2. They found confidential files there, but nothing he had no right to access to

3. They found out that he deleted "weird" files the day before he quit the company.

He could not have ever exfiltrated that data to begin with as he gave the drive back to Philips.

I upvoted a few of your comments that were clearly non-inflammatory and useful. But I'd like to tell everyone who's blindly downvoting you, please read comments before downvoting them, instead of just downvoting everything you can that's tied to the person you disagree with.

Think about it. The USB device was for transferring data to something else. That might have been a personal device with a cellular data plan.

Sure, he gave back the USB drive. He didn't physically take that to China, or intend to do so. Those files were on it for a reason though, and that reason is transferring them to something that gets the data to China.

The entire point of the comment I made (which you replied to) is not that baybal2 is correct (in fact, I have no idea/opinion of whether they are correct about the defendent being innocent). The point is that ad hominem attacks through downvotes are a bad thing.

You may have missed this part of the criminal complaint:

“Tan's supervisor confirmed that nothing in the downloaded files was within Tan's area of responsibility. Further Company A confirmed, through Tan's supervisor, Tan did not have a work related need to access or download the restricted files.”

But he could certainly have copied data off the USB before deleting it.

And there, the parallel with Micron case gets more startling: the alleged "spy" was the very man who said that his cellhpone was missing. Then the police found the cellphone in his coworkers locker. The coworker accidentally put his phone into her back along with papers on the table. Then the police searched his phone, and found out that "he happened to be a spy" on very similar circumstances.

I mean, he deleted the files first. It's reasonable that he thought that was sufficient; given the code I've seen from some scientists, scientist != computer expert.

The innocent explanation is that he was cleaning up company property before returning it, but I expect that will play out in court.

Is this common?

But aren't it? He surrendered his flash drive. You can't do anything with it if it is not in your possession... What do you think he was supposed to do with it???

And he had an option to not to do so, or moreover, just fly to China without a notice (remember the case of a hedge fund boy who allegedly "stole keys to the kingdom" and then warned his employer that he is leaving the company on a short notice...)

And there is no proof so far of him doing that (otherwise it will be put in bold letter on his charge sheet.)

That's nothing less than an estoppel condition in hands of a skilled lawyer.

But you can expect that prosecutors will now be trying their best to made up, and attempting to keep him behind bars for the duration of the court proceedings.

“The perfect crook would have covered his tracks better” is not persuasive. The perfect crook wouldn’t get caught. People who do bad things are just as fallible as people who don’t.

If he did not commit a crime, would he not do so, and this be the most normal thing he can do?

The answer is yes

Now there is no distinction in between a normal employee leaving the company and a criminal following your logic.

Every time I see people going for such argument, I almost feel my sight getting dark, but people who can shove such line of thought into a legal argument in a criminal case are found left and right in the West.

I would've liked to put much stronger terms here.

But it is doubtful that the SCMP has squeezed information out of the FBI before the court case. Once the court case happens we will see all the evidence that the FBI has gathered, which probably demonstrates much more clearly that he is guilty. It doesn't make sense to discuss hypotheticals until we at least have the evidence.

It also doesn't make sense to fear getting convicted based on deleting some files unless he is actually convicted on this flimsy evidence. But again, this is unlikely -- if you would not convict someone based solely on this evidence, then why do you think anyone else would decide on a guilty verdict?

(Keep in mind that the information in the affidavit [1] "is intended to show merely that there is sufficient probable cause for the requested warrant" and doesn't include all of the evidence that they have.)

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1122851/downl...

As the Department of Justice statement [2] says:

> A criminal complaint is merely an allegation, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

There will be a court case where the FBI will lay out all the evidence they have and the jury will decide whether or not the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that he is guilty.

The court case has not happened yet so it doesn't make sense to jump to conclusions without hearing the evidence first.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1122851/downl... [2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-charged-comm...

Seriously though, it's interesting to discuss this case. Clearly we don't have all the information. Some of us may change our minds later. Right now, the evidence that is out there isn't convincing on its own. It's okay to point that out!