
Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer? - yummyfajitas
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer
======
waffle_ss
_On the night of the arrest—without an arrest warrant—Serge waived his right
to call a lawyer. He phoned his wife and told her what had happened and that a
bunch of F.B.I. agents were on the way to their home to seize their computers,
and to please let them in—though they had no search warrant, either. Then he
sat down and politely tried to clear up the F.B.I. agent 's confusion._

 _" He was completely not interested in the content of what I am saying. He
just kept saying to me, 'If you tell me everything, I'll talk to the judge,
and he'll go easy on you.' It appeared they had a very strong bias from the
very beginning. They had goals they wanted to fulfill. The goal was to obtain
an immediate confession."_

Don't talk to police! -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

~~~
sneak
That video is right up there with knowing about 83b elections as some of the
most valuable information one can possibly possess.

I rewatch it annually and send out mass emails to all my friends and family
when I do reminding them to do so as well.

~~~
gamblor956
Tell that to all the Zynga employees who made 83(b) elections and are now
underwater! 83(b) entails being taxed on the value of stock/options when
purchased/received (i.e., as compensation), rather than when vested or when
exercised. It's great if the value of the stock increases, but you're
substantially worse off economically (taking the time value of money into
account) if the value of the stock decreases.

~~~
gohrt
What valuation did those underwater employees get?

------
davidw
I have some recollection that it was a bunch of Erlang code, from some other
article about it.

Edit: Hah, wow... ok, so it's a small world. If I'm not mistaken, this is the
same Sergey Aleynikov:

[https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec/commits/master](https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec/commits/master)

I've been interacting with him quite a bit lately regarding his erlexec code.
He strikes me as a nice guy.

Edit2: Looks like he's asking for donations to help fund his defense:
[http://www.aleynikov.org/](http://www.aleynikov.org/)

------
zeteo
The justice system is, of course, still in the business of catching and
punishing murderers, thieves and such. But, with the decline in crime since
the early '90s, this side of their activity is becoming increasingly
supplemented by a different game altogether: enforcing a growing set of
complex laws against practically everything [1]. There is a lot of
prosecutorial discretion in choosing which of these laws to enforce and the
degree to which to enforce them. With prosecutors often competing against each
other in the number and severity of convictions secured, it's hardly
surprising that they've arrived at the age-old algorithm used by street
muggers: pick the most likely victim, and go all in. A guy like Aleynikov was
thus ideally suited as a prosecution target: unlikely to excite much sympathy
from a jury with his heavy accent and un-American looks; clueless about
lawyers and confessions; cooperative enough to sign statements that were re-
formulated by investigators to look bad in court; high-tech enough to mark
novel and impressive prosecutorial checkboxes. They consequently made sure to
squeeze him for all he had.

So, while I think the often repeated advice about never talking to the police
sometimes goes too far (it's probably good to have a friendly relation with
the neighborhood cop, and by all means please help in apprehending murderers
and burglars if you safely can), it's pretty much dead-on as soon as you step
into enforcement la-la land:

\- Don't consent to any searches.

\- Don't say anything without a lawyer.

\- Put great effort into finding a competent lawyer.

\- Don't say anything your lawyer hasn't approved.

Beyond refusing help to efforts to prosecute you, such steps will clearly mark
you as a non-victim. (Same advice as applies when you have to pass through a
mugging-prone area.) This will cause a lot less effort towards pushing through
with your case. After all, there are other suckers born every minute.

[1] [http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/19/were-all-felons-
now](http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/19/were-all-felons-now)

~~~
j_baker
Most importantly, don't say anything that _might_ incriminate you. Even if
they have you on video doing it with hundreds of witnesses and DNA evidence.

~~~
kbenson
That's the whole point of not talking unless a lawyer is present (and you give
them a chance to vet your speech). You have very little chance of knowing what
is incriminating, and this is by design.

Their job is to put away criminals. In the case where there is not really a
crime, their training, which is meant to get confessions from actual
criminals, ends up pulling seeming confessions to nonexistent crimes from
innocent people. After that happens, you are screwed.

~~~
jessaustin
Even in cases of "actual" crime, the system is quite content to put away
innocents.

