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Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets
- greatgib 3y agoImagine leaving a Google position and risking a 10 years sentence for the reward of a "monthly salary of about $14,800" job.
- jjmarr 3y ago> Within weeks of the theft starting, prosecutors say, Ding was offered the position of chief technology officer at an early-stage technology company in China that touted its use of AI technology and that offered him a monthly salary of about $14,800, plus an annual bonus and company stock. Crime doesn't pay. That's a pretty lackluster bribe for a mid-career AI expert. I wonder if there's more behind it.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago[flagged]
- krona 3y agoSerious question: Can we presume he knew he was doing something wrong?
- blondie9x 3y agoOf course he did. How could he not know taken documents and giving to a competing company wasn’t a violation? Need more locks on this kind of stuff. Should all uploads and content transmissions out of network require an approval by default? Difficult to say it but it needs to be considered
- imchillyb 3y ago> Should all uploads and content transmissions be locked for employees with foreign ties to an adversarial country? Profiling works. Profiling is abhorrent to most people in 1st world countries, but it works exceedingly well. If the hire is from an adversarial country, they should not only be locked but on a watch list. Our 3 letter organizations should be proactive toward information security. We're in the Information Age now. It's time our society treated that information like the gold it is.
- a_gnostic 3y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Like the Muslim-ban? No, like the way it wouldn’t be possible for an American national—whether of Chinese descent or not—to get a job at a Chinese missile research laboratory.
- nonethewiser 3y ago"Muslim-ban" is not accurate because it did not ban on the basis of being Muslim or not. It was a ban on travel to the US for 90 days from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. There are many predominately Muslim countries it didn't include and it was specifically about travel from those countries.
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago"Muslim ban" is what the person who initiated it called it, not a description of the actual effects.
- mikeyouse 3y agoRight - he repeatedly said he wanted a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country and then directed his legal staff to find a legal way to do so… pointing at the hamfisted EO that attempted to toe the line of the clearly unconstitutional order to excuse it is pretty obviously bad faith.
- miohtama 3y agoAfter exfiltrating the data, he was offered a job in Chinese AI startup. Whether or not a real startup, or just s Communist party / military company is an interesting question.
- justaman 3y agoEventually tech leaders will stop hiring Chinese nationals. This keeps happening again and again.
- edgyquant 3y agoThey should already be at that point. I’m surprised it isn’t a violation of sanctions or something to have them working on cutting edge tech.
- xienze 3y agoNo they won’t, they’ll get hit with the dreaded “racist hiring practices” accusations. China knows this, and they exploit it. If tomorrow Google announced a ban on hiring any Russian nationals the HN comments and the media would by and large applaud such a move, by contrast.
- a_gnostic 3y agoAll Chinese startups are Communist Party companies, success dictates just *how* tied-in they are.
- lucidrains 3y agoexactly, this guy understands how business in China works.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoHow do you imagine this works, western government can’t manage potholes but CCP beurocrats can manage AI, Car production and solar panel production and beat our companies? Are they superhuman?
- ArunRaja 3y agoHe was supposedly moonlighting as well.
- monktastic1 3y agoDo you mean morally or legally? It's hard to imagine a Google engineer not knowing that sharing trade secrets is something their employer would seriously frown upon, no?
- jojobas 3y agoIs your allegiance to your employer above your allegiance to your country?
- monktastic1 3y agoI'm not sure why you're asking me that. I made it clear from my comment that there's a distinction between legal and moral "wrong," and I described the unlikelihood that he didn't know it was the former. That's all.
- jojobas 3y agoWhat's legal is not constant in space and time. I bet the only thing he thought he didn't do right is not get out of the US in time. Then it would have been both legal and moral for him.
