
Medical Device CEO Catches Stranger After Hours, Prompting Espionage Charges - wpietri
https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-after-hours-company-visit-spurs-espionage-charges-1505813401
======
esaym
I'm sure plenty of people will declare his innocence in this current age of
"love your neighbor" and "nothing is secret". But really, this kind of stuff
is not right.

I briefly worked for Boeing once and they were working on a new fuel boom for
the KC-135 Fuel tanker. Spent millions in research and then some idiot takes a
bunch of photos of the blueprints and physical hardware and then sells it to
someone in China. Thankfully he was busted. A company just trying to make a
profit on what they spent millions developing is not inherently evil.

~~~
msla
And I'm certain that if Boeing were offered similar information from a
defector within a Chinese firm, they'd turn it down and report the spy to the
proper authorities.

Industrial espionage is as old as industry. It got porcelain and tea out of
China and is, in fact, the reason the UK was able to grow tea as early as it
was.

It isn't nice, but business isn't nice.

~~~
Blackthorn
Well, we know that AMD at one point did in fact turn someone in to the
authorities for attempting to sell them industrial espionage from Intel. I
don't think it's as gloomy a picture as you are trying to paint.

~~~
msla
Gloomy depends on the context. The US got its textile industry due to Samuel
Slater stealing the design of the shuttle loom from the UK:

[http://www.brahmsmount.com/blog/american-textile-
history/](http://www.brahmsmount.com/blog/american-textile-history/)

I'm not defending industrial espionage, I'm merely pointing out that treating
it as a grave and horrible thing is at odds with how important it's been
historically.

~~~
RamshackleJ
So the benchmark for modern business ethics is a man who made his fortune off
the back of slaves in the 1700s?

~~~
msla
Huh. I wasn't aware industrial espionage caused slavery.

------
bpicolo
> he saw a man he didn’t recognize, sitting by himself in front of two open
> laptops and a tablet device.

> “Mr. Liu adamantly asserts his innocence and we fully expect he’ll be
> exonerated after a careful review of the evidence,” said Robert Goldstein,
> Mr. Liu’s defense attorney.

The best-case scenario still seems reasonably illegal here

------
vxNsr

        >On that evening in late August, Dr. Straface said he introduced himself to Mr. Liu as the CEO and asked who Mr. Liu was and what he was doing in the office.
    
        >Mr. Liu mumbled at first, then said he was there to visit the company’s head of intellectual property and also the sales director for the European division, according to Dr. Straface.
    
        >“At one point he mentioned that he was here to do business with the CEO, not seeming to realize he was looking at the CEO,” Dr. Straface said.
    

This seems to be pretty damning...

------
AnimalMuppet
We once had a contractor who used _our_ printer to print out a letter to a
competitor, offering to sell them our source code. Unfortunately, one of our
employees visited our printer at the wrong time (for the contractor)...

~~~
bllguo
Hopefully your competitor would have told you anyway. But wow, didn't think
this actually happens. Plus, why _print out_ the letter??

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Plus, why print out the letter??

This was in the early 90s. We didn't have internet yet.

------
prklmn
Him declaring innocence provided for a good laugh

> The FBI confiscated “an unusual amount of computer equipment” that Mr. Liu
> had brought with him, including the laptops and tablet and also two
> smartphones, a smartwatch, a computer thumb drive, two digital video
> cameras, several SIM cards and high-capacity storage drives, according to
> the affidavit.

~~~
tambienben
Is that an unusual amount? That describes my electronics inventory pretty
accurately.

~~~
leggomylibro
I would say several SIM cards and large storage drives probably isn't part of
everyone's going-around-town bag. The rest doesn't seem TOO out-of-the-
ordinary.

For me, someone who occasionally carries two laptops (bulky company-issue,
light personal worktop) and a sundry of perboard assemblies that would make
the TSA raise an eyebrow. But I think even that might count as 'unusual' if
you're talking about the average population. How many peoples' jobs require
them to occasionally have 24/7 access to their work computer? How many people
carry around devices solely because they vaguely intend to tinker with them at
some point, and you never know when you'll have a spare hour?

Probably less than 10%. Also, side-note, as much as I hate the TSA's security
theater, I've never actually had problems with bringing things that look like
bombs through security. Including a wired belt with a black box covered in
electrical tape (compass)...good thing I'm white!

~~~
lambda
I have an SSD (along with a USB SATA enclosure to connect it), a spinning
disk, and at least one USB thumb drive in my bag that I bring to work every
day (along with my laptop).

This is in part because I switch between working from home and working at the
office fairly often, have travel time in between, and need to have access to
more VMs than I can fit on my laptop's internal SSD comfortably.

I also may have SIM cards rattling around somewhere; when I travel
internationally, I buy a local prepaid SIM, and I may have older SIM cards
left over from the last time I replaced one.