------
noonespecial
_“He was stringing these computer terms together in ways that made no sense.
He didn’t seem to know anything about high-frequency trading or source code.”_

Programming is esoteric to common folk. Almost like witchcraft. When things go
wrong for villagers, they often burn witches.

They didn't burn witches in the old days because of some moral failing that
we've outgrown. They burned them because they were unable to understand that
"witches" didn't actually cause plagues.

~~~
minimax
That cringing sensation you got when you saw the scare quotes around
"subversion repository" is the same feeling people in trading get when
journalists write about HFT and algorithmic trading. You can see an obvious
example in the article where Michael Lewis applies scare quotes to "dark
pools."

~~~
sgt101
dark pools scare me a hell of a lot more than witches - possibly because the
continued functioning of the financial system is more important to me than
warts.

~~~
phyalow
how, all they are is usually unlit "unadvertised" elob's?

~~~
sgt101
I have no idea what you are talking about, but the reason they scare me is
because they provide an opaque mechanism for trading that enables or allows
the unmanaged exposure of major financial institutions. This means that the
confidence that anyone can have in a particular counter party in a transaction
is undermined - whether or not they are participating in these transactions,
because we cannot know.

~~~
phyalow
Most markets are regulated in such a way that unlit venues have to report
executions back to the lit market. Also most alternative venues will operate
through clearing houses (the same as lit public markets). The risks you
mention are real but as mentioned most sophisticated markets have regulations
and rules in place to mitigate them - after all a darkpool or crossing network
that failed to find quality and non flakey contra parties doesnt present a
compelling case for its use!

------
nohuck13
I was working at one of the rival HFT's mentioned in the article when all this
went down. I had some thoughts.

-It's _never_ ok to take proprietary code with you after quitting. I don't know anybody that would have thought that was OK, especially with the amount of money people were making off this IP in 2008. Of course that's true in any industry, but especially in trading.

-That said, you can't just walk out the door of Goldman on Friday and be trading on Monday, even if you had their entire codebase. The infrastructure needed to be a world-class HFT player at Goldman scale is insanely complicated and prohibitively expensive to all but the most well-funded folks these days. You're going to need colo space and power at tens of trading venues, low-latency WAN infrastructure to ship production quotes and data around the world, expensive exchange gateway connectivity, quant research platforms and a giant compute cluster, significant devops and monitoring infrastructure to run and monitor it all, and smart people evolve the stategies, models, and code as it decays while you're setting all this stuff up.

~~~
appdeveloper
I agree- it's not okay to take proprietary code. But criminal charges and an 8
year sentence? Totally disproportionate.

~~~
perlpimp
That is some advertisement for Goldman, work for us and you will be fine, quit
and we will sic FBI, Police or whoever we can find to persecute you, take your
money destroy your family and ...

.. man this sounds like some mafia.

------
impendia
I was on a jury for a murder trial, and so I have some insight into how juries
work.

At one point, when I was splitting some hairs and discussing the meaning of
some small details from the evidence, one of the other jurors got impatient
and reached for the coroner's photo of the victim. "Someone died here, you
realize."

~~~
tehwalrus
I was on a jury (robbery) in the UK. It's a crime to say, afterwards, what
happened in a jury room in the UK.

~~~
tomjen3
So could you punch one of the other Juriors and get away with it, since they
can't press charges?

~~~
tehwalrus
ahh, it may only be "deliberations" that are protected. so you'd probably be
able to say "he punched me!" but not why...

------
JonnieCache
Side question: how do these people with _" only the vaguest interest in his
fellow human beings"_ end up with a wife and three kids? It seems to be a
common theme amongst articles like this. They always paint the hero-programmer
as some kind of rainman figure and then it turns out he has a loving family.
Just the usual fictional press nonsense I guess.

EDIT: should always read on before commenting:

 _" He married a girl and manages to have three kids with her before he
figures out he doesn’t really know her."_

~~~
feintruled
As far as the article has it, it wasn't a match of love. It was just two
Russians getting together through the ex-pat community, she got security and
money to spend, and he just did it because it was the thing to do.

------
6d0debc071
Of course they overstepped. They basically mugged a person of their life
savings, deprived them of their liberty, and ruined his marriage over nothing
of consequence.

------
rollo_tommasi
This article is also interesting in that the total blind trust McSwain put in
Goldman's explanation of the situation really illustrates the typical mob hit-
man mentality of most law enforcement agents. The Big Boss gives them a name
and they take that guy out, no questions asked.