- monktastic1 3y agoIf he felt that he had to "get out in time," then he knew he did something "wrong" in the sense that my parent is (presumably) asking about. That's the only question I'm answering. You seem intent on drawing me into a debate about subtleties of moral and legal ethics, but I'm sorry to say I'm not interested right now.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y agoAnd yet you're the one who brought it up
- 3y ago
- 1234letshaveatw 3y agothat's irrelevant- Snowden thought what he was doing was right
- pid-1 3y agoI've had an intern uploading code to his G Drive and after talking to him I concluded he was not malicious, just dumb. That said you can't claim innocence for not knowing some law, plus any half serious company makes you sign cyber security / IP stuff during the hiring process (ofc one is entitled to sign contracts without reading them).
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoMany crimes require malicious intent, that exactly how most executives never spend time in jail - it’s hard to prove that Boeing executives where hiding the plane’s defects on purpose.
- phillipcarter 3y agoYes? And also it doesn't matter? Ignorance of the law doesn't mean you get a free pass. And by day 1 at any company you've already had to sign stuff saying you won't steal trade secrets (in addition to loads of other things).
- jojobas 3y agoA Chinese national helping his country not fall behind in what's perceived as an existential race? Wrong?
- powerapple 3y agoA Chinese national is trying to make big bucks with stealing technology maybe...
- jojobas 3y agoThe Motherland rewards it's loyal servants, what of it?
- powerapple 3y agoIt is capitalism actually. There are a lot money is looking for opportunities, and the hype generated from the US has a ripple effect on the global market. China has a big venture capital market, and domestic money is looking for these opportunities and quick bucks (maybe quick RMB). Started from social media, then e-commerce, a few years ago autonomous driving and now AI. There will be people taking risks with so much money on the table.
- seneca 3y agoYes, from his perspective it's likely morally right, but he was very likely aware it is illegal in the US. This nicely highlights a difficulty with globalism.
- jeffbee 3y agoIt did go unnoticed though, for years. According to the indictment nobody detected this until the employee moved sensitive data out of Google and into a personal account while in the PRC. Even then they did not really figure it out until the person resigned.
- philip1209 3y agoIt's kind of brilliant. He was probably confident that Google Cloud's security was good and wouldn't let employees access private data. And, it's a domain / network traffic that wouldn't be flagged.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sidcool 3y ago[flagged]
- monktastic1 3y agoPretty sure that guy's Japanese.
- boringuser2 3y agoHe is. Patrick Shyu.
- nextworddev 3y agoNo he’s of Taiwanese descent
- monktastic1 3y ago"[Patrick] Shyu is from Tokyo, Japan and finished high school at the Tokyo Institute Of Technology. In 2001, he moved to the US to study at ..." https://techiegamers.com/techlead-net-worth/ https://techiegamers.com/techlead-net-worth/ Do you have different (or more) info?
- nextworddev 3y agoThere was a origin story video that mentioned it - his ex wife was Japanese tough
- lupire 3y agoThere are thousands of Tech Lead employees.
- boringuser2 3y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Hiring a Chinese national and giving them access to trade secrets To be fair, this would have been prohibited if we subjected AI to ITAR restrictions. That said, do we know Ding was a Chinese national?
- boringuser2 3y agoIf he's not a Chinese national, that makes the discussion much more likely to get me censured when I suggest the obvious corrective remediation.
- nextworddev 3y agoYes according to the article
- lupire 3y agoIf US prevented Chinese people for working on US AI, US would be in a far worse position in AI. Half of AI contributors in US are Chinese.
- xienze 3y agoWhy do they bother spying on us if they’re so far ahead then?
- ziddoap 3y agoBecause the other half of contributors aren't Chinese?
- xienze 3y agoBut what value are they providing to the Chinese? The original assertion was that American AI is only where it is because of the contributions of Chinese nationals. I.e. they’re leading the way. Why even contribute to our efforts and potentially improve our standing?
- xnx 3y agoGoogle has a fair bit of experience with employees stealing trade secrets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski#Criminal_conviction_and_pardon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski#Criminal_c...
- bigcat12345678 3y agoIt's doubly awkward that this guy apparently doesn't know or underestimate Google's determination to trace employee' access.
- flakiness 3y agoThat determination got stronger after this incident.
