6 ms·

Statement by Professor Xi on the Dismissal of the Federal Indictment

112 points by gluejar 11y ago

ClintEhrlich 11y ago
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, this New York Times piece describes how this all happened in the first instance. One more datum on federal incompetence: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/us/politics/us-drops-charges-that-professor-shared-technology-with-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/us/politics/us-drops-charg...
chromaton 11y ago
It's still not entirely clear to me why or how Xi was being investigated in the first place. There was a mention in an earlier post on HN that he had some incidental contact with Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road. However, the indictment gives a couple hints on this topic. There are multiple mentions of FISA and CIPA, US laws dealing with national security and spying. Perhaps the US was spying on the people Xi was communicating with? You can read the indictment here: https://cryptome.org/2015/09/xiaoxing-xi-files.pdf https://cryptome.org/2015/09/xiaoxing-xi-files.pdf All of this seems like overkill for what was supposedly a violation of an NDA.
- walshemj 11y ago
  You do wonder if there is some internal university politics going on as well certainly being forced out of his job instead of being put on paid leave smells bad
  - morganvachon 11y ago
    If you read his statement, you will see that he thanks the university for standing behind him and treating him as "innocent until and unless proven guilty", as they should. I think you're barking up the wrong tree with this theory.
    - walshemj 11y ago
      "taking away his title as "chairman of the physics department" doesn't strike me as fair. And he's obviously he playing nice with his employer - to try and stave off any retaliation. You do know the famous quote "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
      - morganvachon 11y ago
        Taking away his title is far removed from firing him and washing their hands of him, as was implied. Based on what he wrote it's fair to assume that he's been talking with the university during the process, the talks have been productive and positive, and it's possible he will be reinstated. We won't know for sure until he publishes "his side" as he put it, so it's all conjecture at this stage, including on my part.
      - btilly 11y ago
        It seems to me that "chairman of the physics department" is a real job with real work and you want someone there who is able to do it. Do you think he was able to do that job properly with this hanging over his head? If not, he should have moved on.
        walshemj 11y ago
        But it should not happen when your on administrative leave.
        WallWextra 11y ago
        Can you imagine a physics department where the chair is on administrative leave?
        shawn-furyan 11y ago
        Easily, with an interim acting chair. Upheaval under all contingencies is minimized with this solution.
  - jtedward 11y ago
    I believe this at least partially driven by internal politics. Dr. Xi was very, very unpopular. The reaction to his indictment on the Temple University subreddit was very indicative of this. https://www.reddit.com/r/Temple/comments/36w3df/cst_dean_mike_klein_comments_on_physics_chairs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Temple/comments/36w3df/cst_dean_mik...
    - Tinyyy 11y ago
      The comments on that reddit link are so vicious.
      - CamperBob2 11y ago
        Yet also so vague. That was a weird thread. This entire affair seems to be an exercise in telling half the story and seeing how different people react. We're never told what set the Feds on Xi's trail in the first place, and that might be important.
    - kooshball 11y ago
      There is only one reddit user in that thread that said his students hate him. I hope you have other sources that shows he is "very very unpopular".
    - hackuser 11y ago
      Before we make allegations about someone personally, I think we should have better evidence than a Reddit thread.
- mtgx 11y ago
  I imagine after the OPM hack the government started looking at lot more closely at communications between Chinese citizens and China, just like they did with the muslims after 9/11. Why would they do that when the attack was likely to have happened remotely anyway and would have nothing to do with Chinese residents? Who knows. Maybe just because "they can", once they have such powers.
- pasbesoin 11y ago
