4 ms·

So long as they used public information- why would it be illegal?

• secalex 12y ago
  I once had an interesting discussion with a tech-savvy criminal attorney about whether security researchers could trade public equities using early indicators of compromise or private knowledge of 0-day (gained from outside the company, not under NDA). She thought about it a bit and said "The insider trading laws are so broad that if the US Attorney didn't like it they would make it illegal, and if you had talked to anybody about it they would go down for conspiracy." My interactions with the criminal legal system as an expert witness since then have only reinforced my belief in Harry Silverglate's axiom that pretty much every US adult is merely an un-indicted Federal felon living their lives at the mercy of the thousands of AUSAs who could plunge them into a living hell.
  • olefoo 12y ago
    And that is a problem, that we should solve.
• kragen 12y ago
  They were talking about using information from the stream of search queries issuing from each company, as I remember the story. So they'd get advance knowledge of layoffs, diseases among key personnel, that kind of thing.