- breakingcups 3y agoIncredible that he got pardoned.
- sdwr 3y ago[flagged]
- jasonvorhe 3y agoDo you have a source for that? Sounds far fetched. (Not a Trump fan.)
- monocasa 3y agohttps://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/giuliani-accused-offering-sell-trump-pardons-2-million-new-lawsuit-rcna84569 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/giuliani-accu...
- anonuser123456 3y ago
- ninja3925 3y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> the CPP also benefit indirectly because it will make Chinese immigration harder in the US They also benefit directly as they’re stealing the information.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> The US vastly benefit from Chinese immigration and most Chinese aren’t spies. However, it’s interesting to notice the damage one person can have, arming our most potent adversary with advanced technology. How would you quantify all this? I mean I think we're all on the same page about not wanting to reduce people to their race. That's a good sentiment. But do you have data on any of these claims? When you observe that Chinese nationals are uniquely positioned to arm "our most potent adversary with advanced technology", I dont think you can just handwave such damages away.
- lelanthran 3y ago> I mean I think we're all on the same page about not wanting to reduce people to their race. No we aren't. China, at any rate, isn't squeamish about using nationality and race of a person as one of the inputs into profiling them. Until China is onboard with prohibiting race profiling, everyone else who doesn't do the same is at a distinct disadvantage.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> No we aren't. China, at any rate, isn't squeamish about using nationality and race of a person as one of the inputs into profiling them. This is a fair point, but misses my point. I meant the vast majority of people on this board aren't just racists who dislike certain races. So we don't have to divert all conversation to trying to prove it.
- izacus 3y ago
- miohtama 3y agoLinkedIn profile screenshot: https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1765533899873288642?t=yUGybAsw9rPne53WJgC4VQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1765533899873288642?t=yUGy...
- NicoJuicy 3y agoWelp. Infra secrets for deep mind too and access.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ironyman 3y agoGood time to post this article again: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z4MDDwwnWKnv2ZzdK/the-agi-race-between-the-us-and-china-doesn-t-exist https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z4MDDwwnWKnv2ZzdK/the-agi-ra... China understands there is a real risk of the US gaining an absolute advantage in A[G]I development. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they will use all kinds of 'greyzone methods' to bridge this gap.
- nextworddev 3y agoThis article should decouple 1) capacity to develop AGI versus 2) desire.
- Dr_Birdbrain 3y agoSkimming through it I was confused. - No homegrown semiconductor industry: isn’t the recent hand-wringing over the new Huawei chips proof of the opposite? - No interest in training LLMs? Is that true? I thought Baidu was already on it? In fact at every major AI conferences, Chinese R&D groups like Baidu and Ant group are major participants (and sponsors). I am talking about conferences like NeurIPS and AAAI, which both happened in the past few months. EDIT: the comments of that article are also confused by that article, lol. Is there a joke that is going over our collective heads?
- CuriouslyC 3y agoThey're major participants and sponsors because they're definitely behind, and they're trying to rectify that.
- Twirrim 3y agoThere's also a lot of research papers in AI coming out of Chinese universities.
- rayval 3y agoAlso I have seen some papers on Arxiv from FAANG companies that have a half-dozen or more co-authors, and almost all of those authors have Chinese names.
- feverzsj 3y agoSo he was already CEO/CTO of 2 China companies while still working in google. And these information are publicly available right after he registering them. Seems a management disaster of google.
- Waterluvian 3y agoNot agreeing or disagreeing, but what’s the remedy? To regularly scour sources for information on tens of thousands of employees and parse actionable meaning from the data? Maybe someone can make a horrible start-up that does this as a service.
- catchnear4321 3y agomaking vast amounts of scraped data accessible, almost like search. you’re right, the big names probably can’t handle that on their own.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> Not agreeing or disagreeing, but what’s the remedy? To regularly scour sources for information on tens of thousands of employees and parse actionable meaning from the data? Maybe someone can make a horrible start-up that does this as a service. If a colleague new about it and reported it then that should lead to action 100% of the time. The question is if that happened or not.
