DOJ Drops All Charges Against Professor After Realizing No One Checked To See If What He Sent To China Was Actually A Secret
from the total-failure dept
There's been a bit of hysteria in the US lately about "the Chinese stealing our secrets." Now, there's plenty of evidence of corporate espionage going on from China, but the actual impact of it appears to be quite overblown. But as we're in a giant moral panic about everything China related, the White House launched a big "crackdown" on such things recently -- and so far it seems to have resulted in the DOJ destroying innocent people's lives, while getting a lot of egg on its face. The latest: late on Friday the DOJ announced that it was completely dropping all charges against Xi Xiaoxing, the head of Temple University's physics department, who had been arrested earlier this year for apparently sharing the schematics of a special device known as a pocket heater with Chinese scientists. The only problem? It turns out he didn't actually share the schematics of a pocket heater with the Chinese -- the FBI just assumed what he shared must be a pocket heater. But it wasn't.The schematics, prosecutors said, revealed the design of a device known as a pocket heater. The equipment is used in semiconductor research, and Dr. Xi had signed an agreement promising to keep its design a secret.You would think that this is the sort of thing that the DOJ would check before arresting the guy and destroying his life.
But months later, long after federal agents had led Dr. Xi away in handcuffs, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence at the heart of the Justice Department’s case: The blueprints were not for a pocket heater.
Faced with sworn statements from leading scientists, including an inventor of the pocket heater, the Justice Department on Friday afternoon dropped all charges against Dr. Xi, an American citizen.
“I don’t expect them to understand everything I do,” Dr. Xi, 57, said in a telephone interview. “But the fact that they don’t consult with experts and then charge me? Put my family through all this? Damage my reputation? They shouldn’t do this. This is not a joke. This is not a game.”And he's not kidding about putting his family through a terrible situation. A dozen FBI agents "with guns drawn" stormed his home when he was arrested back in May. His whole family was there at the time.
Meanwhile, as the NY Times report notes, this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. Just a few months ago, the DOJ similarly dropped all charges against Sherry Chen, who worked for the National Weather Service. The story here is perhaps even more ridiculous. Chen, in a visit back to China to see her parents, had also visited with a former classmate, who was a senior official in the Ministry of Water. In passing he asked her some questions about how certain projects concerning US reservoirs were funded. Chen later emailed him some links to public websites that contained some basic info (not even that relevant to the original question). She also put him in touch with a colleague she had worked with at the Army Corps of Engineers who might be able to answer more questions. That person reported the emails to officials saying she was "concerned" about what was happening.
And, from there, the DOJ flipped out. It got a warrant, searched her emails and work computers and discovered a very weak link. In searching around, Chen had accessed another database, just for US government workers, using a colleague's password, since she didn't have a password to that particular database (but was allowed to access it). She had downloaded some info that was useful to a project she was working on, and had told her former classmate back in China that if he wanted info from the database, he would need to go through more official channels, suggesting the colleague at the Army Corps. of Engineers... who had just turned her in as a possible spy.
She was later arrested and her name was all over the press -- and then eventually dropped months later when the DOJ finally took the time to realize that she hadn't actually done anything wrong, and it had jumped to all sorts of crazy conclusions because of her one 15 minute meeting and her sending a few emails with public information.
A week before trial was to begin, Mr. Zeidenberg requested a meeting with Carter M. Stewart and Mark T. D’Alessandro, two United States attorneys for the Southern District of Ohio.You'll notice, of course, that both of the individuals arrested are American citizens, but were born in China, leading to reasonable accusations that the DOJ is overreacting to Chinese-Americans and assuming that anything they do with people back in China may be espionage.
“Why,” Mr. Zeidenberg said he asked, “if she’s a spy, is she coming back from China and telling her colleagues that ‘I met this guy in China and this is what he wants to know’? Why is she telling the guy in China, ‘Here’s my boss’s phone number’? Why is she asking for a password over email? Why would you do that?”
Mr. Zeidenberg says the prosecutors listened. On March 10, the day after their meeting, they dismissed the charges.
“Thank God,” Mr. Zeidenberg added.
Again, it's likely that there is real espionage going on. No one denies that. But when we scare ourselves so much that we're looking for ghosts, we're taking down innocent people because the DOJ is just too amped up looking for "bad guys" and either unable or unwilling to actually look at the evidence first. That's really, really messed up.
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Filed Under: china, doj, espionage, failures, fbi, investigation, pocket heater, sherry chen, xi xiaoxing
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Collective embarrassment is meaningless, make it personal
Make it so that the apology and admission holds the same place as the original bogus claims, so if the previous story was front page news, so is the apology.