  > All of this seems like overkill Did they really burst into his home, armed -- arms drawn? -- and handcuff him in front of his children? Was that necessary? I don't know enough about the case to speak to the charges themselves -- and I'm confident that, regardless of Xi's individual circumstances, there is plenty of espionage going on [1] -- but I have to wonder at yet another incident that appears to insist upon storm trooper tactics -- followed I presume by a publicity motivated perp walk. [1] And why don't we pursue further all the production agreements where the Chinese use their economic leverage (politically prescribed and enabled cheaper production costs) to coerce domestic production as a condition of participation in their domestic sector and trade, whereupon they examine and copy the relevant technology, including supposedly restricted high technology components, wholesale. Who's knocking on the door of e.g. the CEO of Hughes? Who's publicly displaying those who've grossly mismanaged compromised high value information systems? Each case like this just further disillusions me with respect to what increasingly appears to be primarily the Federal government's ongoing dog and pony show of law enforcement. Back to the SWAT teams and perp walks. I no longer see quiet competence on display. Rather, more and more political grandstanding.
  - facetube 11y ago
    Armed raids help destabilize families, do profound psychological damage including PTSD, cause property damage, can render your home uninhabitable, lead to evictions, and consume resources that could otherwise be spent defending yourself, all before you ever see a judge. Bonus points for being able to directly punish the children and loved ones of the person you don't like, in some cases burning them with stun grenades, breaking limbs, telling them you're "going to fucking kill them", or otherwise causing them hardship in order to affect an emotional response in your primary suspect. If I were a sociopath trying to destroy lives extrajudicially and win/plea-bargain as many cases as I possibly could, all to further my career regardless of the person's true guilt, I'd do the same. We're fucking animals.
    - a3n 11y ago
      Not to mention the clichéd SOP, which might actually be SOP, of shooting the dog on sight.
- revelation 11y ago
  Why is the government acting on what is a contractual matter between Xi and "US company"?
  - walshemj 11y ago
    All governments have technology that they monitor and restrict in the UK this is called List X. I remember buying some computer kit and it came with about 20 pages of legal docs saying who we where not allowed to re export to and what the legal penalties where
    - revelation 11y ago
      That's not what he was charged with.
Tloewald 11y ago
Violating an NDA is civil, not legal FFS. The US government has no business enforcing NDAs. (It can and should enforce court orders resulting from lawsuits over NDAs.)
- dogma1138 11y ago
  There are several state and federal laws that can be used to criminally prosecute NDA violations, mainly the National Stolen Property Act and the Economic Espionage Act.
  - Tloewald 11y ago
    Then it's those laws that can be enforced. NDAs themselves are not laws, they're contracts. You can sue, but you can't arrest.
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      Violating a contract can result in criminal charges not just civil suit, NDA's aren't special.
      - Tloewald 11y ago
        I am not a lawyer, but this seems wrong to me. Could you elaborate? (My whole point is that NDAs are contracts and not special. Breach of contract is not a crime; it's a "civil wrong" according to Wikipedia, as distinct from a "criminal offense".)
        dogma1138 11y ago
        "Breach of Contract" on it's own might not be a crime, however some contracts may be enforced or protected by criminal laws here is a simple example your divorce settlement especially alimony (which may or may not include child support). When you divorce some one you sign the divorce papers which are a contract certain parts of that contract can be enforced by filing criminal charges, as in the US at least if you don't pay what you affirmed to pay you can be charged with non-support which in many states is a felony. http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/criminal-nonsupport-and-child-support.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/criminal-nonsupp...
fweespeech 11y ago
Is anyone else disturbed by the use of FISA of 1978? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla... They basically accused him of being a Chinese Spy but instead charged him with Fraud. :|
- facetube 11y ago
  FISA's probably being cited there because the e-mail evidence was, in all likelihood, captured by the NSA. It turns out you don't need a dystopian future for unaccountable pervasive domestic spying to ruin lives, you just need an incompetent one.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Yeah, but in theory, the NSA/CIA are foreign surveillance and not to be used to gather evidence on domestic citizens.