- Thorrez 3y agoYou expect Google to scan the database of companies in every country continuously to see if employees are executives of them? How would this handle different people who have the same name? Disclosure: I work at Google.
- xienze 3y agoPresumably for such a high profile position a simple um, Google of the person, checking LinkedIn, or a standard background check would reveal this.
- ok123456 3y ago[flagged]
- rayval 3y ago[flagged]
- unsupp0rted 3y agoCommenters are saying this is parody. I can’t tell. In another comment she says something like “I’d be doing this work even at half the salary”, which also sounds like parody.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jdross 3y agoThis is a parody account
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zackangelo 3y agoThat is satire.
- Aurornis 3y agoThis is a parody account. That’s a joke. The next Tweet in the timeline is a joke that the person hasn’t been at standup for a couple days and she doesn’t know why. I’m amazed that this obvious satire is the top voted comment for so long.
- zettabomb 3y agoIt's currently a 11 minute old comment, for what it's worth. HN doesn't have the traffic of something like Reddit, it takes a bit longer to change. But I'm not sure the account is a parody - it's certainly very trolly, but it does seem to be this person's real account based on LinkedIn, her Instagram, her website www.anamostarac.com, and others. Seems like a real person and their real account but according to other information not a Google employee. Oh and of course she's got a blue check which is a 100% guarantee that it's not an impersonator. /s
- jgalt212 3y ago[flagged]
- jeffbee 3y agoThe opsec of the people who eventually get indicted is always terrible. If you wanted to exfiltrate source code or docs, why the heck would you use the victim's own cloud storage product? You would just point a camera at your display and scroll through the desired materials, or use HDMI capture, or something along those lines.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- diggan 3y agoSurvivorship bias in action? The only ones we hear about are the ones who are sloppy enough to get caught. The people who know how to not get caught, doesn't get caught so we never hear about them.
- flextheruler 3y agoDefinitely. We’re certainly not living in a world where we catch more of these people than we don’t.
- trollerator23 3y agoExactly. We only know about the terrible ones.
- ecoquant 3y agoIt also reminds me of stories I have read of drug mules that it makes no sense how they think they wouldn't be caught using the methods they were using. The twist of the story though is they were duped themselves. They were setup to get caught as a decoy while the real crime took place.
- trollerator23 3y agoThat sounds interesting. Where?
- 3y ago
- consf 3y ago[flagged]
- october8140 3y agoIt’s not a secret. It’s called the “Thousand Talents recruitment plan”
- alephnerd 3y agoThousand Talents is different. That was specifically about enticing expat Chinese talent to return to China. The overreaction to the Thousand Talents program had a significant negative impact within a number of STEM subfields here in the US China has industrial espionage programs, but Thousand Talents wasn't one of them
- ct0 3y agoMost F50 companies will not hire those without citizenship and will be reluctant to hire talent born in China to protect trade secrets. The number of Chinese students at the local BIG!) university by me is a fraction of what it was in 2019. Companies are well aware of the risks now.
- rjzzleep 3y agoMaybe you should look at some compsci papers coming out of US universities, and tell us what percentage of those are authored by Indian and Chinese students.
- alephnerd 3y ago> authored by Indian and Chinese students There's no reason for xenophobia. Plenty of ethnic Chinese and Indian people become or aim to become US citizens, and contribute. 30-40 years ago it was Russians, Israelis, and Japanese who were the stereotypical foreigner in graduate STEM programs. You'll also notice a direct correlation between Chinese visa backlogs and the rising return of Chinese expats to China in the 2000s. A similar thing happened to Israelis and Koreans in the 1990s and is starting to happen with Indians now in the 2020s.
- lupire 3y ago[flagged]
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago> > The case against Ding, 38, was announced at an American Bar Association conference in San Francisco by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Yeah, this seems very suspicious.