~~~
pigscantfly
It's all down to laziness, IMO. That FBI agent could have done some research
for verification and realized that Goldman was selling him an overblown story.
What's the point, though; the courts will do their background research
eventually, right? And by then they'll be arresting the next poor schmuck Wall
Street doesn't want to lose to a competitor.

~~~
pmorici
Or insider connections; I would bet that the people in charge of security at
Goldman are probably former FBI, Secret Service, or similar background.

------
imsofuture
While stupidity isn't a crime, people like Serge manage to find their way
around that obstacle.

It's pretty obvious he didn't have any malicious or illegal intent, but he
definitely followed the checklist of 'things not to do when leaving a job'.
Emailing yourself code? Seriously?

The whole thing is a travesty, but he walked right into it.

~~~
yogo
That was my impression too. For someone that smart in a technical field, some
things just seemed a little to casual or didn't make much sense. Deleting your
bash history because there might be passwords in it? I generally give the
benefit of the doubt to the guy in his position--maybe he was in a hurry or
got comfortable being one of the chosen few super users--but, you have to
think wtf.

At a company like that where IP is highly valuable and you are paid
handsomely, you know right off the bat that every character of code you right
belongs to the company before even seeing employment and/or confidentiality
agreements.

Dating another woman or stuffing a large object in your trunk late at night
right after your wife dies, does not look good. You may very well be innocent,
but it doesn't look good.

~~~
smm2000
I have passwords in my bash history - namely mysql passwords.

~~~
yogo
Use the --defaults-extra-file to point to a file containing the password and
stop the madness. At least that is what I think should be done if entering the
password is inconvenient or not feasible (like in an automated script)

------
wmil
From the article:

"He didn’t fully understand how Goldman could think it was O.K. to benefit so
greatly from the work of others and then behave so selfishly toward them."

I don't think he understands Wall Street.

~~~
chiph
While I'm a capitalist, I wouldn't conduct business with Goldman. They have a
history of screwing the market (semi-ok), screwing their customers (not ok),
and screwing their employees (not ok). And then blaming everyone else. I
expect a certain degree of ethical behavior.

~~~
yummyfajitas
On the contrary, Goldman generally stands by their employees provided they
believe the employee stood by them. See for example, Fabrice Tourre, who's
personal legal expenses were entirely covered by Goldman.

~~~
milemi
I think Goldman always stands by Goldman, first and foremost. And so do the
lawyers paid by Goldman. Cf. in Fab's case they rested their case literally
the minute they had their turn, without calling any witnesses. From day one I
was amazed at the guy's naivete of accepting the "gift" from Goldman that he
be represented by their lawyers. It's the rule #1: get your own representation
folks. Company lawyers don't work for you, they work for the company.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Resting their case without witnesses is a fairly standard strategy in court -
it's a way of emphasizing that the case has so little merit that there is
nothing to argue against.

~~~
milemi
In this case it was also a way of wrapping it up quickly and not dragging GS
any deeper into it.

------
melling
In case people aren't clear on this. He worked in an industry that takes this
sort of thing very seriously. He shouldn't have even been trying to download
open source from work. You don't email stuff home to work on it, for example.

~~~
walshemj
Banks take security v seriously even trying to plug a usb drive into you pc to
copy files will be logged and will probably get you fired.

~~~
jonknee
Getting fired for breaking policy is fine. Calling in favors to the Feds and
nailing someone for 8 years is not.

~~~
walshemj
He was caught bang to rights with company property how is that different to a
shop worker getting caught with some of the shops goods

~~~
jonknee
Quite obviously the coffee shop worker would not be serving time in Federal
prison. He caught caught with source code, not with using the source code,
selling the source code, threatening to sell or release the source code, etc
etc. No actual damage occurred.

------
ImJasonH
My favorite part of all of this is the scare-quotes around "subversion
repository"

~~~
ErikAugust
You think if they chose to use Git for version control the agent would have
not thought anything of it? Subversion just sounds too menacing?

~~~
cupcake-unicorn
Well, I'm sure they'd find some other, equally ridiculous way to interpret
"Git" \- obviously the programmer was making a statement about the stupid
"gits" in charge of the company...