    - facetube 11y ago
      In the most theoretical of theories.
konamaster 11y ago
why cant he sue the DOJ for liabilities ?
mtgx 11y ago
> carrying a maximum of 80 years in prison It boggles the mind that it's even possible to manufacture such a charge. In most European countries you would get the highest sentence for the biggest crime, which although wouldn't be "accurate" either, it's a whole lot closer to what the punishment should be than stacking the sentences up. And please spare me the "but he would never get this sentence anyway!" argument. If you were in his position and the government would tell you you're risking 80 years in prison unless you fully cooperated with it, you'd shit your pants, too, and you'd probably give up any rights you have just to not risk getting anywhere close to that sentence, or you would even settle and plead guilty to avoid that.
- FlannelPancake 11y ago
  IIRC the federal government really doesn't offer plea bargains, right? And federal sentencing is pretty rigid, so he probably would have served ~80 years.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    That's correct the USSG pretty much makes plea agreements non-viable because it doesn't allow the prosecutor to offer any substantial leniency on sentencing, mandatory minimums on pretty much every federal crime also make plea agreements pointless. On the local level plea agreements are used to make prosecuting people cheaper, if you don't agree to it they'll pretty much fuck you up intentionally just to prove a point which is probably even worse than not having the ability to offer them in the first place.
    - agwa 11y ago
      > That's correct the USSG pretty much makes plea agreements non-viable because it doesn't allow the prosecutor to offer any substantial leniency on sentencing, mandatory minimums on pretty much every federal crime also make plea agreements pointless. You are very wrong. First of all, the majority of federal crimes do not have mandatory minimums. http://famm.org/Repository/Files/Chart%20All%20Fed%20MMs%202.25.13.pdf http://famm.org/Repository/Files/Chart%20All%20Fed%20MMs%202... is an exhaustive list of federal crimes with mandatory minimums. It's only a fraction of the total number of federal crimes. More importantly, the effect of the Sentencing Guidelines was that it removed sentencing discretion from judges and gave it to prosecutors. That's because the sentencing range given by the guidelines is influenced by what charges the prosecutor brings, and the details of those charges such as quantity of drugs or amount of property damage. This gives the prosecutor enormous influence over the sentence.[1] (Edited to add: In the same way the prosecutor can influence whether a statutory minimum is triggered.) Consequentially, the plea bargain rate in federal cases is about 97% whereas in states it is somewhat less. See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-inn... for a federal judge's take on the situation. [1] Technically, since U.S. v. Booker in 2005, the sentencing guidelines are only "advisory" so the judge can ignore them, but judges still mostly sentence according to the guidelines.
sigmar 11y ago
I still don't understand how the DoJ screwed up so much in this case. Did they see schematics in an email and then made the wild assumption that it was nefarious? That seems absurd.
- TillE 11y ago
  Quite a number of people in the world, including those in positions of authority, are shockingly incompetent at a very basic level.
  - hackaflocka 11y ago
    And there are many "career-opportunists" hoping to score brownie points to fast-track their way to a few promotions.
yyhhsj0521 11y ago
It seems that the website is blocked (by GFW). It makes no sense.
dmix 11y ago
This always happens when there is a public hysteria over a new threat. Innocent lives are very quickly ruined, charges get dropped and evidence fails to hold up in the courtroom on a frequent basis, and despite all of this the actual criminals continue to operate successfully afterwards (just as chinese espionage continues to be successful at the present). The same type of failed wrongful convictions - typically involving people who are easy targets - as a result of rabid law enforcement and media fear mongering can be found in terrorism in 2000s, drugs in the 1980s-90s, biker gangs in the 60s-70s. Instead of taking a logical and well-reasoned approach to the enforcement of legitimate societal problems history just keeps repeating itself.
4714 11y ago
It would be nice to know the amount he is trying to recoup.

