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So the guy stole data and hardware. Instead of leaving immediately for China before it's discovered, he went back to Apple and told them that he's leaving. And

by _cs2017_ 8y ago

So the guy stole data and hardware. Instead of leaving immediately for China before it's discovered, he went back to Apple and told them that he's leaving. And not just leaving, but leaving to work for a competitor in the self-driving car industry. If he wanted to raise any more suspicion, he'd need to show up to the exit interview in a ski mask, carrying a crowbar. And after that, he still stayed in the US for over two months (April 28 - July 7). This simply defies belief. I don't even mention the fact that he admitted to the Apple security team that he stole stuff. Presumably without any lawyer since no lawyer would let him admit to anything. Why would he even meet with a security team, if he's not under arrest? Even if he thought he can't get caught, surely he knew something was wrong when the security team called him for an interview? Maybe he thought it's impossible to prove what he did? But the guy is intelligent, he was hired to an important project at Apple. He must know that corporations have security cameras and also can check corporate device usage. So I'm down to my final two guesses. Either the guy thought he didn't do anything wrong (really? taking confidential documents and hardware??). Or the article heavily distorts the facts. Anyone has better explanations? Edit: just saw the official FBI court filing at the end of the article. The article did not distort anything. I have no words.

slivym 8y ago
It could be that it simply never occured to him that he would get caught. When you work somewhere for years you don't think "This security cameras on the entrance could technically be used to track my activity". As the article says, the repositories that he accessed are restricted to THOUSANDS of people. So really the guy was probably right - if he hadn't been a dumbass and said that he was going to work for a chinese competitor then his boss likely wouldn't have thought to ask questions, no one would've noticed.
- antpls 8y ago
  I don't understand how you can blame him and call someone a "dumbass" for being honest. It looks like the dumbasses are Apple project managers, or Apple lawyers, or Apple security admins or whoever write Apple's policies
  - pfisch 8y ago
    It is naive/lacking common sense to think always being honest is smart.
    - antpls 8y ago
      It depends of your believes. You can't prove that always being honest is not smart.
  - tomtimtall 8y ago
    Are you a dumbass if you are honest? No. Are you a dumbass if you steal and then honestly tell that you did it? Yes. Now don’t get me wrong, all criminals are bad. But you have to admit that there is a difference between smart criminals and dumb ones. This person was a dumb criminal. Likely due to him not even contemplating that what he was doing was criminal, in-line with shoplifters who will tell you: “No it’s ok to eat the fruit inside the store, as long as it’s gone before you get to the counter you don’t have to pay”
    - antpls 8y ago
      Following your argument, Apple could be a very smart criminal organization that doesn't get caught. Should we investigate further on Apple to make sure? Edit : by the way, that guy could have been blackmailed. Someone may have said "If you don't do it, we will harm your family". We shouldn't be judging someone without investigating all the elements, especially when an individual takes the risk of facing a gigantic organization. It should rings bells to everyone.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Children and fools always speak the truth.
- _cs2017_ 8y ago
  It's hard to believe an Apple employee could have no common sense. But your explanation is still the least unbelievable. So I think you're right. Then the story is like this. The guy knew it's wrong to take stuff, but hoped nobody would notice. Told his former boss about the new job because why not. Then Apple security team called, he got scared enough to tell them everything, but not scared enough to leave for China or at least get a lawyer. He even voluntarily gave his wife's computer to them. Maybe he thought it would ok if he was cooperating with them? Then later, the FBI got involved at the end of June. He finally got seriously scared, bought tickets to China, but by then FBI was already monitoring his movements. It would be interesting to see his side of the story.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    And perhaps he also got some assurance from the Chinese intelligence services and thought he could just run to the embassy. Just speculating. But it wouldn't be the first time China (or any other country) uses their nationals to ex-filtrate IP.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      While it certainly happened in the past, I don't think it's the case there - the guy tried to cooperate with Apple. I also don't think that he's so morally corrupt that he'd cooperate with Chinese intelligence services and still keep thinking he's doing nothing wrong (as was suggested as reasoning of his behavior in another thread).
  - pfisch 8y ago
    I mean he already made like 1000 mistakes, but he really should've driven to mexico and flown out of there.
    - _cs2017_ 8y ago
      Omg it's just too funny because it's so irrelevant to the main story and yet you're absolutely right. Even after the poor sod fought so hard to win the techie version of the Darwin award, he still could have made it to safety. If only he stopped for a moment to think about what he did wrong and learned from his mistakes. It's like watching a movie with a horrible plot.
- Ntrails 8y ago
  any company that values its IP/client lists/etc will (should) run an "activity log" over any employee who hands in their notice, typically for the 3-6 months preceeding the date of handing in notice. Some poor sap then gets to scroll through it and see if anything looks odd. If it does, they ask someone with more context to have a look. There is no excuse for expecting this kind of thing would go unnoticed, beyond simply assuming your employer is an idiot.
- est 8y ago
  > It could be that it simply never occured to him that he would get caught It never occurred to him that copy company data is wrong.
antpls 8y ago