~~~
praneshp
It's valid for your usecase, but I still agree with your parent comment that
your bag's contents are unusual.

------
fblp
Fta:

 _The FBI confiscated “an unusual amount of computer equipment” that Mr. Liu
had brought with him, including the laptops and tablet and also two
smartphones, a smartwatch, a computer thumb drive, two digital video cameras,
several SIM cards and high-capacity storage drives, according to the
affidavit._

If the guy pleads not-guilty, I wonder how he'd explain why he had that much
equipment with him for a business meeting.

~~~
Aloha
This often sounds like the kit I travel with, up to three laptops (work main,
work task, personal), two phones (work/personal), occasionally a tablet, a
portable hardrive, 3-6 thumb drives, plus cables, adapters, dongles, and a
power bar or two.

I hope that we're not entering a world where having a bunch of computer
equipment automatically makes you suspect.

~~~
shapov
I think the 2 video cameras and several SIM cards is what seems odd about this
combo.

------
virtuabhi
Modern day robbery

------
tomtoise
Anyone got a non-paywalled link to this story?

~~~
jdavis703
I've taken to using Blendle to only pay for WSJ articles that I read. Saves me
the money of a full subscription, and makes sure quality journalism is funded.
Here's the link in case you want to read it, and support journalism:
[https://blendle.com/i/the-wall-street-journal/industrial-
esp...](https://blendle.com/i/the-wall-street-journal/industrial-espionage-
cases-soar-in-u-s/bnl-wallstreetjournal840-20170920-1_7)

~~~
hamandcheese
On blendle, the article is cut short in the middle of a sentence.

~~~
rconti
Even after paying? Can you clarify? It's exactly the kind of service I want..
if I can read the whole article.

~~~
hamandcheese
Yep. Paid with my promo credit, was reading, and arrived at an abrupt, mid
sentence stop. There was no UI asking me to pay more.

I requested a refund and gave that as my reason.

------
peterwwillis
pw;dr

~~~
bokchoi
Peter Willis; didn't read?

~~~
jacquesm
Paywall.

~~~
wpietri
Funny, it was definitely not paywalled when I submitted it.

------
alexanderstears
I really hope that we can accept turnabout as fair play. At some point, China
is going to have technology that America wants and I hope that we can pilfer
it.

On the flipside though, industrial espionage is a wealth transfer that reduces
inequality. I recently purchased tires for my car - I got some Chinese ones
that were 1/2 the price of the other tires and the Chinese tires are
shockingly fine. I don't know how they'd get the price and quality without
benefiting from industrial espionage.

Perhaps something more ideal would be to opensource everything that's been
stolen. It'd encourage companies to take security seriously and it would
reduce the value of the stolen property.

Lastly, I kind of wonder how much of this problem is due to companies
insisting on removing dependencies from certain people / groups. Think of all
the documentation people create 'in case you get hit by a bus tomorrow'. When
my grandpa worked, it sounds like it was fine to have undocumented things so
long as people knew about it (e.g watch out for that machine, it's sensitive
to humidity and here's how to reset it). Now, I'm sure some middle manager
would insist that the 'operational knowledge' be documented and stored
somewhere that becomes that much more lucrative for a thief.

~~~
chisleu
> ... I hope that we can pilfer it.

Steal and steal alike? No thanks.

> I don't know how they'd get the price and quality without benefiting from
> industrial espionage.

They engineer their internal economy to keep cheap labor at near starvation
levels of subsistence.

> Perhaps something more ideal would be to opensource everything that's been
> stolen.

Robin Hood arguments are vapid. Stealing is often costly. Hackers aren't free,
although the Chinese government does basically quarantine anyone with any
chops.

> Now, I'm sure some middle manager would insist that the 'operational
> knowledge' be documented and stored somewhere that becomes that much more
> lucrative for a thief.

Actually, all levels of management want information to be there because you
don't want to lose enormous sums of money if someone leaves and doesn't
document the location of encryption keys before taking a secret job and
disappearing into Asia or eastern Europe.

~~~
ajross
> They engineer their internal economy to keep cheap labor at near starvation
> levels of subsistence.

The first clause is true enough, the latter seems to be missing a ton of
context, given y'know, the _actual famine_ this same government caused two
generations ago.

Low wages being a growth engine may not be fair or uniformly beneficial.
Compared to the desperation of the cultural revolution it's sort of a
paradise. Things are getting better, not worse.