112 points by gluejar 11y ago

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, this New York Times piece describes how this all happened in the first instance. One more datum on federal incompetence: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/us/politics/us-drops-charges-that-professor-shared-technology-with-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/us/politics/us-drops-charg...

chromaton 11y ago

It's still not entirely clear to me why or how Xi was being investigated in the first place. There was a mention in an earlier post on HN that he had some incidental contact with Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road. However, the indictment gives a couple hints on this topic. There are multiple mentions of FISA and CIPA, US laws dealing with national security and spying. Perhaps the US was spying on the people Xi was communicating with? You can read the indictment here: https://cryptome.org/2015/09/xiaoxing-xi-files.pdf https://cryptome.org/2015/09/xiaoxing-xi-files.pdf All of this seems like overkill for what was supposedly a violation of an NDA.

walshemj 11y ago
You do wonder if there is some internal university politics going on as well certainly being forced out of his job instead of being put on paid leave smells bad
- morganvachon 11y ago
  If you read his statement, you will see that he thanks the university for standing behind him and treating him as "innocent until and unless proven guilty", as they should. I think you're barking up the wrong tree with this theory.
  - walshemj 11y ago
    "taking away his title as "chairman of the physics department" doesn't strike me as fair. And he's obviously he playing nice with his employer - to try and stave off any retaliation. You do know the famous quote "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
    - morganvachon 11y ago
      Taking away his title is far removed from firing him and washing their hands of him, as was implied. Based on what he wrote it's fair to assume that he's been talking with the university during the process, the talks have been productive and positive, and it's possible he will be reinstated. We won't know for sure until he publishes "his side" as he put it, so it's all conjecture at this stage, including on my part.
    - btilly 11y ago
      It seems to me that "chairman of the physics department" is a real job with real work and you want someone there who is able to do it. Do you think he was able to do that job properly with this hanging over his head? If not, he should have moved on.
      - walshemj 11y ago
        But it should not happen when your on administrative leave.
        WallWextra 11y ago
        Can you imagine a physics department where the chair is on administrative leave?
        shawn-furyan 11y ago
        Easily, with an interim acting chair. Upheaval under all contingencies is minimized with this solution.
- jtedward 11y ago
  I believe this at least partially driven by internal politics. Dr. Xi was very, very unpopular. The reaction to his indictment on the Temple University subreddit was very indicative of this. https://www.reddit.com/r/Temple/comments/36w3df/cst_dean_mike_klein_comments_on_physics_chairs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Temple/comments/36w3df/cst_dean_mik...
  - Tinyyy 11y ago
    The comments on that reddit link are so vicious.
    - CamperBob2 11y ago
      Yet also so vague. That was a weird thread. This entire affair seems to be an exercise in telling half the story and seeing how different people react. We're never told what set the Feds on Xi's trail in the first place, and that might be important.
  - kooshball 11y ago
    There is only one reddit user in that thread that said his students hate him. I hope you have other sources that shows he is "very very unpopular".
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Before we make allegations about someone personally, I think we should have better evidence than a Reddit thread.
mtgx 11y ago
I imagine after the OPM hack the government started looking at lot more closely at communications between Chinese citizens and China, just like they did with the muslims after 9/11. Why would they do that when the attack was likely to have happened remotely anyway and would have nothing to do with Chinese residents? Who knows. Maybe just because "they can", once they have such powers.
pasbesoin 11y ago
> All of this seems like overkill Did they really burst into his home, armed -- arms drawn? -- and handcuff him in front of his children? Was that necessary? I don't know enough about the case to speak to the charges themselves -- and I'm confident that, regardless of Xi's individual circumstances, there is plenty of espionage going on [1] -- but I have to wonder at yet another incident that appears to insist upon storm trooper tactics -- followed I presume by a publicity motivated perp walk. [1] And why don't we pursue further all the production agreements where the Chinese use their economic leverage (politically prescribed and enabled cheaper production costs) to coerce domestic production as a condition of participation in their domestic sector and trade, whereupon they examine and copy the relevant technology, including supposedly restricted high technology components, wholesale. Who's knocking on the door of e.g. the CEO of Hughes? Who's publicly displaying those who've grossly mismanaged compromised high value information systems? Each case like this just further disillusions me with respect to what increasingly appears to be primarily the Federal government's ongoing dog and pony show of law enforcement. Back to the SWAT teams and perp walks. I no longer see quiet competence on display. Rather, more and more political grandstanding.
- facetube 11y ago
  Armed raids help destabilize families, do profound psychological damage including PTSD, cause property damage, can render your home uninhabitable, lead to evictions, and consume resources that could otherwise be spent defending yourself, all before you ever see a judge. Bonus points for being able to directly punish the children and loved ones of the person you don't like, in some cases burning them with stun grenades, breaking limbs, telling them you're "going to fucking kill them", or otherwise causing them hardship in order to affect an emotional response in your primary suspect. If I were a sociopath trying to destroy lives extrajudicially and win/plea-bargain as many cases as I possibly could, all to further my career regardless of the person's true guilt, I'd do the same. We're fucking animals.
  - a3n 11y ago
    Not to mention the clichéd SOP, which might actually be SOP, of shooting the dog on sight.
revelation 11y ago
Why is the government acting on what is a contractual matter between Xi and "US company"?
- walshemj 11y ago
  All governments have technology that they monitor and restrict in the UK this is called List X. I remember buying some computer kit and it came with about 20 pages of legal docs saying who we where not allowed to re export to and what the legal penalties where
  - revelation 11y ago
    That's not what he was charged with.

Tloewald 11y ago

Violating an NDA is civil, not legal FFS. The US government has no business enforcing NDAs. (It can and should enforce court orders resulting from lawsuits over NDAs.)

dogma1138 11y ago
There are several state and federal laws that can be used to criminally prosecute NDA violations, mainly the National Stolen Property Act and the Economic Espionage Act.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  Then it's those laws that can be enforced. NDAs themselves are not laws, they're contracts. You can sue, but you can't arrest.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Violating a contract can result in criminal charges not just civil suit, NDA's aren't special.
    - Tloewald 11y ago
      I am not a lawyer, but this seems wrong to me. Could you elaborate? (My whole point is that NDAs are contracts and not special. Breach of contract is not a crime; it's a "civil wrong" according to Wikipedia, as distinct from a "criminal offense".)
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        "Breach of Contract" on it's own might not be a crime, however some contracts may be enforced or protected by criminal laws here is a simple example your divorce settlement especially alimony (which may or may not include child support). When you divorce some one you sign the divorce papers which are a contract certain parts of that contract can be enforced by filing criminal charges, as in the US at least if you don't pay what you affirmed to pay you can be charged with non-support which in many states is a felony. http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/criminal-nonsupport-and-child-support.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/criminal-nonsupp...