> So I'm down to my final two guesses. Either the guy thought he didn't do anything wrong (really? taking confidential documents and hardware??). Or the article heavily distorts the facts. Probably a bit of both. And also many other facts we don't know. Anyway, Apple only should be blamed, imho. If people efforts and project momentum are the real plus value, then data alone won't be sufficient to steal a technology. It shows that international cooperation about global-impacting technologies should be the norm, rather than a race to monopolize a market.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  >Anyway, Apple only should be blamed, imho. If people efforts and project momentum are the real plus value, then data alone won't be sufficient to steal a technology. That's a weird argument. No one said it's sufficient, but "stealing" data certainly helps. Also, what do you mean by "people efforts"? The only way to prevent every single employee with access to trade secrets from leaving is to make workers corporate property and lock them up on a remote island. Surely, that's not what you're suggesting, is it?
  - antpls 8y ago
    > That's a weird argument. No one said it's sufficient, but "stealing" data certainly helps. IF the employee wasn't aware that he/she was stealing, maybe he was being told internally what he/she was doing was OK. Maybe someone suggested him to do so, only then to be accused after. Anyways, the ability for an individual to transfer so much knowledge should remind you the MP3 and p2p era. The patents and secrecy of big corporations makes NO SENSE in a world where communication is instant and easy. Not better than China censorship.
    - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
      So what does make sense if the problem is how to protect the value of investments into the acquisition/generation of knowledge?
      - 8y ago
onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>>But the guy is intelligent, he was hired to an important project at Apple. No data, but I believe that you can be extremely bright in a lot of things and dumb as a rock on other very basic things. Maybe arrogance plays a part too. It's safe to assume that x% of Russian and Chinese employees do talk to, and plan to go back to the mothership. Must be the greatest ROI for the Chinese, tens of billion dollars worth of R&D in a hard-drive. (granted it's not the same since while researching you learn a lot of other things, but presumably the Chinese want those few things that they haven't figured them out already.)
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >No data, but I believe that you can be extremely bright in a lot of things and dumb as a rock on other very basic things. Maybe arrogance plays a part too. If there's any highly political threads on the front page the comment section would be a perfectly illustrative example of this.
baybal2 8y ago
>Anyone has better explanations? Important to note: there were no charge for him for all that time. That means they had very weak case. They might be specifically waiting for him to do at least that: just look how they accent that he "bought red flag last minute ticket" as if he knew he did something wrong. This also supports the idea that they had no proof of him doing what amounts to criminal industrial espionage (passing data to another company.) Another standing out fact is that he was arrested minutes before boarding (he passed the border.) If he would be on exit control list, he would never be allowed pass the border. It means he was not nor on exit control list (people on it include convicts on probation, tax debitors, persons against whom a restraining order was issued i.e. people under investigation of a crime,) nor on the on-the-run list of criminals (he would've been detained immediately) Third, how FBI ever knew of him buying a ticket? US is not East Germany where all ticket sales are wired to STASI in real time. My explanation: they did not have anything qualifying for a charge on him till that "last minute ticket purchase" which added more substance to allegations of criminal conduct. This is supported by the fact that he was detained "minutes before boarding." Probably, it was only the fact of him passing the border control that was visible to FBI, the moment they saw it, they came with a rushed arrest warrant.
- lallysingh 8y ago
  > Third, how FBI ever knew of him buying a ticket? US is not East Germany where all ticket sales are wired to STASI in real time https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/44909 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/44909 see (c).
  - qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
    He should have jumped a China shipping cargo ship like they threw Jack Bauer on at the one of that one season.
- sameyolo 8y ago
  I would safely assume the government does collect all ticket purchase data in real time.
innagadadavida 8y ago
In my opinion, This is just free PR for XMotors. Either they deliberately planned it and this guy has nothing or they took the chance and hoped to get away with it. Either way it is win-win for them.
wyuenho 8y ago
The simplest answer to you question is the guy has absolutely no understand of how the US legal system works. In China, when you are in any "legal" trouble, whether you actually are at fault or not, if you want to get out of it, all you have to do is "confess". The dude probably thought he could have done the same in the US. This is naivety, but not entirely beyond belief given how backward the Chinese are when it comes to legal matters.
- _cs2017_ 8y ago
  Oh yeah, that kinda makes sense. In China you can't run away after you got on the radar of a serious investigation. Maybe he thought the same happens here? Like he thought Apple security is equivalent to FBI or CIA or something. And then eventually someone told him he can just leave, but by then FBI was already interested?
neya 8y ago
As harsh as this sounds, it's a cultural thing. The Chinese generally don't believe in respecting IP, this is coming from someone who has lived with Chinese for many many years. To them, it's like a shopping basket, you just pick what you like. Unfortunately, for this guy, it seemed like he didn't understand how copyrights work in the US. Also as a matter of personal experience, I've had a couple of my photographs stolen by popular Chinese newspapers who refused to attribute it to me. P.S - I am not commenting on the morality of his action here, I'm simply suggesting the way their culture works is probably a big reason to him getting charged.
groupthinking 8y ago
You would likely not enjoy being a criminal defense attorney.

