discovered that the head of Temple's physics department had transferred to China schematics for a 'pocket heater', which is used for semiconductor research and for which he had signed some sort of NDA (I don't know with whom). The FBI arrested him, handcuffed him, led him away; and the U.S. attorney charged him. You can imagine the effect on his job, reputation, etc. We pick up the story here: But months later, long after federal agents had led Dr. Xi away in handcuffs, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence at the heart of the Justice Department’s case: The blueprints were not for a pocket heater. Faced with sworn statements from leading scientists, including an inventor of the pocket heater, the Justice Department on Friday afternoon dropped all charges against Dr. Xi, an American citizen. My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability?

CamperBob2 11y ago
The key point of the article, to me, is really not in the article at all but in one of the comments. Tobin Worcester 22 minutes ago Once again, the government is demonstrating that we cannot trust it to wisely use the evidence that it is collecting on us. It just goes to show how we as private citizens are accountable to our government, but the reverse is never true. Rest assured no heads will roll over this. No lawsuits will be won or even be permitted. No elections will be lost, no careers ruined. The prosecutor's office will continue to run 100% open-loop, as usual.
- cariaso 11y ago
  See also the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee
- Asbostos 11y ago
  That's because you'll continue to vote for the same party that's responsible for it. You can blame the government all you want, but almost everybody in America is to blame for either voting for it or not voting for anyone else.
  - rhizome 11y ago
    How in the world are you able to interpret this as a partisan issue?
    - bpodgursky 11y ago
      Uh, because the actions of the Justice department are a direct function of whatever the Executive branch wants to focus on. The Attorney General is nominated by the president. They decide who the federal government prosecutes. It is absolutely political.
      - mistermumble 11y ago
        The surveillance state machinery has been a long time building, under the aegis of both parties. I think the Republicans push this with more vigor than the Democrats, but Democratic administrations such as the current one keep the machinery running.
        bpodgursky 11y ago
        This is not a greater debate about the vague idea of a surveillance state, it's about a very concrete case the federal government could either choose to prosecute or choose to drop. The current administration chose to prosecute. That decision was a decision entirely up to the executive branch, which is entirely up to the electorate. Making (not well supported) assertions about "republican adminstrations pushing a surveillance state" does not change those facts.
        nitrogen 11y ago
smtddr 11y ago
>>My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability? There should be a minimum $500k USD awarded to anyone who's arrested by USgov but then found innocent. Of course the problem this will cause is that if USgov arrests you... they will try their hardest to find any kind of violation on you. And as we know, the law is so complicated that chances are if USgov looks hard enough they can find dirt on anyone. So... as much as I wish they were held accountible, the pain they'd put you through to make sure they're not found in the wrong makes me hesitant to levy anything on them. I want it to be much easier for them to admit being wrong than going forward with pressing charges.
- jrs235 11y ago
  "Of course the problem this will cause is that if USgov arrests you... they will try their hardest to find any kind of violation on you." No the problem with that is tax payers are punished for shitty government official decisions. The officers and officials don't have to pay, they have "endless" funds. Individual actors need to be held accountable. The DoJ is now focusing on criminally charging executives at companies, not just the companies themselves, for breaking laws. Government officers and officials should also be held accountable.
  - MaulingMonkey 11y ago
    > No the problem with that is tax payers are punished for shitty government official decisions. Which would hopefully motivate the tax payer to hold their government officials accountable while helping restore those harmed. Hopefully... > Individual actors need to be held accountable. Agreed.
  - SapphireSun 11y ago
    Guess who is ultimately responsible for shitty government decisions in a representative democracy... If the people are technically the source of government power, the people as a whole should bear the responsibility of ensuring that good government is elected. Punishing the taxpayers broadly ensures accountability from the top (the people).
- 11y ago
dylanjermiah 11y ago
>My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability? Who's going to hold them accountable? Those who fund them have no choice in the matter, so it's naive to expect accountability in the first place.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  A small change I would make would be to allow appellate courts to ban prosecutors and police officers. A ban meaning they can't bring cases before the court or testify. Bans could be temporary or permanent.
  - Beltiras 11y ago
    Yellow and Red cards, just like soccer. This idea actually has some merit.
  - neltnerb 11y ago
    wow... this is really clever. personal accountability and an incentive to not pursue any charges not clearly backed up by the facts.
a3n 11y ago
> My concern is, do heads roll at the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office after a failure like that? Is there accountability? Never worked in the FBI, but just based on how rabid the US govt appears to be over prosecuting and winning, threatening people with ruin so that they can get any win ... No, not a single head will roll. At most, relevant supervisors will console the investigators and prosecutors. "Well, bad break kid, the guy was innocent." I really don't think it's about enforcing the law, or protecting the public or the Constitution, it's about annual reviews and advancement. We are resources for law enforcement.
- mig39 11y ago
  No, they won't say "the guy is innocent" -- they'll say "bad break kid, the guy got off ... on a technicality."
downandout 11y ago
Nothing will roll. In fact, Dr. Xi won't even receive an apology or acknowledgement that something wrong happened here. He probably can and should sue in this case, as they destroyed his reputation over a "mistake". The government either a) brought these charges due to extreme negligence, or b) brought the case in bad faith, knowing that their case was fatally flawed from the beginning and were looking to use the charges to extort Dr. Xi into cooperating against his Chinese counterparts. Either way, the government is liable for the damages its actions caused.

