Live data from Hacker News

Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

apnews.com

311–320 of 497 posts

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American government will spy, but will not explicitly spy to provide IP directly to a private company like Boeing or Lockheed, as this enters felony level corruption territory due to the Procurement Integrity Act, Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, and the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The main difference is DGSE would explicitly attempt to steal American IP and then provide it to Thales or Dassault.

They may not provide direct R&D details but they will provide direct information about offers price, negotiation status etc. This is part of the Snowden leaks that people seems to have completely forgotten. https://wikileaks.org/nsa-france/spyorder/#spyorder2

IANAL but Competitive Intel around pricing and SKUs isn't IP except in certain cases.

If they were, just about every single private sector company globally would be guilty of IP infringement, let alone Public-Private Partnerships like the ones I mentioned.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#312

[flagged]

> It's the stated policy of the Chinese government that /all/ Chinese nationals are responsible to participate in, aid, and abet Chinese intelligence efforts

> If you hire Chinese nationals in your tech company, you can be assured they are committing espionage

One does not follow the other. Prejudice.

I have a dual citizenship, and my other government says all sorts of things about my supposed allegiances that I vehemently disagree with. I am not my governments’ property.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#313

[flagged]

> It's the stated policy of the Chinese government that /all/ Chinese nationals are responsible to participate in, aid, and abet Chinese intelligence efforts > If you hire Chinese nationals in your tech company, you can be assured they are committing espionage One does not follow the other. Prejudice. I have a dual citizenship, and my other government says all sorts of things about my supposed allegiances that I vehe…

> I am not my governments’ property.

That quickly changes when one has loved ones or assets inside the Fascist country. This has been done to many dual citizenship nationals.

Anyone originally from a country controlled by a tyrannical system should most definitely seize all connections to it otherwise they are opening themselves up to being a liability such as what OP is saying.

And this is coming from one of those people.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a model that is not financed through extortion. By granting a small part of the population rights and duties that would be criminal for anyone else to perform (do you even have a right to extort, kidnap, and murder?), you are playing people against each other and perpetuating a struggle for control of the government to act on their behalf, at the expense of everyone else. governance ≠ government As long as e…

Do you have a practical solution that you think people would adopt?

Law without government - Robert P. Murphy

https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8pcb4xyCic

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely can be. In the US there are many different ways in which they can overlap as a matter of law. There are myriad frameworks similar to ITAR that place a national security interest on trade secrets or block public disclosure e.g. patents (which effectively turns them into trade secrets). Your average web dev probably isn’t familiar but navigating this is a routine consideration in deep tech.

Real, and quasi-real national security projects require more stringent background checks than the ones unnecessarily used in most "average web dev" [sic] recruitment processes, and some come with citizenship requirements. I know, because that's one of the reasons I don't work on such projects. ofc, like in any security-related field, many are LARPing instead of practicing, and that's a different issue.

It is more nuanced than this. A startup is virtually never a "national security project" even if they end up involved in an actual national security project. The kinds of background checks startups do are the same as any other company in any industry. It has nothing to do with national security. There are many things that can factor into a citizenship constraint depending on the type of business.

A "real" national security background check requires support and sponsorship from a national government, and governments don't provide that casually to anyone that asks. If a startup finds themselves with national security customers, there is no requirement for the startup to go full-on Secret Squirrel but governments will calibrate their trust in the startup by how seriously the startup takes security and how diligent they are when vetting employees. It does not involve everyone getting a security clearance, which would not be possible anyway if the startup works with multiple national governments.

I find the opposite situation is more common in practice: startups that find themselves in the national security space are often naive about what constitutes a baseline level of security, vetting their employees, and the pervasiveness and character of espionage programs.

It is important to recognize that national security considerations are starting to affect startups that never go anywhere near national security customers due to escalating concerns and increased rigor around software supply chains. You may not have an interest in national security but national security may take an interest in you. This has ramifications for many software business models.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#316

I find it funny how Google is presenting this. These statements don't really mesh well. > “We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in a statement. > Ding [..] began uploading hundreds of files into a personal Google Cloud account two years ago. > He resigned from Google last Dec. 26. Three days later, Google off…

[deleted]

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#317

[flagged]

> It's the stated policy of the Chinese government that /all/ Chinese nationals are responsible to participate in, aid, and abet Chinese intelligence efforts > If you hire Chinese nationals in your tech company, you can be assured they are committing espionage One does not follow the other. Prejudice. I have a dual citizenship, and my other government says all sorts of things about my supposed allegiances that I vehe…

> I am not my governments’ property.

Your government might have a different opinion on the subject.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> employ and inform your enemies This is literally presumption of guilt based on where someone was born. It's the literal definition of prejudice . Very illiberal. Mind you, I am not claiming that you have to be liberal. I just want honesty and consistency. If we all oppose China because they threaten liberty, then we must protect liberty. But if you oppose China just because it's a pissing contest between superpower…

> This is literally presumption of guilt based on where someone was born. Not where someone is born, but whom they owe allegiance to. If you do not discriminate based on someone's allegiances, then on what basis would you expect it to be appropriate to discriminate? The idea that all discrimination is immoral or unethical is not only suspect, it's clearly foolhardy. China is an enemy to everyone who is not China, the…

Being born someone does not force you to have an undying allegiance to that place, what are you on about?

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is literally presumption of guilt based on where someone was born. Not where someone is born, but whom they owe allegiance to. If you do not discriminate based on someone's allegiances, then on what basis would you expect it to be appropriate to discriminate? The idea that all discrimination is immoral or unethical is not only suspect, it's clearly foolhardy. China is an enemy to everyone who is not China, the…

Being born someone does not force you to have an undying allegiance to that place, what are you on about?

I don't think your response is in good faith, since you are responding to a comment where I explicitly say that I have made no reference to where someone is born, only to their allegiance.

Do you not understand what the term "national" means? A significant number of US nationals were not born here, being born here is not a prerequisite to be a national. While the same is largely not true for China, there are many people born in China who are no longer Chinese nationals because they have renounced their citizenship as part of immigrating and naturalizing elsewhere. The statement I made is not about ethnicity or birthplace, it's about allegiance. /Every/ citizen of China is required by Chinese law to participate in espionage either directly or indirectly as requested, and they are requested, the evidence is insurmountable.

Post reply on HN