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Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

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

#151

Post by appdeveloper »

nohuck13 wrote: post #120

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…

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

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

#152

Post by iopq »

Fuxy wrote: post #87

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.

jury of my pears? Why would the jury consist of fruits?

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

#153

Post by dredmorbius »

j_baker wrote: post #97
zeteo wrote: post #48

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 enfo…

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.

Note that even denials, e.g., "I have no idea of what you're talking about", can result in charges, if they're provably false (e.g., there's a record you do know what they're talking about -- email, twitter, writings, conversations, etc.). These typically lead to various "obstruction" charges.

Simply refuse to comment.

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

#154

Post by defen »

gd1 wrote: post #136
defen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

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.

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

#155

Post by qdpb »

tomp wrote: post #33
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…

Are you sure about that? Do non-Americans have the same rights as Americans? Can they refuse to talk to the police, refuse to let the police into their home without a warrant, have an attorney present, ...?

He most definitely is an American now. Otherwise he would be deported by now.

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

#156

Post by mindslight »

kasey_junk wrote: post #12
ig1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

What are the benefits of not simply putting 'unset HISTFILE' in your shell rc?

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

#157

Post by biero »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #150
biero wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's up to Goldman (and the terms of the license). It is really up to the license, Goldman either selected licenses where they could legally avoid sending upstream changes or planned to violate the law in secrecy. If they did the latter on just one license, then he should qualify as a whistle blower.

what common open source licenses would require them to send changes upstream? Or really, what licenses would require them to release the modified code to the public? GPL requires you to make source code available to anyone who you distribute the program to. If you're just putting code on servers, there's no obligation. Even if you distribute internally, you usually are technically distributing to the company for inst…

Sorry to spread FUD, I was under the impression that non-OSI compliant licenses sometimes made this requirement, but I can't find any actual examples so maybe it was an overly cautious question I was always answering 'no' to to get import approval.

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

#159

Post by jlgreco »

reginaldjcooper wrote: post #61
sneak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you add "jury nullification" to the mass emails also? That's what I tell my friends and family about.

If I ever get "fuck you" money, I am going to entertain myself by renting billboard space around courtrooms urging jurors to Google "jury nullification". I figure there would probably be some entertaining fallout of some sort.
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