Engineer Faces 219 Years In Prison For Smuggling US Military Chips To China (zdnet.com) 102
schwit1 quotes a report from ZDNet: On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said that Yi-Chi Shih, a part-time Los Angeles resident, attempted to secure semiconductor chips used in US military applications in order to transfer them to Chinese associates. The 64-year-old was subject to a six-week trial in a Los Angeles, California federal court. Prosecutors alleged that Shih, alongside co-defendant Kiet Ahn Mai of Pasadena, California, conspired to gain access to a sensitive system belonging to an unnamed U.S. firm which manufactured semiconductor chips and Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMICs).
The victim company's PC systems were accessed fraudulently after Mai posed as a potential customer, giving Shih the opportunity to obtain custom processors. While the firm in question believed the chips would only be used in the United States, Shih transferred the products to the Chengdu GaStone Technology Company (CGTC), a Chinese firm building an MMIC manufacturing plant. Evidence suggested that Shih managed to "defraud the U.S. company out of its proprietary, export-controlled items, including its design services for MMICs." A sentencing hearing is yet to be scheduled. The range of charges could see Shih face a maximum sentence of 219 years in federal prison, and the judge presiding over the case is also considering the prosecution's request for hundreds of thousands of dollars to be made forfeit.
The victim company's PC systems were accessed fraudulently after Mai posed as a potential customer, giving Shih the opportunity to obtain custom processors. While the firm in question believed the chips would only be used in the United States, Shih transferred the products to the Chengdu GaStone Technology Company (CGTC), a Chinese firm building an MMIC manufacturing plant. Evidence suggested that Shih managed to "defraud the U.S. company out of its proprietary, export-controlled items, including its design services for MMICs." A sentencing hearing is yet to be scheduled. The range of charges could see Shih face a maximum sentence of 219 years in federal prison, and the judge presiding over the case is also considering the prosecution's request for hundreds of thousands of dollars to be made forfeit.
Re: Unnamed? (Score:2)
Why isn't treason treated more seriously? (Score:1, Insightful)
Treason. Nothing but treason to the country and the people. He had nothing in mind but money and hurting people. Why isn't the death penalty available for scum like this? I know that there are some other scum reading this and thinking that is too harsh. You are scum and you deserve to be washed from the planet.
Re:Why isn't treason treated more seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Treason is very narrowly defined in American law. America is not in a state of war with China so treason does not come into the picture. Treason was defined this way to specifically avoid the kind of abuses of the term that Britain used leading up to and during the revolutionary war.
Corporate espionage with the intent to bypass export controls on military hardware is still a serious crime hence the potential for multiple consecutive life sentences in the end. Could still debate whether the death penalty should still be involved, but it wouldn't be within the context of treason.
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Dont think you have to be at a state of war. Obama charged more people with espionage than every other president combined. Remember the Rosenbergs from the 50s. They were executed for it. This guy can clearly face federal espionage charges if these chips have specific military applications.
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Dont think you have to be at a state of war.
Legally you do. The constitution:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
No formally declared enemies, no treason. Anyone who walked into a court room and claimed Snowden was a traitor would be laughed out of court. Of course what happened is they made other legally distinct crimes like sedition, rebellion, espionage, desertion etc. that in laymen's terms may be considered treacherous. A bit like with copyright infringement, you're not going to get charged with piracy [cornell.edu]. It's rather snobbish to point to the legal definition though if it's obvious t
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Maybe. Keep in mind that we're still at war with N. Korea. There is an Armistice, there was never a peach treaty signed. China helped N. Korea or there would be no N. Korea today. So I have a feeling there could be a case made for Treason. Depends on how bad they want to get him. Convict, execute him then figure out that was wrong.
Never the less it's a distinction without much of a difference I have a feeling. He's going to die in Prison unless someone pardons him. Could happen, not likely though. It would
Re:Why isn't treason treated more seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Do remember that "espionage" is NOT the same crime as "treason". For instance, it is possible to charge a German national living in the USA with "espionage", but it is not possible to charge him with "treason"....
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Treason and espionage are two different things.
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Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried for treason and executed when officially the US was not at war with the USSR.
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This is simple economic espionage, at best.
It's military espionage, far more serious than industrial.
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Are these chips, in fact, munitions? Or are they dual-use technology? Is the receiving company using them for munitions?
I question export regulations because "munitions" has also included civilian encryption tools such as PGP, or such as web tools that support 128 bit SSL keys rather than the more vulnerable 80-bit keys originally permitted.
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So is oxygen, which has many other peaceful uses.
CPU's, and encryption devices and the software that handle them, have potent peaceful uses. Even though it can be used as part of military equipment, its peaceful their primary use for almost all of them has been commercial products, not military. Even for those specific technologies with military use, most are "dual use", and examined for export on the basis of some specific guidelines.
What we've had, instead, is a history of quite restrictive regulations w
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Remember Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Could amount to the same.
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Is there any potential conflict between legally forbidding the export of certain products because of "national security", and loudly proclaiming the necessity of a free market?
Unless of course the free market is only to be in things that one wants, and things that one doesn't want others to get can be restricted.
Re: Why isn't treason treated more seriously? (Score:1)
Selling your countryâ(TM)s secrets is fairly obviously treasonous behaviour even if it is not by statute. Heâ(TM)s lucky heâ(TM)s in the US, there arenâ(TM)t many countries that are so lenient with traitors. Certainly not China
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But trump being the president, is in the position of being able to negotiate an end to the war. Different rules apply to officials who are negotiating with an enemy, otherwise a state of war could never end in anything other than the complete destruction of one of the warring parties.
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Insane raging. Incidentally, you do not even know the definition of treason. Do you, perhaps, support the same death penalty when the NSA steals European trade secrets to prop up the failing US industry?
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Let me see, any Tom, Dick, Harriet or Martha can buy those chips to use inside the USA for any reason what so ever, no crime. So 214 year prison sentence, for attempting to take them out of the USA to China, when in a decades time Chinese chips will likely be better. This is nothing but a political witch hunt, prosecution for publicity. Ohh Ahh technology from the exceptional country can not be replicated any where else on the Glove ever. You know what, if only they had gone to a US lobbyist and paid them t
Execute him (Score:2, Insightful)
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Remember when traitors were executed? It's time we brought that back.
My father was born in Canada but later came to the US to work for RCA and worked on the DEW Line [wikipedia.org].
He was then informed that this required him to get US citizenship, which he did. When he asked why this was necessary, he got the answer:
"If you betray the US . . . we want to be able to hang you. We can't hang Canadians, only Americans."
He never revealed this to me . . . my mother told me about this years after his death. But it explained a lot . . . one time he told me about a construction site in north
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Why should anyone believe what you have said?
Re:Execute him (Score:5, Informative)
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Remember when traitors were executed? It's time we brought that back.
And lose the ability to turn them or exchange them for CIA officers rotting in jail in other countries? I realise Americans in general are fond of ton-of-bricks justice but do try to think a few moves ahead ...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which is why extraordinary rendition was invented.
That's gotta suck (Score:1)
Being over 200 years old and in prison. Dayyom!
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Too stupid to FedEx it to his aunt in China? (Score:2)
Or just walking into the embassy?
After all, this is no longer the century of the fruitbat.
Was Google involved? (Score:1)
They love the hammer and sickle. Communism. Even though they make "obscene profits".
Good riddance to bad rubbish. (Score:1)