Finding Wrongs, Through The Prism Of Silicon Valley
from the gray-line dept
Now that the investment banks have officially "settled" their case for lying to investors, the NY Times is claiming that the Justice Department has decided to target Silicon Valley next. They've already started a few securities fraud cases against Valley execs, but nothing big has turned up. In fact, many think the move is much more political, since the Valley still gets blamed for many of the tactics used by the Enrons and Worldcoms of the world, despite neither being a Silicon Valley company. The best quote in the article comes from Stewart Alsop who points out that, "there is a pretty gray line between incompetence and fraud." Certainly, many of the practices in the Valley weren't scams, but were simply badly managed companies.
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What about
There is another angle that federal prosecutors could go for, though -- the poorly enforced area of exporting sensitive technologies overseas. If the Justice Department wanted to, they could stage showy seizures and arrests for companies that "exported sensitive technologies".
When the Pentium III came out, it was technically considered a "supercomputer", therefore illegal to export to foreign countries. Far as I've heard, regulations change by the month, but I'm sure they could find some nit to pick. They could arrest thousands of foreign IT professionals here who are "national security risks" and "potential terrorists". The NY Times will surely have 6-inch tall headlines claiming that the Valley is a "breeding ground for terrorists".
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