US Levels Espionage Charges Against 6 Chinese Nationals 100
Taco Cowboy writes: The U.S. government has indicted five Chinese citizens and arrested a Chinese professor on charges of economic espionage. The government alleges that they took jobs at two small, American chipmakers — Avago Technologies and Skyworks Solutions — in order to steal microelectronics designs. "All of them worked, the indictment contends, to steal trade secrets for a type of chip popularly known as a “filter” that is used for acoustics in mobile telephones, among other purposes. They took the technology back to Tianjin University, created a joint venture company with the university to produce the chips, and soon were selling them to both the Chinese military and to commercial customers."
It's interesting to note that the Reuters article keeps mentioning how this technology — used commonly as an acoustic filter — has "military applications." It's also interesting to look at another recent case involving Shirrey Chen, a hydrologist who was mysteriously arrested on suspicion of espionage, but then abruptly cleared five months later. One can't help but wonder what's driving the U.S.'s new strategy for tackling economic espionage.
It's interesting to note that the Reuters article keeps mentioning how this technology — used commonly as an acoustic filter — has "military applications." It's also interesting to look at another recent case involving Shirrey Chen, a hydrologist who was mysteriously arrested on suspicion of espionage, but then abruptly cleared five months later. One can't help but wonder what's driving the U.S.'s new strategy for tackling economic espionage.
Change of tactics? (Score:2)
Perhaps they've studied the SEC, and are now realising that a shakedown racket pays far better than justice?
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The topic at hand is industrial espionage. Either point out actual cases of this or STFU.
Perhaps you have not been paying attention to current events. [cnn.com] Oh, it's easy to complain when someone else does it to YOU, isn't it?
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There is also the General Electric - Enercon windmill case a couple of years back.
Re:On behalf of planet earth (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't read your own linked story. The USA snoops on powers but doesn't hand that over to corporations. OTOH, the Chinese snoops #1 priority is to steal everything nailed down so that they can duplicate it for economic gain. Pretty much complete opposites.
Re:On behalf of planet earth (Score:4, Interesting)
[Proof needed]. What fucking sense does it make for the NSA to spy on Brazil's deep-ocean oil drilling technologies if not for giving that info to American* companies?
* Gee, I wonder if Bush's family wouldn't benefit from that info. Noooo, that kind of corruption does not exist, the government is pristine.
There was a similar case like this in Australia where the Australian Federal Police were spying in order to gain advantage in a gas resources [smh.com.au] deal with poor - and recently "liberated" - neighbor East Timor. When it came to light, the Australian lawyer representing East Timor was roughed up and had documents seized.
These are just the cases we hear about. Presumably the secret service manage to keep their operations secret some of the time.
Re:On behalf of planet earth (Score:5, Informative)
The USA snoops on powers but doesn't hand that over to corporations.
[Proof needed]. What fucking sense does it make for the NSA to spy on Brazil's deep-ocean oil drilling technologies if not for giving that info to American* companies?
Monitoring violations of the Benthic Treaty.
Re: On behalf of planet earth (Score:2)
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A few minor tweaks holds true as well.
Re: On behalf of planet earth (Score:2)
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All german parties except of the CDU/CSU (which are "sister parties"), led by the leftists, who were created from the remaining parts of the totalitarian SED that governed the GDR, and, out of this "tradition", have a very anti-US and pro-russia position (nicely observable in the debate about ukraine), agree that this form of espionage is far too much. There has been some critical politicians before too, but now, after two years of snowden, we finally see something really moving inside political berlin. Thi
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Germany isn't a colony.
Bwahahaha. Poor deluded person. Germany does not have the capability to defend itself against anything. They delegated their military defense to the USA now they have to pay the price.
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I really hope you are being sarcastic or something, and you don't really think that...
The German airforce has over 200 front line offensive aircraft in its inventory, 109 of them being the Eurofighter.
The German army has over 230 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, a tank commonly held as one of the best in the world, and over 150 PzH 2000 self propelled guns, again commonly held as one of the best in the world.
The German navy has 81 commissioned ships in service, 43 of them front line offensive in nature.
Germany
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I really hope you are being sarcastic or something, and you don't really think that...
The German airforce has over 200 front line offensive aircraft in its inventory, 109 of them being the Eurofighter.
The German army has over 230 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, a tank commonly held as one of the best in the world, and over 150 PzH 2000 self propelled guns, again commonly held as one of the best in the world.
The German navy has 81 commissioned ships in service, 43 of them front line offensive in nature.
Germany isn't exactly a nation I would want to currently face in battle, not even with a top tier military such as the US, France, UK et al - those military's would almost certainly win any competition, but they wouldn't come out unscathed....