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoJustice dept and FBI love any chance for photo ops and press releases patting themselves on the back. I'm not sure there's too much ace detective work to be proud of here - seems Google heard he'd presented as a CEO of a Chinese firm days after he quit, and must have given the FBI a call. It makes a good story, but the current crop of LLM-based AI's don't seem to require much more than a bit of prior job experience to build. The most successful recentish AI/LLM startups such as Anthropic, Mistral and Reka.ai all have ex. Google, OpenAI and Meta employees as founders, and that prior experience appears plently enough to hit the ground running.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- billy99k 3y agoThis doesn't surprise me. I knew someone that intentionally graduated with a specific major, so they could get a job in that industry and send trade secrets/IP back to China. The purpose was to create a competing company. It didn't work out for them that well. They couldn't last more than 6 months at any one company and I think eventually gave up and went back home.
- scrubs 3y agoSlightly different: I worked with a guy who took a job at a finance firm I worked to understand trading. His stated goal? Arabic states and individuals have stupid amounts of money he can play with. That is, he wanted parlay learning and connections to start his own firm.
- mupuff1234 3y agoDid that person just go around disclosing their plan?
- reaperman 3y agoI think if someone actually had government handlers asking them to do this, most of those people wouldn't blab about it to their school chums. But there's a subset of people with grandiose delusions / general behavior problems who feel a compulsion to tell everyone about their grand plans/machinations to become rich and powerful.
- ecoquant 3y agoI think you are underestimating how tough it would be to be playing James Bond and not tell anyone. You wouldn't have to be a delusional braggart to want to tell a friend this. Most spies are not going to be as much of a compartmentalized lunatic like Robert Hanssen or someone at that level.
- djtango 3y agoReminds me of that scene from Silicon Valley where Jian Yang has a bunch of new startup ideas on his whiteboard
- axpy906 3y agoThe title is “ Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing AI trade secrets while working with Chinese companies”
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- esics6A 3y ago[flagged]
- throwaw12 3y agojust wondering, what makes you feel safe if trade secrets are stolen by countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel?
- yellow_lead 3y agoI find it funny how Google is presenting this. These statements don't really mesh well. > “We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in a statement. > Ding [..] began uploading hundreds of files into a personal Google Cloud account two years ago. > He resigned from Google last Dec. 26. Three days later, Google officials learned that he had presented as CEO of one of the Chinese companies at an investor conference in Beijing.
- vasco 3y ago> We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets This is just something companies have to say to keep their certifications / audits valid and not get sued by shareholders. In the end any system is leakable if workers really want to.
- agitator 3y agoIt's also to be defensible in court. If an opposing party can make the valid argument that "They leave the doors wide open and scatter IP willy-nilly, why wouldn't the IP get leaked?" it makes it harder to argue "Person X stole information when it was obvious that there was an expectation of secrecy"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago[flagged]
- claytonjy 3y agoThat is a satirical twitter account.
- ttul 3y agoAnd a damn fine one at that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- richiezc 3y agoI'm pretty sure this is a shitposter account
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jzebedee 3y agoThis is a satire account, if the recent tweets and inclusion of TC didn't tip it already.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoWell, I guess I’m fucking old now so fuck me
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ttul 3y agoIf any of you get this far down, one thing that caught my eye is that Google said they had analyzed this guy’s network traffic after locking his laptop, confirming various things. If you work at a large company like Google, every packet on their employee access network is recorded and indexed for forensic purposes. This is not something Google would talk about publicly, but it’s standard practice in any company that is a serious target for sophisticated cyberespionage to spend a great deal on specialized equipment that can log all network traffic at scale.
- cryptoBros2023 3y agoWhy don’t they steal these documents by taking a photo using a camera? I feel like a genius be the first one thought of this.
- alephnerd 3y agoIt's SOP in all companies, not just those facing sophisticated threat actors - there's a reason EDRs like Crowdstrike and SentinelOne are massive players now.
- deelowe 3y agoI've never been exposed to that side of things but always wondered do certain levels datamine this information? For example, do they get reports on user activity during the day... A pareto of employee activity perhaps by userid? I mean, why wouldn't they?
