Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 228 posts

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#121

Post by ChuckMcM »

waffle_ss wrote: post #20

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 th…

The best answer to the question "Can I ask you a few questions?" is "Sure! Just give me your card and I'll have my attorney set something up."

Gives them nowhere to go but home.

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#122

Post by jonknee »

marvin wrote: post #52
drone wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all persons on US soil are to be protected by the constitution. (Not withstanding specific incidents of abuse, the fact that one is, or isn't a citizen is not intended to have any effect on the constitutional rights available.)

Is it really as simple as this in practice? Does anyone have any experience with this? As a foreigner, I have huge respect for the amount of trouble that the immigration authorities can cause for you if they figure they don't like your face.

He would have been quite lucky to be deported. It's also sadly a much different game when you have access to funds--most people don't call a lawyer because it's expensive.

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#123

Post by 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 :)

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#124

Post by psychometry »

rhizome wrote: post #104
waffle_ss wrote: post #20

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 th…

Even more on point: ALWAYS record interactions with the FBI: http://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/11/why-the-fbi-doesnt-reco... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130516/18383623114/your-w... http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/05/10/beware-fbi-whe... http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20070402_FBI_Me...

Unless you live in a multiple-party wiretap consent state, in which case you've committed additional crimes.

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#125

Post by jonknee »

walshemj wrote: post #81
melling wrote: post #18

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.

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.

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

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#126

Post by sgt101 »

minimax wrote: post #112
noonespecial wrote: post #21

“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 unde…

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."

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.

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#127

Post by gknoy »

shubb wrote: post #89
freyr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

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'.

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.

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#128

Post by jmaygarden »

cupcake-unicorn wrote: post #123

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, et…

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...

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

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#129

Post by defen »

gd1 wrote: post #79
chrisgd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try listing them

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…

> 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.

Re: Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

#130

Post by [deleted] »

rhizome wrote: post #104
waffle_ss wrote: post #20

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 th…

Even more on point: ALWAYS record interactions with the FBI: http://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/11/why-the-fbi-doesnt-reco... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130516/18383623114/your-w... http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/05/10/beware-fbi-whe... http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20070402_FBI_Me...

[deleted]
Post reply on HN