------
Geekette
Wow. Naivete is a bitch... Or one hell of a drug, depending on your viewing
angle.

And given his re-arrest on what appear to be spurious charges (1st set were
thrown out on appeal), I can't help but agree with this comment on VF: "When
Goldman says 'jump', the gov't says: 'How high?'"

------
cgshaw
As an attorney and someone moderately interested in politics, it's becoming
more and more clear that technical literacy is going to play a huge role in
law and policy.

We desperately need more politicians, bureaucrats and law enforcement who at
least have some basic technical knowledge.

Empathy is the only way to prevent stuff like this.

~~~
ionforce
Usually people who attain technical knowledge are the same type to avoid
politics.

Politics is a "soft" game of imperfections, where as technical knowledge is
the opposite. Cold, hard, objective.

What incentive is there for technically-equipped folk to deal with the
imperfections and heartache of interacting with non-technical folk than to
take a white collar job amongst other technically-minded folk?

~~~
cgshaw
I completely agree.

Maybe it should be more incumbent on politicians and law enforcement to learn
more about technology and incorporate more private citizens as opposed to just
big corporations in the dialogue.

It's frustrating, I think everyone realizes that technology is going to become
a greater and greater part of every day life in government and yet there
hasn't been much of a push for elected officials to give a shit to do anything
but fundraise with it.

------
GeneralMayhem
This makes me angry. Not just the story itself, but the way VF goes about
telling it, which commits the same sins (albeit with better intent) as Goldman
Sachs. "So-called 'subversion repository'?" Why don't we just accuse him of
summoning demons while we're at it?

~~~
freyr
Maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but I think the author's emphasizing
that the term itself sounds like damning evidence to anyone who doesn't know
better, since subversion means "a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine
a government or political system by persons working secretly from within."
He's pointing out that agent used such terms without understanding them (or
exploited the public's ignorance to make their case). That's why he put it in
quotes.

Lewis goes on to explain, later in the article, that subversion repositories
are commonly used and aren't evil. He could have explicitly spelled out that
the term subversion relates to version control, but I think he explained it
adequately enough given the intended audience.

~~~
shubb
To be fair to the agent, I think uploading company code to your private third
party repository is pretty bad.

Especially if you are thinking (later in the article, quoting the programmer),
'they wouldn't like it', 'it was like speeding, in a stolen car'.

~~~
gknoy
Oh, I agree, but the point the article seemed to be making was that the agent
thought it was fishy that the _name_ of the repo was "subversion", rather than
"github" or "bobs-useless-code-dump". It was a complete misunderstanding of
what was important (storing code elsewhere), and an ascribing of malicious
intent ("subversive") to it.

------
mcgwiz
Although I acknowledge the sympathetic angle of the article, I cannot fathom
why he would take such a risk.

During my 2 years consulting in global investment banks in NYC, it was
standard practice for all employees, internal or external, with access to
sensitive data or IP to undergo comprehensive IP compliance training and
execution of IP agreements. This had to be performed within a month or so of
engagement or your badge and account would be deactivated. Every year at a
particular client required the training to be repeated.

It was inculcated that violations of such policy had a high likelihood of
being caught and would carry very significant penalties. In my experience,
they successfully established very taboo cultures around transmitting IP out
of their systems.

------
GeneralMayhem
An interesting takeaway from this piece is that GS is blatantly and
systematically violating the terms of the MIT license, GPL, and whatever else
they happen to get their hands on. I'd love nothing more than for the FSF to
take them to court over it.

~~~
vidarh
That's only true if they distribute the code, is it not?

~~~
GeneralMayhem
IANAL, but I don't think so. Practically, probably; legally, unknown.

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
> all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

That makes it sound like ripping the license out and replacing it with a
proprietary one, even for purely internal use, is probably a bad idea. I don't
know who'd be able to sue them for that, though, if the original copyright
"owners" aren't supposed to have seen it in the first place.

Article II of the GPL has a specific exception for transferring GPL-ed
software to employees to work on without letting them spread it beyond that,
but I don't know how much of this that would cover.

~~~
lmm
Copyright only applies when you distribute something. With your internal copy
of something that you don't redistribute you can modify it however you like,
and the GPL or any other copyright license never gets a chance to apply.