- leetcrew 3y agowhy would they? if we're talking about sophisticated espionage, that's more of a job for infosec. if we're talking about AFK time, being secretive defeats the purpose.
- flextheruler 3y agoI’ve done this sort of work and my anecdotal experience was it is mostly used to flag blacklisted activities from occurring on the computer spanning things like porn and gambling sites to administrative privileges, but also to modify what level of access these computers had for interacting with different infrastructure between silos. You could use the data to identify activity levels or behavior patterns of the people using the device but it would cost a ton more money and a larger team to do that plus the other responsibilities we had simultaneously. My experience is also not with employee owned devices so in my mind there’s nothing wrong with doing it’s agreed to and is imperative to their function as an employees especially with HIPPA concerned. I think there was some BYOD stuff that was starting at one point and we had to run an emulator on their personal devices so the programs we run to collect logs were sandboxed from their regular phones.
- keepamovin 3y ago[flagged]
- azinman2 3y agoThe entire history of man counters this. So while you might be advocating for some Star Trek world peace fantasy, historical and present realities differ. And that reality is what leadership and everyday people live in. A zero sum game.
- keepamovin 3y agoNota zero sum game, but about history I agree with you man but we can do better.
- abetusk 3y agoI think you're getting at a basic fallacy. This is not a zero sum game. This is a positive sum game. The worlds population has been steadily growing for the past 10,000 years. The quality of life has mostly increased. We're figuring out more efficient ways to extract energy from the resources around us, including the sun. We don't live in a post-scarcity world but we also don't live in a zero-sum world either.
- antisthenes 3y ago> I think you're getting at a basic fallacy. This is not a zero sum game. This is a positive sum game. You don't get to sweep many zero-aspects of life that are zero-sum, by calling it a fallacy, under the rug. Many scenarios in life are game-theoretical with tradeoffs, where deviation from the greater sum results in higher rewards for individual actors. Until you solve it, you don't get to say "ItS noT ZeRo Sum!!11"
- abetusk 3y ago> You don't get to sweep many zero-aspects of life that are zero-sum, by calling it a fallacy, under the rug. Declaring life as a zero-sum game doesn't make it so. I didn't just declare life as a positive sum game, I gave some basic counter examples to your claim that life is a zero sum game. > Many scenarios in life are game-theoretical with tradeoffs, where deviation from the greater sum results in higher rewards for individual actors ... This is a separate phenomena. It sounds like you're alluding to the Prisoner's Dilemma problem [0]. Notably, many formulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma problem are not zero-sum [1]. I never said game theoretic ideas don't apply nor did I claim that individual rewards could inhibit global reward, I specifically addressed your claim about it being zero sum. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma [1] http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PRISDIL.html http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PRISDIL.html
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago[flagged]
- Shrezzing 3y agoSo... Indentured slavery?
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoNo, the choice to learn in American institutions, make tons of American money, and live the American dream. None of those things should benefit a country that we are in direct competition with. Slavery is wrong, becoming an international student to get a world-class education and work in the center of the tech industry is not. Comparing them is very silly.
- gsdofthewoods 3y agoThis dystopian vision would require lighting the Fourth Amendment on fire and lead to widespread human rights violations of innocent people. Is corporate espionage a problem? Of course it is. Is it worth abandoning the principles of a free society for? Absolutely not.
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoCitizens should always be incredibly insulated from any sort of government interference, I agree. The Constitution should be ratified so any time it mentions “people” or “persons” it instead says “citizens”. We need a separate document that applies to non-citizens.
- wizzwizz4 3y agoSounds a bit like ancient Athens. (That's not a complement.)
- lupire 3y agoIf you can't beat them, join them, I guess. CCP has been saying for 70 years that a free society cannot compete with a totalitarian society. US can either agree or disagree. What we cannot honestly do is claim to disagree but agree via our actions.
