
Ex-Microsoft employee arrested for leaking company secrets - ABS
http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/20/microsoft-employee-leak-secrets-arrest/
======
ABS
No one picking up on this snippet?

"When Redmond determined its authenticity, investigators looked through the
blogger's Hotmail account and instant messenger, where they found
incriminating emails and chat logs."

~~~
chevreuil
Yes that's insane. But the blogger is also to blame here, he should not have
used a Hotmail account to share such sensitive information.

~~~
ABS
he might have been naive, stupid even, but definitely not to blame: they
effectively broke the law.

IANAL and I'm not based in US but I would guess the only way to do this
legally would be for MS to go to a law-enforcement agency, the agency would
need to get a warrant and then _the agency_ would be able to look into it, not
MS itself.

~~~
throwawayaway
What law would deter them from doing so? They are microsoft's computers. I'm
sure the EULA has them covered legally, and I bet they asked their legal team
before going in.

~~~
ABS
there are constitutional guarantees on the secrecy of correspondence and email
is considered (by the law) the same as letters therefore legally protected
from all forms of eavesdropping.

contracts are not above the law, if a contracts stipulates something illegal
it doesn't matter that both parties agreed to it

~~~
throwawayaway
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence)

This seems to disagree with you, seems you are required to litigate to get
your rights. The blogger was french also, so that probably has a bearing on
what rights he has.

~~~
ABS
not so simple:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Priva...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_Act)

~~~
throwawayaway
That's for federal agencies and a third party's server. Considering microsoft
are not a third party, not a federal agency and it's their own server, I don't
think that law is relevant.

------
josephlord
I was surprised trade secrets theft was a criminal rather than civil matter
but it seems that is the case in the US:

[http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9711.ht...](http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9711.html)

But I don't think it is in the UK:

[http://richardpoynder.co.uk/Keep%20your%20secrets%20safe%20f...](http://richardpoynder.co.uk/Keep%20your%20secrets%20safe%20from%20thieves.htm)

~~~
markovbling
Comedian Joe Rogan has a great bit about Wesley Snipes' tax-evasion jail term
and how if you owe a friend money there's nothing he can do but if you owe the
government money they lock you up and put you in a cage.

~~~
forgottenpass
Snipes was jailed for failure to file.

The US generally does not believe in debtors prisons and even has legal routes
like bankruptcy to discharge debt.

~~~
knodi123
*except in cases where you borrowed that money to pay for your education

------
kabdib
Internal builds at Microsoft get stamped with unique IDs by the download
server (special kernel running on those servers knows to GUID-stamp and log
certain files when they are copied, I understand). So binaries are pretty
traceable.

Always assume that everything you type or view in a company is logged,
especially in a place like MS where they basically control your computational
oxygen down to the metal.

~~~
gwern
Presumably that's why he broke into that building to get a copy - stamped with
other peoples' GUIDs.

------
jrockway
This is a slippery slope. On the one hand, companies don't want their secrets
being leaked. On the other hand, they need employees that can trust them.

If I were Microsoft I'd tighten internal controls rather than try to make an
example of a former employee. They're legally in the right, but the question
is: is that good for their reputation and their recruiting efforts?

~~~
ABS
I don't have any problems with their handling of their own employee. My
problem, considering the facts as reported by the Seattle PI, is with their
own "dredging" into a non-employee hotmail account and chat logs

------
jeroen
Source:

[http://m.seattlepi.com/local/article/Ex-Microsoft-
employee-c...](http://m.seattlepi.com/local/article/Ex-Microsoft-employee-
charged-with-passing-5331715.php)

------
zimbatm
He's getting to jail for ... screenshots ?

~~~
alistairSH
Sounds like the criminal offense was breaking and entering. The suspect
admitted (to the blogger?) to illegally entering MS facilities to obtain the
stolen software.

------
michaelochurch
The charges should be dropped.

This was back in the time of stack ranking. The performance review he got
wasn't just emotionally hurtful or annoying. It actually fucked with his
reputation. In a typical stack-ranking regime, performance reviews are part of
the transfer packet, actively making it hard to impossible for the employee to
fix the situation on his own. While this action was probably overreach, some
retaliation is to be expected under such regimes. If a company can't handle
that sort of thing, it needs to ditch stack ranking (which Microsoft,
admirably, has apparently done).

This doesn't 100% absolve him of responsibility (he still deserves to lose his
job over the leak) but it absolves him enough that criminal charges are just
inappropriate and wrong for the situation.

~~~
Fede_V
Uhh, what? Stack ranking is terrible and I'm glad MS got rid of it, but how
does it justify leaking code in retaliation?

How does it 'absolve him enough'? That's a crazy moral framework.

~~~
michaelochurch
Misread. I was confusing this with another case where no actual code was
leaked.