------
mathattack
They did mug him, but it's considered a huge no-no in financial services to
take any kind of code home. It's impossible that he didn't know the gravity of
what he was doing when he did it. It's always a terminatable offense at the
very least, and frequently leads to more.

------
cmiles74
Programming is starting to seem like a relatively dangerous kind of work.

------
j_baker
When I took Criminology (or perhaps it was Deviance), my professor made me
read this book: [http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Going-To-
Prison/dp/1559501197](http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Going-To-
Prison/dp/1559501197)

It was written decades ago, and is still relevant today. Sadly, I think
programmers should begin reading it, as prison seems to be growing into a
larger threat for us.

------
amalag
If it was a normal company you could boycott them, but how do you boycott
Goldman Sachs for all they have done?

~~~
xradionut
Why boycott GS? It's their state, country and mostly their world to loot. They
have been above the law for over 80 years. They own the current
administration, courts and congress. I wouldn't doubt it if someone claimed
they had access to much of the NSA collection due to the amount of influence
they have...

------
nonchalance
The best lesson here:

> The fourth, and final, rule was by far the most important: Don’t say a word
> to government officials. “The reason you don’t,” he says, “is that, if you
> do, they can place an agent on a witness stand and he can say anything.”

Aren't you allowed to have a lawyer present in conversations with agents?

~~~
chrisgd
A right he did not exercise

------
ahallock
How does this case not violate the eighth amendment? Or if not that, basic
fucking justice and morality. He's lost everything, spent a year in prison,
was acquitted of federal charges, and now is being charged by NY State? The
justice system is seriously broken.

------
biafra
Where in the article is the actual story? Can someone please point me to the
page and paragraph that contains what actually happened? What did he do?

~~~
ig1
My understanding is he copied a bunch of confidential code off company servers
and then deleted the audit trail from the servers. He claimed that the
confidential code copied was accidental and that he only meant to copy some
open source code.

~~~
kasey_junk
It's a little harsh to say he deleted the audit trail. He deleted his bash
history. Something I do on a near daily basis.

~~~
ig1
The exact details (which aren't disputed) are covered in:

[http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/021110aleyn...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/021110aleynikovindictment.pdf)

Basically he'd written a backup program which was specifically designed to
compress both his home directory and propriety code from elsewhere on the
system into a file (which it would do depended on parameters passed).

On his last day of employment he ran it several times with different
parameters which including copying propriety code. He then encrypted the file
and then uploaded it to a SVN hosting service before deleting the encryption
program and his bash history. Because it was encrypted it bypassed GS's
automated scanners.

He then downloaded the source files to both his laptop and external flash
drive and took them to work at his new employer.

Given the (undisputed) facts, he clearly broke several laws, the question is
whether he was doing it innocently and just being stupid or if he did it with
serious criminal intent.

~~~
kasey_junk
I don't doubt he did something illegal and I don't care particularly what his
reason is.