- wg0 3y agoWhat exactly sterling secrets looks like? Suppose I work on a video streaming service. Spent 8 years. Now I know in and out of it. The ffmpeg the queues the buckets the meta data and what not. Someone hires me. I build a steaming service. But this time I'm much more polished and faster. Is this stealing too?
- lupire 3y agoThere is not exact definition. Real world is messy.
- noslenwerdna 3y agoDefinitely downloading and uploading company documents to people outside the company counts as stealing...
- bredren 3y agoAs a sibling comment mentions, it depends. If you want to learn more, there is a thing called clean-room development which is a process used to reduce the legal risk of copyright and intellectual property violations.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pradn 3y agoNo, that would be your government or employer preventing you from using your specialized skills to earn a living. In theory, a competitor can hire you for your skills - but your new employer will make it clear they are "only hiring you for your skills, not your proprietary knowledge". I've see that clause even as a junior employee.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago[flagged]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago[flagged]
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoThis happens to all threads about China here.
- tristor 3y ago[flagged]
- blackoil 3y ago> It's the stated policy of the Chinese government stated as in? Can you share some source.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agohttps://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-china-threat/chinese-talent-plans https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-chin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law_of_t...
- blackoil 3y ago> All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of. That's as vague as it can be. Does any country not have similar laws?
- josephh 3y agoWhich countries have laws that require their citizens to "support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts"?
- EasyMark 3y agoI've never heard of that as a requirement for US citizens. I mean the government can't compel you to be a spy (industrial or espionage) last I checked. I'd be happy to be corrected. I mean you can totally volunteer for it though, of course.
- riku_iki 3y ago
- idkdotcom 3y ago[dead]
- lfmunoz4 3y agoWonder if any Americans go to Chinese tech companies to steal secrets or if there is just nothing there to steal.
- xeonmc 3y agoThe secrets are which secrets had been stolen.
- tivert 3y ago> The secrets are which secrets had been stolen. The Chinese probably have secrets worth stealing about solar panel production. They've pretty much driven everyone else out of business.
- ejb999 3y agoIt’s hard for others to compete with slave labor. Gives the Chinese quite a leg up on pricing power. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/business/economy/china-forced-labor-solar.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/business/economy/china-fo... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/08/27/customs-detains-chinese-solar-panels/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/08/27/customs-d... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Legend2440 3y agoI would be frankly disappointed if our government and tech companies are not doing the same.
- mr_toad 3y agoHow many Americans go to work in China at all?
- dagw 3y ago
- prepend 3y agoIt’s interesting to me that google doesn’t do a security clearance review on its engineers. I’ve had a security clearance in the past and there’s no way a foreign national passes. I got questioned significantly about a family member who was a citizen of another country. I wonder if it’s just a matter of time.
- mvdtnz 3y agoIs it your contention that Google should never hire anyone born outside of USA or without USA citizenship? Do you realise how much of their workforce that would preclude?
- prepend 3y agoIt precludes a great many people. In my example, the US won’t grant security clearance to a foreign national. Even if you are a permanent resident, you don’t get clearance without citizenship.
- c2occnw 3y agoPresumably it would only be required to work on extremely sensitive projects with national security implications (no idea if that applies in this case).
- jpk2f2 3y agoOf course not. However there should certainly be a risk assessment with regards to citizens of foreign countries known to steal IP or otherwise perform hostile actions.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago> without USA citizenship For jobs in the US, yes.
- calculatte 3y agoHow many software engineers were laid off in the US over the past year? Shortage of talent is not the issue.
- 3y ago
- hnburnsy 3y agoHere is the indictment since AP News can't be bothered to link to it... https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1341356/dl?inline https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1341356/dl?inline
- _cs2017_ 3y agoInteresting. The guy copied source code via copy paste... And it seems, also regular Google documents. He was already caught uploading secret stuff, quit Google and bought a ticket to go to China, and was arrested only because he delayed the trip by a few weeks which was enough time for Google to discover more violations and contact the FBI. Google didn't contact the FBI until they learned of older violations. Which begs the question: what triggered that: the fact that the earlier documents were more secret, more numerous, or the fact that the guy lied about destroying all previously downloaded data?