yeukhon 11y ago

I can understand Temple's decision to put him on leave, but stripping away his chairman title seems like too far. Either Xi resigns or appoint an interim chairman until the end of the trial would be a better option IMO. So far, I haven't seen statement from Temple. By the way, there is another charge against another Chinese-born U.S. professor (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3227518/Renowned-U-S-scientist-worked-NASA-Mars-missions-resigns-disappears-FBI-investigates-suspicions-shared-defence-secrets-China.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3227518/Renowned-U-S...). In this case the "evidences" so far seems very strong against the professor from the public opinion, at least raising suspicious. Of course, his fate remains unknown until the court decides.

staunch 11y ago

> In Dr. Xi’s case, Mr. Zeidenberg said, the authorities saw emails to scientists in China and assumed the worst. > About a dozen F.B.I. agents, some with guns drawn, stormed Dr. Xi’s home in the Philadelphia suburbs in May, searching his house just after dawn... How did they see the emails? Was it mass surveillance or did someone complain to the FBI? Arrests based on the mass surveillance of millions of people is far scarier than arrests based on sincere accusations from concerned citizens.

zhemao 11y ago
I'm guessing that since he was a) Chinese-American and b) working on a high-tech research project involving classified information, the FBI was already suspicious of him and monitored his email and other communications.
- greglindahl 11y ago
  What classified information? The article says it was "sensitive" and that he had "signed an agreement promising to keep its design a secret". That sounds like an NDA. How many techies have signed an NDA?
  - Beltiras 11y ago
    Everyone? It's been boilerplate text in my last 3 employment contracts.
- rhino369 11y ago
  The FBI isn't typically allowed to do that without a warrant, which would require probably cause. They or the NSA could do it anyway, but the evidence would never be let into court. The most likely answer if they got emails from whoever they were sent or forwarded to. Chinese spies looking for this information would, presumably, pose as experts or students and get involved in academic discussions at conferences and email chains/listseves. So hypothetically the FBI could bust a real spy, then see emails from Dr. Xi sending technical information and they suspect the worst. The FBI could have even infiltrated these groups themselves directly, which doesn't require a warrant or any oversight. One other way I just thought of is that public school employees, like Temple, don't own their work email. A regular person can use FOIA to get professors emails. I wonder if the FBI is allowed to use FOIA.