What is way more troubling to me is how apparently easy it is for Goldman to
get the highest levels of government involved and throw the criminal book at
someone over what is typically a civil matter.

~~~
ig1
Any company can ask for a criminal referral on a corporate espionage case
(United States v. Nosal is a major one), and while it's becoming more common
it's still pretty unusual for companies of all sizes because it's often
expensive for the company involved (legal counsel, staff time, etc) and means
that they lose control of the case.

------
mabhatter
Black and white letter of the law, he should not have sent the modified Open
Source programs home. The modifications really would be the employers property
and the employer has all the power to release them. That said, he had been
sending the files home to work on all along (before changing jobs) and never
was EXPRESSLY TOLD to stop. That is why the original case would have been
tossed as there was noillegal access" going on.

The second case for sending secrets is closer to legit. But only because if
you send secrets out at all, if you didn't have permission, it could be
illegal.

The REAL issue is font work for asshats that don't play nice. Alternately,
accept that as a programmer mixing hobby Open Source projects with your
Employment projects is a recipe for trouble.. Take their money and be a sucky
leacher.. Or post your fixes to maintainers from home, reengineered solely at
home with no files from work.

As somebody who does admin work, its a great excuse just to not take work home
at all unless its on my company laptop.

------
Tycho
_Russians had a reputation for being the best programmers on Wall Street_

Is that true?

(the rest of the paragraph was interesting, and worth repeating for anyone who
read the whole article):

 _Serge thought he knew why: they had been forced to learn programming without
the luxury of endless computer time. “In Russia, time on the computer was
measured in minutes,” he says. “When you write a program, you are given a tiny
time slot to make it work. Consequently we learned to write the code in a way
that minimized the amount of debugging. And so you had to think about it a lot
before you committed it to paper. . . . The ready availability of computer
time creates this mode of working where you just have an idea and type it and
maybe erase it 10 times. Good Russian programmers, they tend to have had that
one experience at some time in the past: the experience of limited access to
computer time.”_

------
fnordfnordfnord
IIRC one speculation on the matter was that the information that was taken
would have proven that GS engages in all sorts of illegal and rule-bending
trading strategies (say it ain't so).

edit: added quote from court record below.

 _"...because of the way this software interfaces with the various markets and
exchanges, the bank has raised a possibility that there is a danger that
somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets
in unfair ways."_

See page 8
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/17191934/USAvSergeyAleynikov-7409-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/17191934/USAvSergeyAleynikov-7409-Full)

------
cupcake-unicorn
I don't have anything useful to say, but: "Serge figured, it was a matter of
unfolding the box, turning a three-dimensional object into a one-dimensional
surface"

Now how does one do that? :) And he shouldn't have had to used the Pythagorean
theorem on just a one dimensional line...

Sigh. Just thought it was funny, since the article was about how
programming/technical jargon goes over the heads of jurors, the FBI, etc. but
seems like the article writer isn't immune to it either :)

~~~
jmaygarden
There are multiple ways to unfold a box into 2 dimensions. For example, see
this printable pattern that you can try at home [1].

Also, how else would you determine the distance between two coordinates in a
plane without using the Pythagorean theorem [2]? It's not like he could use a
measuring tape in an imaginary, unfolded room.

EDIT: I reread your post and see that you are pointing out a typo. The phrase
"one-dimensional surface" was obviously meant to be "two-dimensional surface."
A one-dimensional surface is non-sense.

[1]
[http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/coloringpages/l/blboxtempla...](http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/coloringpages/l/blboxtemplate.htm)

[2]
[http://www.purplemath.com/modules/distform.htm](http://www.purplemath.com/modules/distform.htm)

~~~
cupcake-unicorn
Yes, sorry - I was pointing out the "one dimensional" typo.

------
vermontdevil
And now he's being charged by the state of New York. This will never end as
long as Goldman Sachs continues to pull the strings, I fear.

------
vijucat
I have worked with Goldman and UBS. UBS, to it's credit, has taken a liberal
stance and explicitly addresses contributions to Open Source : if they are
done on your own time, that's fine. Goldman, in contrast, had the usual,
"anything and everything you do or do not belongs to us" agreement.

------
hawkw
ITT: journalists don't "get" programming.

~~~
bmj
It sounds like a couple of tech-savvy journalists should start the equivalent
of [http://getreligion.org](http://getreligion.org).

------
metaphorm
A reminder everyone, the only thing you should ever say to a law enforcement
officer is "I'd like to see my attorney."

------
justinhj
The only thing I find odd is the deleting of the bash history. There are no
passwords in there, unless you type one by accident.

~~~
beerscout
If he used wget (or similar utility) he could specify password as a command
line argument. It's not a very good practice security-wise but people do this
sometimes.

------
snake_plissken
Like the opening of the Vanity Fair article, I never and still do not
understand exactly what he did that is illegal.

------
Fuxy
That's the problem with the American judicial system. Whenever they want to
convict someone innocent of a bullshit crime they just assemble of idiots who
just say guilty to go home to their trailer. Have they heard of the phrase
"jury of their pears" that actually means pears not of the same species. I
wouldn't consider any of the people on that jury my pears.

~~~
tomjen3
jury of one's peers n. a guaranteed right of criminal defendants, in which
"peer" means an "equal." This has been interpreted by courts to mean that the
available jurors include a broad spectrum of the population, particularly of
race, national origin and gender. Jury selection may include no process which
excludes those of a particular race or intentionally narrows the spectrum of
possible jurors. It does not mean that women are to be tried by women, Asians
by Asians, or African Americans by African Americans.