Dude, you might want to check this: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns (Feb, 19, 2015) [washingtonpost.com]
Or this older article from 2014: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-german-military-faces-a-major-challenge-from-disrepair/2014/09/30/e0b7997c-ea40-42be-a68b-e1d45a87b926_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
Hell, just google "Germany military equipment problems". When German soldiers have to use broomsticks to hide the facts they did not have heavy machine guns during a NAT
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Until you see Russians who aren't carrying broomsticks.
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As a German, I'd rather see Germans with broomsticks and a healthy economy...
Because those two are so mutually exclusive. You people are dumb. If you do not want to be an armed country, that's great, just be open about it as opposed to pretending to have an army with broomsticks in lieu of heavy machine guns.
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Yes, it turns out the ministry of defense is just a large money printing machine for Heckler & Koch, and friends.
Guttemberg has wanted to change this, and started reforms, but then suprise suprise his doctor title based on copy+paste. What a coincidence it became public right then.
Let's see what they find out about von der Leyen...
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Greece has more tanks than Germany. That's how few tanks Germany has. Russia has like 10x the amount of tanks.
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Greece has 353 Leopard 2 MBTs. Russia has 930 T-90s, 4500 T-80s in reserve, 8000 T-72 MBTs in reserve.
Russia also has 443 Su-27 derived aircraft.
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Greece has 353 Leopard 2 MBTs. Russia has 930 T-90s, 4500 T-80s in reserve, 8000 T-72 MBTs in reserve.
Russia also has 443 Su-27 derived aircraft.
Greece actually has an enemy right on its border that it might plausibly go to war with in the not too distant future... Germany not so much.
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What enemy is on Greeces border?? Turkey is a Greek ally, they are pledged to defend each other
Russia does not border with Greece, but Kaliningrad is right near to Germany, just a quick hop over the Baltic
Turkey and Greece are both members of NATO but, while being NATO member states have still almost gone to war! The border is still full of land mines.
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You are exaggerating, but there is some truth to that, for sure.
Maybe it's worth mentioning that due to some cataclysmic events you might have heard about in history class, Germany has issues with many things related to patriotism and militarism.
It's no joke. Expressing patriotism or sympathy for militarism is kind of taboo and still frowned upon in Germany.
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How about the Netherlands? Who did they invade? Same thing they don't spend on their own defense. Last thing I heard from them was how they sold all their tanks. Used to have 100 Leopard 2. Now 0.
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Might as well roll the red carpet and let the Russians in.
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Eckhard, die Russen sind da!
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The Durch are to busy partying. I mean, who would want to drive around in a cramped and smelly tank when you have one of the highest living standards in the world and Amsterdam?
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Pray Vlad doesn't roll his tanks over Europe then.
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The worst lie is a half truth. The left party was created as a fusion of PDS (itself a successor of SED, true enough) and WASG. Now WASG never had anything to do with DDR, being a party of disillusioned former social democrat party members from West Germany. This way the majority of the left party is just what SPD used to be once upon a time, but with the additional bonus of Gregor Gysi - a brilliant
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The majority of SED leftovers actually went to east-CDU. And now we have an ex FDJ secretary for propaganda as a chancellor. I'd take Gysi instead anytime.
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All german parties except of the CDU/CSU (which are "sister parties"), led by the leftists, who were created from the remaining parts of the totalitarian SED that governed the GDR, and, out of this "tradition", have a very anti-US and pro-russia position
Are you serious? That is ridiculous. The FDP (liberal party), the SPD (social democrats) and the Green Party are not pro-Russians. None of the parties are pro Russian except the extreme left (Die Linke) and the extreme right (NPD, AfD).
There is some pro-Russian sentiment among many former citizens of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), but the vast majority of Germans, especially in West Germany, are very pro USA. Most Germans were actually quite let down by recent revelations that the US does no
already tit-for-tat (Score:2)
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:2, Insightful)
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That's the point of making noise about these arrests. Distract people from what the US is doing, maybe drum up some support for it because after all everyone else is doing it... Make China look like the big bad, to justify offensive hacking.
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Bullshit.
http://www.bbc.com/news/259075... [bbc.com]
http://www.spiegel.de/internat... [spiegel.de]
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You should do stand-up
Using the same logic (Score:1)
Using the same logic Wernher von Braun should have been arrested, charged and sentences for espionage when he learn rocket making secrets, financed by one type of government, and soon was contributing to the manufacturing of rocket devices in USA.
You know, rocket devices have huge economic potential, as well as potential military applications.