ap22213 11y ago

This should be an important topic of conversation in technology. Similar to other real threats to U.S. companies and citizens, Chinese espionage is the real deal. It's unfortunate that Mr Xi was caught in the crossfire. But, it's not like he was held in prison without justice. In this case, the justice system worked itself out, and Xi was shown to be innocent. He was not, as far as I can tell from reading the article, deemed guilty until proven innocent. He was suspected of a crime, the evidence showed that he had not committed a crime, and the charges were dropped. But, generally, I think the U.S. is much too lax in its patrolling of Chinese espionage. Things have been out of control for many years, at least for the couple decades that I've worked in research and development. Too often, at conferences and trade shows, have I seen the roving groups of Chinese with their video cameras and notebooks, blatantly stealing ideas and IP. Several times, I've witnessed suspicious Chinese citizens coming to work for tech companies, straight from China, being overly interested in details of IP, then mysteriously quitting, without a trace. It's a real problem.

sandworm101 11y ago
Not really. This wasn't a speeding ticket. Serious money was spent on this investigation and equally serious money was spent by the accused on his defense. The worry is best expressed by the Dr. Xi's lawyer... "If he was Canadian-American or French-American, or he was from the U.K., would this have ever even got on the government’s radar? I don’t think so,” Mr. Zeidenberg said." The implication is that investigators are targeting Chinese-americans under the assumption that Chinese-american's are sending information to china and so must be scrutinized. That sort of thinking leads to dark places. Imho money a far greater motivation than family history or racial affiliation. That should be the focus.
- Torgo 11y ago
  Everybody in the West seems to think that everywhere else is just like them when it comes to lack of racial and national solidarity.
  - sandworm101 11y ago

cantrevealname 11y ago

So many obvious questions are unanswered in the article: 1. What does a pocket heater do in general terms? (Saying that it has something to do with "coating one substance with a very thin film of another" is pretty thin.) 2. Why did they target him, and how did they get his emails? 3. So the blueprints weren't of a pocket heater. Then what were they blueprints of? The story would be much better if they explained those. If the New York Times doesn't know, they should at least say something like, "We asked the prosecutors, but they refused to tell us".

tdaltonc 11y ago
It sounds like a tool for CVD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition
natch 11y ago
Yes unanswered, and as you suggest later, even unasked... if even the NYT is this pathetic then that just underscores that journalism is still ripe for disruption. Also it's bizarre they don't mention the case of Wen-Ho Lee, who earlier became a scapegoat for leaks at US nuclear sites, in part due to shoddy reporting by the NYT itself, which they later unwound in a still misstatement-ridden long article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/04/us/the-making-of-a-suspect-the-case-of-wen-ho-lee.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/04/us/the-making-of-a-suspect... /vent
- cinquemb 11y ago
  That's the high quality NYT for you… I hope we see more high quality investigative journalism like this on HN! /sarc I think the only good thing about these type of whitewash pieces on HN (of which I don't even bother to click on) are the comments here that do the work of the journalists… but NYT history is pretty suspect when it comes to things surrounding corporate and government reporting so that's not surprising.
- wfo 11y ago
  I agree with you about the quality of this article, but I find it odd that for many people here and in SV culture, the moment anything in any industry behaves in a way which you don't approve of or don't understand it's immediately "ripe for disruption". Maybe journalism is just genuinely hard and there are plenty of very smart people working hard at NYT but it isn't always perfect, and "disrupting" the industry -- a weasel word which means nothing except "I am a libertarian and I support new things so long as they completely exterminate a non-libertarian established power structure" -- isn't smart, possible, helpful, or in fact any of the three.

kelukelugames 11y ago

Sad part is a lot of Asians go into tech to avoid racism. Joke's on us?