[http://legal-
dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/jury+of+one's+...](http://legal-
dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/jury+of+one's+peers)

But originally jury of ones peers was a right of (so called noble) Englishmen
to be judged by other lords, and not by commoners. Sadly, it does not give
intellectual people the right to be judged by others with above room
temperature IQ (what is it they say, a jury consists of 12 people not smart
enough to get out jury duty?).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Sadly, it does not give intellectual people the right to be judged by others
> with above room temperature IQ

The closest English precedent for that was not the "jury of one's peers" but
the "benefit of clergy".

------
jrochkind1
Man, talk about risks computer programmers don't usually consider in taking a
job on wall street.

------
pawrvx
Goldman is above the law.

------
known
Paranoid?

------
kenjagi
That article is riddled with inaccuracies.

~~~
chrisgd
Try listing them

~~~
gd1
His 'second jury' were comical.

"Most were surprised by how little he had taken in relation to the whole:
eight megabytes in a platform that consisted of an estimated one gigabyte of
code. "

Really? One gigabyte of code? Or one gigabyte of third party binaries,
precompiled libraries, documentation etc.? All you need are the source files,
and those language keywords compress nicely. Exactly how much plain text do
you think they have?

' "But that’s the secret sauce, if there is one,” said the juror. “If you’re
going to take something, take the strats.” '

Rubbish. The strats are the easy (or at least easier) bit in the high
frequency space. That's like taking a dump of the html from facebook/twitter
and thinking you've stolen their site. It's the scalable, distributed
infrastructure that drives large websites, and it's the fastest possible
infrastructure that drives HFT. One thing Lewis got right is the Coke/Pepsi
analogy, and it really is that simple. A straight up race.

" “It’s way easier to start from scratch.” "

It is, and it isn't. In even the worst codebase there will be nuggets of
usefulness that will accelerate the process. Isolated parts of the system that
you've perfected. Exchange message decoders for example (ITCH, FIX/FAST,
etc.). This is especially true when you, the genius who will be starting from
scratch, has worked on it for a few years. I assume he was doing something
useful in his time at Goldman.

I'm not buying the innocent act.

~~~
defen
> In even the worst codebase there will be nuggets of usefulness that will
> accelerate the process. Isolated parts of the system that you've perfected.
> Exchange message decoders for example (ITCH, FIX/FAST, etc.). This is
> especially true when you, the genius who will be starting from scratch, has
> worked on it for a few years. I assume he was doing something useful in his
> time at Goldman.

The new system was going to be written in a different language than what
Goldman uses.

~~~
gd1
And? How does that make it any less useful to have the existing code as a
guide?

~~~
defen
I don't know...having the existing code available seems like it would be more
useful for the "strat" stuff than for the infrastructure, if you posit that
it's all going to be rewritten from scratch in a different language. But I
don't know shit about trading, so maybe I'm wrong.

------
jmduke
This is the first front-paged post I know of where nobody's invoked
Betteridge's Law of Headlines, which I find particularly ironic.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

~~~
mcgwiz
The article was very sympathetic toward Aleynikov and accounts his acquittal
on appeal, so it breaks that "law" (which IMHO is upheld primarily due to
confirmation bias).

~~~
jmduke
_which IMHO is upheld primarily due to confirmation bias_

I agree; this was my point. Its frustrating to trot out a trite middlebrow
dismissal for when we don't like something and to pretend it doesn't exist
otherwise.

------
sneak
I haven't clicked through, but only the government (via prosecutors) can
charge anyone with criminal offenses.

Additionally, while private people can suggest charges or report crimes,
ultimately they have zero say one way or the other if charges actually get
filed.

See also: Apple/DoJ/Gawker, ATT/Apple/DoJ/weev, JSTOR/MIT/aaronsw

~~~
s_q_b
>only the government (via prosecutors) can charge anyone with criminal
offenses.

That's almost universally true, but some states still do in fact have the
right of private prosecution. E.g. New Jersey allows you to swear out a
criminal complaint directly to a magistrate, and there isn't a damn thing the
police or a prosecutor can do about it.

Private prosecutions used to be the norm. It's actually a very powerful force
against police corruption, and I wish it hadn't gone away in so many states.

Also, in cases like this, the prosecutors will generally defer to the desires
of the victim, especially when the victim is one of the world's most powerful
corporations.