You can bet that Germany can present enough evidence and collect serious royalties for USA, including late fees, for all the benefits and gains attributable to von Bra
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it wouldn't be a trade secret if it was on a patent.
it's quite likely that in this case there wasn't that much of secrets anyways, that weren't "common industry knowledge" that they just happened to learn in these two companies.
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I'm pretty sure Von Braun never visited nazi germany again after leaving it(would have been pretty hard to do).
anyways, it's probably some feedback filter. and military applications? yeah, they use walkie talkies.
totally ground breaking tech only available from the few small companies? veery fucking unlikely. doubt they even had decent patent protection.
Re: Using the same logic (Score:2)
"Theft" of trade secrets? Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I learned about this stuff, companies basically had two options to protect their technology: patents and trade secrets.
- If you file for a patent, the theory is that you tell the whole world how it works, but get the exclusive right to produce it yourself, or license it to others. Yes, the patent system has problems, but that's theory. This is supposed to help technology advance, because you can build on other people's work.
- If you go with a trade secret (think: the secret recipe for Coca Cola), that means that you don't want to publish the information, so you receive no protection from the government. Protecting the secret is up to you; if someone steals it, that's your problem. This lack of protection is deliberate, providing motivation for filing patents and publishing information.
What I didn't know is that in 1996, the government passed the Economic Espionage Act [wikipedia.org]. This essentially grants government protection to trade secrets, not only by criminalizing their theft (but that is likely a criminal act anyway), but also by criminalizing the use of the trade secrets by another company.
Of course, the act also explicitly exempts the government; the government can spy on you as much as it wants.
The act also funds the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. You've gotta admire the US Congress - they never miss an opportunity to include pork.
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Never assume that ALL your Chinese workers are in (Score:2)
Re: Never assume that ALL your Chinese workers are (Score:2)
military applications (Score:2)
'...article keeps mentioning how this technology â" used commonly as an acoustic filter â" has "military applications."'
Sure. Soldiers communicate. So do civilians. A soldier has to shit too. I guess if they were stealing the recipee for Charmin that would also be military secrets.
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Again, if everything that could have some important use to the military is kept from the public then the rest of us do what? Go back to living in caves? Oh, wait.. those might be good bomb shelters...
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I guess if they were stealing the recipee for Charmin that would also be military secrets.
No that is civilian tech only. For the military version they need to talk to 3M [3m.com].
Re: military applications (Score:2)
Once more into the breech, dear friends. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no problem with going after people who steal trade secrets, anything more than I have a problem with going after people who steal nuclear secrets. The only thing is that the FBI has a long history of racist paranoia about Chinese scientists, from Quan Xuesen in the early 50s to Wen Ho Lee in the 90s.
Rhwew may well of a legitimate case against these guys and if they do I hope they nail the bastards. But I'm not jumping to any conclusions based on FBI say-so.
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That or they've seen a long-term pattern. Only the fools deny that this is exactly what's happening.
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Not 1st time: one year ago (to the day) (Score:2)
Wall Street Journal:
U.S. Charges Five in Chinese Army With Hacking
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304422704579571604060696532
Better get more visa workers to replace them (Score:1)
Not as if there is any risk in hiring foreign nations. Absolutely no chance that our trade secrets are going to go to countries that do not respect our laws, and may be hostile to our interests, and already have a near monopoly on our manufacturing.
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What, you thought America didn't have criminals or greedy people?
Byproduct of a patent-and-monopoly mindset? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if this is a byproduct of the general corporate tendency to look at "innovation" as a way to get a patent which is then used to enforce a monopoly and collect rents. Collecting rents is a disincentive towards more innovation, product improvements and other business efficiencies. Why compete when you can just charge rents?
If there wasn't a patent-and-monopoly mindset, perhaps there would be greater effort put into innovation as a means to more rapidly improve products (as well as a focus on other business efficiencies). If somebody "stole" your IP in this model, it would matter less because your pace of innovation may render the stolen IP retrograde by the time it was turned into useful products, and your sales would be driven by the strength of your products not because you had a legalized monopoly.
USA handles industrial espionage THE AMERICAN WAY (Score:3)
Avago and Skyworks are massive (Score:3, Informative)
"two small, American chipmakers — Avago Technologies and Skyworks Solutions"
Avago has a market cap over 30 billion, and Skyworks is almost a 20 billion dollar company. They're not exactly garage start-ups, and everyone in the RF world recognizes them as being quite big players.
taco, it is driven by spies. (Score:2)
More useful than the dumb War on Terror (Score:1)
The impact of actions like this is many many many times greater than any impact from the stupid waste on spying on Americans for the War on Terror.
The only spying that has worked has been that actually done in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other real threats.
So, about time.