dba7dba 11y ago
yup. no marketing, sales, project management, product manager, or any other field that doesn't somehow involve math/science.
9872 11y ago
There is no such thing as avoiding racism.
a3n 11y ago
I'm white native-born American, so grain of salt. I don't think this was racism, just fear, ignorance and bureaucracy. We happen to be in a low-grade technology/security conflict with China at the moment, so that's where investigators and prosecutors are going to pick up their annual review points at the moment. I think the same thing could have happened with a white or Chinese Russian-American professor. But maybe not with a white or Chinese Canadian-American professor.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  And white people get killed by police too! #AllLivesMatter!!!
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Here is a snark free reply. Yes, there is a logical explanation. Maybe this single incident is just bad luck. No racism. I would say the odds are 99% bad luck and 1% racism. But it isn't the first time a Chinese scientist ran into bad luck. Do you remember this high profile case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee#Indictment.2C_imprisonment_and_release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee#Indictment.2C_impri... Now it's more like 89% bad luck and 11% racism. There is also strong anti-Asian sentiment in general. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113236377590902105 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113236377590902105 http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vandalism-hate-crime-charges-in-no-more-6497185.php http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vandalism-hate-crime-cha... http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/10/terrorist-go-back-to-your-country-attacker-yelled-in-alleged-assault-of-sikh-man/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/10... 59% bad luck vs 41% racism. Not to mention the countless stereotypes. http://www.bustle.com/articles/106467-jeb-bush-donald-trumps-asian-remarks-only-reinforce-the-stereotypes-we-should-have-left-behind http://www.bustle.com/articles/106467-jeb-bush-donald-trumps... 49% vs 51%. And all of the BS from my co workers, classmates, and random people in public places. Oh yes, so much ignorant, racist BS. The odds of racism is much greater now. Because of the racism I have experienced and witnessed, the benefit of the doubt is rarely deserved.

gluejar 11y ago

I used to work in the same research field as Xi. A very nice guy, did some very excellent work. It's outrageous what's happened to him. You might be asking, what's the FBI looking at his emails for? So here's a random fact. Xi was a Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University up to 2009. Guess who was a graduate student in the Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University from 2006 to 2008, had Xi on his thesis committee, and attracted a huge amount of attention from the FBI. Yep. Ross Ulrecht. https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/paper/9710/4335 https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/paper/9710/4335 The idiots at the FBI must have been looking for Chinese links to Silk Road! Because isn't that in China?

gluejar 11y ago
Statement by Professor Xi on the Dismissal of the Federal Indictment and Legal Defense Fund http://www.xiaoxingxi.org/ http://www.xiaoxingxi.org/

makecheck 11y ago

A lot of damage comes from society's tendency to make the following synonymous: "accused of" = "guilty", "being investigated for" = "guilty", "was arrested" = "guilty", "currently on trial for" = "guilty", and so on. It infuriates me how this is done over and over again with the media's help. For starters it should NOT be public knowledge that someone has been arrested. Sweep that under the rug, let the trial happen, make it illegal to announce anything but guilty VERDICTS.

a3n 11y ago
Secret trials ensure no protests. The proper solution to this is to not have these misadventures (as unlikely as that solution is). Personal damage notwithstanding, society has an intense interest in following justice from start to finish.

a3n 11y ago

I'm sure Xi had nothing to hide.

lionspaw 11y ago

A lot of people are linking past cases that are similar, but let me just link the biggest one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen The guy went on to lead China's missile and aerospace program, but it was almost certainly because he had his life destroyed in the US first. The 50th Secretary of the US navy, Dan Kimball said, "it was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go."

OliverJones 11y ago

It's obviously political, eh? The US federal government's human resources tracking IT system is thoroughly pwned by a state actor (according to the NYT), under the noses of all the black-budget unregulated and expensive federal police forces. So those same federal police have to try to show the public they're not completely impotent. Gosh, we might insist on seeing, and even, cutting, those bloated black budgets. To prove themselves they go after expatriate intellectuals from the same state who pwned them. Blueprints? Really? has anybody seen an actual blueprint machine in the last generation?

kordless 11y ago

> A spokeswoman for Zane D. Memeger, the United States attorney in Philadelphia who brought the charges, did not elaborate on the decision to drop the case. We seriously need to put protections in place that force prosecutors to pay for the suffering they cause as a result of their efforts.

01002637764 11y ago

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