slivym 8y ago

It could be that it simply never occured to him that he would get caught. When you work somewhere for years you don't think "This security cameras on the entrance could technically be used to track my activity". As the article says, the repositories that he accessed are restricted to THOUSANDS of people. So really the guy was probably right - if he hadn't been a dumbass and said that he was going to work for a chinese competitor then his boss likely wouldn't have thought to ask questions, no one would've noticed.

antpls 8y ago
I don't understand how you can blame him and call someone a "dumbass" for being honest. It looks like the dumbasses are Apple project managers, or Apple lawyers, or Apple security admins or whoever write Apple's policies
- pfisch 8y ago
  It is naive/lacking common sense to think always being honest is smart.
  - antpls 8y ago
    It depends of your believes. You can't prove that always being honest is not smart.
- tomtimtall 8y ago
  Are you a dumbass if you are honest? No. Are you a dumbass if you steal and then honestly tell that you did it? Yes. Now don’t get me wrong, all criminals are bad. But you have to admit that there is a difference between smart criminals and dumb ones. This person was a dumb criminal. Likely due to him not even contemplating that what he was doing was criminal, in-line with shoplifters who will tell you: “No it’s ok to eat the fruit inside the store, as long as it’s gone before you get to the counter you don’t have to pay”
  - antpls 8y ago
    Following your argument, Apple could be a very smart criminal organization that doesn't get caught. Should we investigate further on Apple to make sure? Edit : by the way, that guy could have been blackmailed. Someone may have said "If you don't do it, we will harm your family". We shouldn't be judging someone without investigating all the elements, especially when an individual takes the risk of facing a gigantic organization. It should rings bells to everyone.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Children and fools always speak the truth.
_cs2017_ 8y ago
It's hard to believe an Apple employee could have no common sense. But your explanation is still the least unbelievable. So I think you're right. Then the story is like this. The guy knew it's wrong to take stuff, but hoped nobody would notice. Told his former boss about the new job because why not. Then Apple security team called, he got scared enough to tell them everything, but not scared enough to leave for China or at least get a lawyer. He even voluntarily gave his wife's computer to them. Maybe he thought it would ok if he was cooperating with them? Then later, the FBI got involved at the end of June. He finally got seriously scared, bought tickets to China, but by then FBI was already monitoring his movements. It would be interesting to see his side of the story.
- cm2187 8y ago
  And perhaps he also got some assurance from the Chinese intelligence services and thought he could just run to the embassy. Just speculating. But it wouldn't be the first time China (or any other country) uses their nationals to ex-filtrate IP.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    While it certainly happened in the past, I don't think it's the case there - the guy tried to cooperate with Apple. I also don't think that he's so morally corrupt that he'd cooperate with Chinese intelligence services and still keep thinking he's doing nothing wrong (as was suggested as reasoning of his behavior in another thread).
- pfisch 8y ago
  I mean he already made like 1000 mistakes, but he really should've driven to mexico and flown out of there.
  - _cs2017_ 8y ago
    Omg it's just too funny because it's so irrelevant to the main story and yet you're absolutely right. Even after the poor sod fought so hard to win the techie version of the Darwin award, he still could have made it to safety. If only he stopped for a moment to think about what he did wrong and learned from his mistakes. It's like watching a movie with a horrible plot.
Ntrails 8y ago
any company that values its IP/client lists/etc will (should) run an "activity log" over any employee who hands in their notice, typically for the 3-6 months preceeding the date of handing in notice. Some poor sap then gets to scroll through it and see if anything looks odd. If it does, they ask someone with more context to have a look. There is no excuse for expecting this kind of thing would go unnoticed, beyond simply assuming your employer is an idiot.
est 8y ago
> It could be that it simply never occured to him that he would get caught It never occurred to him that copy company data is wrong.

antpls 8y ago

> So I'm down to my final two guesses. Either the guy thought he didn't do anything wrong (really? taking confidential documents and hardware??). Or the article heavily distorts the facts. Probably a bit of both. And also many other facts we don't know. Anyway, Apple only should be blamed, imho. If people efforts and project momentum are the real plus value, then data alone won't be sufficient to steal a technology. It shows that international cooperation about global-impacting technologies should be the norm, rather than a race to monopolize a market.