And finally, hit 'em where it hurts, the wallets of those involved. Not the agency budget, but the personal pay of all of those involved, to the tune of perhaps 50% of what they were paid while the 'case' was ongoing. Give them some real incentive to make sure that they have a case before dragging some poor sod through the mud and ruining their reputation and life.
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Re: Collective embarrassment is meaningless, make it personal
Seems like that would run into 1st Amendment issues. What right does the government have to force a newspaper to print something?
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Re: Re: Collective embarrassment is meaningless, make it personal
While I'm dreaming of unicorns I think an idea like this would work better for any article in which they provided comment to the newspaper either on the record or off than for any article on the case since it then has a direct tie to the individual's behaviour and encourages law enforcement to stop defaming people before acquiring a conviction.
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Re: Re: Re: Collective embarrassment is meaningless, make it personal
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Re: Re: Collective embarrassment is meaningless, make it personal
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The More Things Change
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Re: The More Things Change
I wonder how much of this is just simple racism, like interning Japanese in WWII, carpet bombing Koreans and ChiComs, and padding the bodycount with women and children in Vietnam. They're just gooks after all, and there's plenty more where they came from. :-P
I haven't heard of any efforts to put those who failed to secure OPM into jail, and that's far more likely damaging than this gong show.
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What no Encryption?
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They didn't have time to check what they assumed, because ZOMG espionage. They are sending a clear message that talking to the undeclared enemies of the state will result in them destroying your life. There is no recourse for these cases built on guesses and no evidence beyond vivid imaginings of true americans. When cooler heads FINALLY manage to get them to look and see that there is no case, there is no recourse. Just a slap on the back, as they shove you back into the crater that was your life.
Allegations are the thing people remember. No one ever remembers that they were found innocent, or were railroaded. See also Central Park Jogger Case - Even after real investigation proved these kids were railroaded & screwed... you still have people behaving like they must have done it.
We are far to obsessed with catching the boogeymen they created, that we forget these the boogeymen come from a story they told us to keep us scared. To keep the narrative going some innocent people getting screwed is a small price to pay... we can all sleep safer at night as they 'catch' people who are completely innocent. We all accept that this is the price others have to pay for us to be safe, never thinking what happened to others will ever happen to them.
Those that "investigated" this case, need to be removed from active duty until they can be retrained in how to investigate. They failed to do their job, and someone else is paying the price for their stupidity. As I am fond of saying, Stupid should hurt... and we should stop shielding the inept from reaping the pain they deserve.
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Someone should tell them that it's generally a good idea to take the gun out of the holster before shooting. It's less painful for the feet.
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The life and Rights of one citizen
And if the poor, pitiful, picked-on "widdle" citizen feels he's been wronged, he can always go to court and grab a million or two of taxpayer money. See? All better now, and we didn't even have to admit wrongdoing.
One citizen at a time, like potato chips. But it's not like there's a pattern of activity here that needs to be reigned in, oh no. These are all isolated incidents.
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Re:
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way to go, fellers. here's another chaw.
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Re:
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but........
(Anyone else notice that the push against piracy and the efforts to prevent spying are running parallel)
this is endemic in the USA government (local, state and federal).
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so you're saying belichick was behind the whole thing?
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Re:
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A Public Service Announcement from the Department of Justice (HaHa)
Welcome to the idiot states of America.
Borrowed from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outer_Limits_%281963_TV_series%29
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It was encrypted --
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Re:
That's actually "Guilty until proven not guilty.", since under current War on Terror and War on Drugs definitions of law and constitutional protections, Nobody is Innocent.
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overstepping one's bounds with citizens.
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Money and Power
It is obviously NOT being used for the purpose of catching spies, terrorists, or criminals, who seem to all be having a really good and profitable time without any interference from the Justice Department these days.
So, what's it for then?
Commercial espionage? Civilian Blackmail? Foreign Official Blackmail? General Extortion and Control over corporate competitors home and abroad?? A data base for future mass-coercion of the US public once the fascists drop their facade and establish martial law? All of the above?
Terra-bytes daily, of personal data from every computer, telephone, email, mail, telegram, and verbal conversation in front of a smart TV, in America, (and possibly the world), and they still can't manage to catch any real bad guys with it and instead rely on useless and unverified knee-jerk hunches, pathetically unfounded accusations by sad believers in See and Tell, and imaginary evidence... to arrest non-spies, non-terrorists, and non-criminals.
Makes me wonder.... well, ok you got me - not really.
Its pretty damn obvious that all of that surveillance data is used for just two purposes, neither of which has anything to do with criminals, terrorists, or spies.
For billionaire fascists, its always just about money and power.
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