Nabbed at airport,Apple engineer was fleeing with secrets to self-driving cars

[Homer J Simpson]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/07/11/former-apple-employee-charged-self-driving-car-data-theft/774643002/

[Marco]

"Apple informed the FBI about the data taken, which included a 25-page document containing electrical schematics for a circuit board used in Apple’s proprietary self-driving project."

He was working on circuit board design and he downloaded a circuit board design ... the whole taking some shit from the lab while on paternity leave sounds weird, but presumably he only took it to his own workspace, or they'd have pinned it on him as well. A whole lot of circumstantial bullshit and no proof he actually passed anything on, or even that he took any valuable data at all. A PCB design certainly isn't valuable, it tells you some of the parameters of their design, but he already had those in his head any way.

If that's the best evidence they have, I'd consider the possibility he was just being stupid and took some work home.

[filssavi]

Sure sounds to me like he was just being stupid and took some work home.

I won't say a word about claims and accusation since nobody apart from apple, the investigators and the emplyee have enough details to speak.

However if the policy of your employer is that you don't take anything home, then it's quite simple...

You don't take anything home.

It might not be the case for outside contractors, but in hardware, if a company pays you to develop something, that thing is legally theirs, no ifs or buts, if they don't allow you to take the circuit home you just don't.

[Marco]

No shit, but if simply downloading internal documents out of stupidity was enough to justify criminal proceedings for theft Hillary Clinton should be in jail

[coppice]

It might not be the case for outside contractors, but in hardware, if a company pays you to develop something, that thing is legally theirs, no ifs or buts, if they don't allow you to take the circuit home you just don't.

If I take the plans I am in trouble. However, if I designed those plans, go somewhere else, and implement almost the same thing I am only in trouble if I incorporate something patented. Much of what makes an experienced engineer more valuable than a novice is their ability to regurgitate proven successful ideas from the earlier work.

There is a deep hypocrisy in much of intellectual property thinking. People want their own work protected, but can only function if they are free to copy everything from the past and much of what is from the present.

[TerraHertz]

There is a deep hypocrisy in much of intellectual property thinking. People want their own work protected, but can only function if they are free to copy everything from the past and much of what is from the present.

Totally agree. The entire system of IP (patents, copyright, etc) has become a perversion of the original intent.
Originally conceived to ensure inventors saw fair return on their work, it's now used by corporations as a tool to suppress competition and innovation.
The original patent term under the 1790 Patent Act was decided individually for each patent, but "not exceeding fourteen years"
The first federal copyright act, the Copyright Act of 1790 granted copyright for a term of "fourteen years from the time of recording the title thereof", with a right of renewal for another fourteen years if the author survived to the end of the first term.

Both have since been extended over and over, to absurd durations. Copyright in particular keeps being extended, at the urging (bribery) of the large movie and printed works corporations. If they have their way, no content will ever go 'copyright expired' ever again. Companies acquire 'patent portfolios' that cover enough that they could sue and ruin any small manufacturer for doing almost anything. And they do, when any startup looks like potentially becoming serious competition. With many of the patents being ridiculous rubbish that wouldn't stand up in court, but no individual could afford the legal fees. Meanwhile the large companies all mostly leave each other alone, in a kind of Mexican standoff between their portfolios.

About the Apple case - we have no way of knowing if the charges are truth or lies. The part about PCB layout and schematics doesn't make sense, since that would never be any big secret. As soon as they sell a product, someone's going to open it up and reverse engineer, so what?
When parts of a news story are senseless, it usually means someone is making stuff up, to obscure the real story.
I wonder if he was trying to leak information about something Apple is designing, that the public would consider unethical? Would not surprise me at all.

[donotdespisethesnake]

A company who I worked for was paranoid about leaks of "their" source code. After I worked on the code, I realised it was not because they wanted to keep their IP secret, but they wanted to conceal the fact they were copying other people's IP left right and center!

[tsman]

A company who I worked for was paranoid about leaks of "their" source code. After I worked on the code, I realised it was not because they wanted to keep their IP secret, but they wanted to conceal the fact they were copying other people's IP left right and center!

This is the reason for why GPU vendors don't open source their full drivers. The open source version if it exists at all is cut down and missing most of the advanced features. Nobody rocks the boat too much though as they're all pinching stuff off each other and pointing fingers will mean too much attention on their own IP infringing driver.

[ajb]

If that's the best evidence they have, I'd consider the possibility he was just being stupid and took some work home.

Nah, it looks much worse for him based on the criminal complaint.  Ars Technica sums it up:

They discovered that Zhang's activity on the Apple network had "increased exponentially" in the days before Zhang announced his departure.

According to the FBI, Zhang downloaded numerous documents from Apple's network and transferred them to his wife's personal laptop. The information Zhang took was "largely technical in nature, including engineering schematics, technical reference materials, and technical reports."

Authorities also say Zhang "admitted to removing items" from Apple's campus, including "two circuit boards and a Linux server from the hardware lab."

[joeqsmith]

Sure sounds to me like he was just being stupid and took some work home.

I won't say a word about claims and accusation since nobody apart from apple, the investigators and the emplyee have enough details to speak.

However if the policy of your employer is that you don't take anything home, then it's quite simple...

You don't take anything home.

It might not be the case for outside contractors, but in hardware, if a company pays you to develop something, that thing is legally theirs, no ifs or buts, if they don't allow you to take the circuit home you just don't.

Yes. 

I remember a case in the 80s where TI had two of their engineers arrested for stealing designs for a speech system they were working on.  The police raided their homes and took all of their equipment for evidence.    The engineers so no harm and their defense was they took the designs home out of personal interest.  I don't remember what damages were awarded.   

[vk6zgo]

A company who I worked for was paranoid about leaks of "their" source code. After I worked on the code, I realised it was not because they wanted to keep their IP secret, but they wanted to conceal the fact they were copying other people's IP left right and center!

One place I worked was paranoid about IP, & wouldn't let us have schematics of their "mother board".
This made fault finding pretty difficult, as you might imagine.

It was really silly, as all the stuff on the board was in the "public domain".
The only really important IP was in their software.

Physical security of the place was pretty poor---- "you could break in with a sharp fingernail"!

[Marco]

Nah, it looks much worse for him based on the criminal complaint.  Ars Technica sums it up:

Probably, but lets create an alternative scenario for just one moment. He took two third party devkits and some COTS SBC to experiment with (ie. 2 circuit boards and a Linux computer) and downloaded a whole bunch of third party datasheets and programming manuals (in addition to the PCB design).

It fits within the description of events described (Apple calls the data problematic, but that could just be because it's covered by third party NDA) but is a whole lot less nefarious than what is implied.

[Stray Electron]

  I'll have to disagree with most of you here.  This wasn't some taking his work home with him so that he could work on it at home. The article specifically says that he was at the airport and scheduled to fly to China so this sounds like a clear case of intended industrial espionage. China has been behind a lot of cases like this going all the way back to the very beginning of the Clinton administration.