fauigerzigerk 8y ago
>Anyway, Apple only should be blamed, imho. If people efforts and project momentum are the real plus value, then data alone won't be sufficient to steal a technology. That's a weird argument. No one said it's sufficient, but "stealing" data certainly helps. Also, what do you mean by "people efforts"? The only way to prevent every single employee with access to trade secrets from leaving is to make workers corporate property and lock them up on a remote island. Surely, that's not what you're suggesting, is it?
- antpls 8y ago
  > That's a weird argument. No one said it's sufficient, but "stealing" data certainly helps. IF the employee wasn't aware that he/she was stealing, maybe he was being told internally what he/she was doing was OK. Maybe someone suggested him to do so, only then to be accused after. Anyways, the ability for an individual to transfer so much knowledge should remind you the MP3 and p2p era. The patents and secrecy of big corporations makes NO SENSE in a world where communication is instant and easy. Not better than China censorship.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    So what does make sense if the problem is how to protect the value of investments into the acquisition/generation of knowledge?
    - 8y ago

onetimemanytime 8y ago

>>>But the guy is intelligent, he was hired to an important project at Apple. No data, but I believe that you can be extremely bright in a lot of things and dumb as a rock on other very basic things. Maybe arrogance plays a part too. It's safe to assume that x% of Russian and Chinese employees do talk to, and plan to go back to the mothership. Must be the greatest ROI for the Chinese, tens of billion dollars worth of R&D in a hard-drive. (granted it's not the same since while researching you learn a lot of other things, but presumably the Chinese want those few things that they haven't figured them out already.)

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>No data, but I believe that you can be extremely bright in a lot of things and dumb as a rock on other very basic things. Maybe arrogance plays a part too. If there's any highly political threads on the front page the comment section would be a perfectly illustrative example of this.

baybal2 8y ago

>Anyone has better explanations? Important to note: there were no charge for him for all that time. That means they had very weak case. They might be specifically waiting for him to do at least that: just look how they accent that he "bought red flag last minute ticket" as if he knew he did something wrong. This also supports the idea that they had no proof of him doing what amounts to criminal industrial espionage (passing data to another company.) Another standing out fact is that he was arrested minutes before boarding (he passed the border.) If he would be on exit control list, he would never be allowed pass the border. It means he was not nor on exit control list (people on it include convicts on probation, tax debitors, persons against whom a restraining order was issued i.e. people under investigation of a crime,) nor on the on-the-run list of criminals (he would've been detained immediately) Third, how FBI ever knew of him buying a ticket? US is not East Germany where all ticket sales are wired to STASI in real time. My explanation: they did not have anything qualifying for a charge on him till that "last minute ticket purchase" which added more substance to allegations of criminal conduct. This is supported by the fact that he was detained "minutes before boarding." Probably, it was only the fact of him passing the border control that was visible to FBI, the moment they saw it, they came with a rushed arrest warrant.

lallysingh 8y ago
> Third, how FBI ever knew of him buying a ticket? US is not East Germany where all ticket sales are wired to STASI in real time https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/44909 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/44909 see (c).
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
  He should have jumped a China shipping cargo ship like they threw Jack Bauer on at the one of that one season.
sameyolo 8y ago
I would safely assume the government does collect all ticket purchase data in real time.

innagadadavida 8y ago

In my opinion, This is just free PR for XMotors. Either they deliberately planned it and this guy has nothing or they took the chance and hoped to get away with it. Either way it is win-win for them.

wyuenho 8y ago

The simplest answer to you question is the guy has absolutely no understand of how the US legal system works. In China, when you are in any "legal" trouble, whether you actually are at fault or not, if you want to get out of it, all you have to do is "confess". The dude probably thought he could have done the same in the US. This is naivety, but not entirely beyond belief given how backward the Chinese are when it comes to legal matters.

_cs2017_ 8y ago
Oh yeah, that kinda makes sense. In China you can't run away after you got on the radar of a serious investigation. Maybe he thought the same happens here? Like he thought Apple security is equivalent to FBI or CIA or something. And then eventually someone told him he can just leave, but by then FBI was already interested?

neya 8y ago

As harsh as this sounds, it's a cultural thing. The Chinese generally don't believe in respecting IP, this is coming from someone who has lived with Chinese for many many years. To them, it's like a shopping basket, you just pick what you like. Unfortunately, for this guy, it seemed like he didn't understand how copyrights work in the US. Also as a matter of personal experience, I've had a couple of my photographs stolen by popular Chinese newspapers who refused to attribute it to me. P.S - I am not commenting on the morality of his action here, I'm simply suggesting the way their culture works is probably a big reason to him getting charged.

groupthinking 8y ago

You would likely not enjoy being a criminal defense attorney.