fweespeech 11y ago

Is anyone else disturbed by the use of FISA of 1978? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla... They basically accused him of being a Chinese Spy but instead charged him with Fraud. :|

facetube 11y ago
FISA's probably being cited there because the e-mail evidence was, in all likelihood, captured by the NSA. It turns out you don't need a dystopian future for unaccountable pervasive domestic spying to ruin lives, you just need an incompetent one.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Yeah, but in theory, the NSA/CIA are foreign surveillance and not to be used to gather evidence on domestic citizens.
  - facetube 11y ago
    In the most theoretical of theories.

konamaster 11y ago

why cant he sue the DOJ for liabilities ?

mtgx 11y ago

> carrying a maximum of 80 years in prison It boggles the mind that it's even possible to manufacture such a charge. In most European countries you would get the highest sentence for the biggest crime, which although wouldn't be "accurate" either, it's a whole lot closer to what the punishment should be than stacking the sentences up. And please spare me the "but he would never get this sentence anyway!" argument. If you were in his position and the government would tell you you're risking 80 years in prison unless you fully cooperated with it, you'd shit your pants, too, and you'd probably give up any rights you have just to not risk getting anywhere close to that sentence, or you would even settle and plead guilty to avoid that.

FlannelPancake 11y ago
IIRC the federal government really doesn't offer plea bargains, right? And federal sentencing is pretty rigid, so he probably would have served ~80 years.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  That's correct the USSG pretty much makes plea agreements non-viable because it doesn't allow the prosecutor to offer any substantial leniency on sentencing, mandatory minimums on pretty much every federal crime also make plea agreements pointless. On the local level plea agreements are used to make prosecuting people cheaper, if you don't agree to it they'll pretty much fuck you up intentionally just to prove a point which is probably even worse than not having the ability to offer them in the first place.
  - agwa 11y ago
    > That's correct the USSG pretty much makes plea agreements non-viable because it doesn't allow the prosecutor to offer any substantial leniency on sentencing, mandatory minimums on pretty much every federal crime also make plea agreements pointless. You are very wrong. First of all, the majority of federal crimes do not have mandatory minimums. http://famm.org/Repository/Files/Chart%20All%20Fed%20MMs%202.25.13.pdf http://famm.org/Repository/Files/Chart%20All%20Fed%20MMs%202... is an exhaustive list of federal crimes with mandatory minimums. It's only a fraction of the total number of federal crimes. More importantly, the effect of the Sentencing Guidelines was that it removed sentencing discretion from judges and gave it to prosecutors. That's because the sentencing range given by the guidelines is influenced by what charges the prosecutor brings, and the details of those charges such as quantity of drugs or amount of property damage. This gives the prosecutor enormous influence over the sentence.[1] (Edited to add: In the same way the prosecutor can influence whether a statutory minimum is triggered.) Consequentially, the plea bargain rate in federal cases is about 97% whereas in states it is somewhat less. See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-inn... for a federal judge's take on the situation. [1] Technically, since U.S. v. Booker in 2005, the sentencing guidelines are only "advisory" so the judge can ignore them, but judges still mostly sentence according to the guidelines.

sigmar 11y ago

I still don't understand how the DoJ screwed up so much in this case. Did they see schematics in an email and then made the wild assumption that it was nefarious? That seems absurd.

TillE 11y ago
Quite a number of people in the world, including those in positions of authority, are shockingly incompetent at a very basic level.
- hackaflocka 11y ago
  And there are many "career-opportunists" hoping to score brownie points to fast-track their way to a few promotions.

yyhhsj0521 11y ago

It seems that the website is blocked (by GFW). It makes no sense.

dmix 11y ago

This always happens when there is a public hysteria over a new threat. Innocent lives are very quickly ruined, charges get dropped and evidence fails to hold up in the courtroom on a frequent basis, and despite all of this the actual criminals continue to operate successfully afterwards (just as chinese espionage continues to be successful at the present). The same type of failed wrongful convictions - typically involving people who are easy targets - as a result of rabid law enforcement and media fear mongering can be found in terrorism in 2000s, drugs in the 1980s-90s, biker gangs in the 60s-70s. Instead of taking a logical and well-reasoned approach to the enforcement of legitimate societal problems history just keeps repeating itself.

4714 11y ago

It would be nice to know the amount he is trying to recoup.