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoReminds me of the time I quit my job at a large corp and my boss advised me to not do any large downloads in the days just before I left because "IT has tools to scan for that and they might think you're trying to take secrets with you." Guess this guy didn't get the memo.
- hilux 3y agoGood boss!
- whiplash451 3y agoI don't want to discount his kindness, but I guess he was also trying to prevent some mess for himself. Being the direct manager in these situations is a hell of a ride no matter what your involvement is.
- throw393200 3y agoThere have been a lot of falsely accused "spies" recently like Xiaoxing Xi, Sherry Chen, and Anming Hu. All charges were eventually dropped. I wonder what will happen with this case.
- zhujiaqi 3y agoChinese or not, this guy is a thief and violated rules of being honest. He also kept a high profile in China and did that on purpose for fame and fortune. Shame on him - Said a Chinese
- zhujiaqi 3y ago[flagged]
- balls187 3y agoYeah sinophobia is an easy trap to fall into. Though I would assume there is analogous sentiments on Chinese platforms.
- baka367 3y agoI'm more surprised at how openly he did this kind of stuff. They even have Goole office in China, how he was not worried about getting pinged randomly!
- martin1975 3y agoJust hire Chinese engineers who were born/raised here. It would meet the DEI quota and decrease the chance of industrial espionage. No guarantees, but I think this would help.
- hilux 3y agoChinese and Indian men do not count towards any DEI quota in tech!!
- kajecounterhack 3y ago…so you mean hire Americans. Also, pretty sure there are no DEI quotas for Asian men.
- boohoowangle 3y agoNo, he doesn't mean Americans. He meant Chinese engineers like Irish or German engineers who were born and raised here.
- kajecounterhack 3y agoYeah, my point is "born here" = you are American. It's racist to insinuate that American-born Chinese aren't American.
- throw383744 3y ago[flagged]
- thescriptkiddie 3y agoHow can you "steal" a trade secret? Isn't the whole idea that you forgo any legal protection of the secret so that you don't have to disclose its nature, as you would have to with a patent?
- anonuser123456 3y agoNo. Trade secrets are intellectual property that have legal protection. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1832 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1832 What a trade secret lacks in protection is the monopoly granted by a patent.
- ein0p 3y agoThe guy was allegedly stealing all that using Google Drive. I find such moronic behavior really hard to believe. Literally, there’s no illusion of privacy at Google while using company hardware, let alone company services. This has become quite clear after the Levandowsky fiasco - some of the things disclosed there were surprisingly invasive far in excess of what you’d normally expect
- hnburnsy 3y agoHe was white washing the documents via Apple Notes and it worked initially. From the indictment I posted here... >In total, DING uploaded more than 500 unique files containing Google Confidential Information, including the trade secrets alleged in Counts One through Four. DING exfiltrated these files by copying data from the Google source files into the Apple Notes application on his Google-issued MacBook laptop. DING then converted the Apple Notes into PDF files and uploaded them from the Google network into DING Account 1. This method helped DING evade immediate detection.
- ein0p 3y ago>> This method helped DING evade immediate detection Evidently not. It just shows that the guy is not a foreign intelligence operative - a professional could easily operate there for years undetected with fairly basic opsec. That said, aside from things like hardware designs and perhaps certain model weights, I struggle to think of anything at Google that anyone would want that’s not already on GitHub.
- bigcat12345678 3y ago> I struggle to think of anything at Google that anyone would want that’s not already on GitHub. It was this person's ploy to pretend there is extremely valuable IPs in the docs he illegally obtained. It just shows that this person indeed was clueless about large-scale engineering. I.e., stealing all of the code wont give any org the capability to do large-scale engineering. It most likely would cripple the org, as the foreign objects act as poison. The ideal trick is to pretend that he possess the secret.
- holografix 3y ago[flagged]
- alexnewman 3y agoDisinfo is how you keep secrets.
- wetpaws 3y ago[dead]