On August 9, 2012, Aleynikov was re-arrested and charged by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.[14] on behalf of New York state, with the offenses of "unlawful use of secret scientific material" and "unlawful duplication of computer related material"[15] based on the same conduct. The state prosecution was initiated based on a signed complaint by the same federal agent, McSwain, who led the investigation of the failed federal prosecution.
[..]
[..] and rejected the prosecutors' plea offer of accepting a single count offense and serving no jail time.
--
If that isn't malicious, I don't know what is. Charging someone acquitted for the same conduct, only to then offer him a plea deal of no prison time? What is the point here?
That seems wrong (unfair) that the state can go after someone for a crime after the federal government has already acquitted that person of the same crime.
It would be like being acquitted in russia and then charged in argentina.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Jeopardy_Clause#Dual_sov...
No, "it would be like being acquitted in Russia and then charged in Moscow" or "it would be like being acquitted in Argentina and then charged in Buenos Aires".
This is exactly why it is not like being acquitted in russia and then charged in moscow. Being acquitted in russia and then charged in moscow would be double jeopardy.
Although the Court had long accepted in dictum the principle that prosecution
by two governments of the same defendant for the same conduct would not
constitute double jeopardy, it was not until United States v. Lanza[53]
that the conviction in federal court of a person previously convicted in a
state court for performing the same acts was sustained. “We have here two
sovereignties, deriving power from different sources, capable of dealing with
the same subject-matter within the same territory. . . . Each government
in determining what shall be an offense against its peace and dignity is
exercising its own sovereignty, not that of the other.”[54] The “dual
sovereignty” doctrine is not only tied into the existence of two sets of laws
often serving different federal-state purposes and the now overruled principle
that the Double Jeopardy Clause restricts only the national government and
not the states,[55] but it also reflects practical considerations that
undesirable consequences could follow an overruling of the doctrine. Thus, a
state might preempt federal authority by first prosecuting and providing for a
lenient sentence (as compared to the possible federal sentence) or acquitting
defendants who had the sympathy of state authorities as against federal law
enforcement.[56] The application of the clause to the states has therefore
worked no change in the “dual sovereign” doctrine.
53 260 U.S. 377 (1922).
54 260 U.S. at 382. See also Hebert v. Louisiana, 272 U.S. 312 (1924); Screws
v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 108 (1945); Jerome v. United States, 318
U.S. 101 (1943).
55 Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), extended the clause to the states.
56 Reaffirmation of the doctrine against double jeopardy claims as to the
Federal Government and against due process claims as to the states occurred
in Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959), and Bartkus v. Illinois,
359 U.S. 121 (1959), both cases containing extensive discussion and policy
analyses. The Justice Department follows a policy of generally not duplicating
a state prosecution brought and carried out in good faith, see Petite
v. United States, 361 U.S. 529, 531 (1960); Rinaldi v. United States, 434
U.S. 22 (1977), and several provisions of federal law forbid a federal
prosecution following a state prosecution. E.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 659, 660, 1992,
2117. The Brown Commission recommended a general statute to this effect,
preserving discretion in federal authorities to proceed upon certification by
the Attorney General that a United States interest would be unduly harmed if
there were no federal prosecution. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON REFORM OF FEDERAL
CRIMINAL LAWS, FINAL REPORT 707 (1971).
Also, doenvoters, if you believe that Federal govt tramples your rights and power should be returned to local authorities, consider the consistency of your internal logic.
The “dual sovereignty” doctrine is not only tied into the existence of two
sets of laws often serving different federal-state purposes and the now
overruled principle that the Double Jeopardy Clause restricts only the
national government and not the states,[55] but it also reflects practical
considerations that undesirable consequences could follow an overruling
of the doctrine. Thus, a state might preempt federal authority by first
prosecuting and providing for a lenient sentence (as compared to the possible
federal sentence) or acquitting defendants who had the sympathy of state
authorities as against federal law enforcement.[56]
55 Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), extended the clause to the states.
56 Reaffirmation of the doctrine against double jeopardy claims as to the
Federal Government and against due process claims as to the states occurred
in Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959), and Bartkus v. Illinois,
359 U.S. 121 (1959), both cases containing extensive discussion and policy
analyses. The Justice Department follows a policy of generally not duplicating
a state prosecution brought and carried out in good faith, see Petite
v. United States, 361 U.S. 529, 531 (1960); Rinaldi v. United States, 434
U.S. 22 (1977), and several provisions of federal law forbid a federal
prosecution following a state prosecution. E.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 659, 660, 1992,
2117. The Brown Commission recommended a general statute to this effect,
preserving discretion in federal authorities to proceed upon certification by
the Attorney General that a United States interest would be unduly harmed if
there were no federal prosecution. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON REFORM OF FEDERAL
CRIMINAL LAWS, FINAL REPORT 707 (1971).
IOW: don't try to take the code your employer paid you to write/modify and use it at another job.
What to do about the open source licensing? Presumably some of the stuff was GPL'd.
It doesn't grant the programmer any ownership of the code, nor any rights to take a copy of what he wrote with him.
To be honest I am even confused about what precedent you are referring to?
Should there be?
Goldman Sachs had every right to request that he be prosecuted, but no matter how the case turned out, his life would be ruined. I don't know of a good solution to this issue, but it just seems very wrong. I'm sure there have been countless instances of this happening though.
Maybe a good solution would be to lessen the penalties for this type of crime.
Maybe a legal requirement for a public apology and for the prosecutor to have to pay back legal costs? A portion of this restitution should come out of that courts budget or the department that perused the case without doing their due diligence.
Did Sergey sign something saying that he could never remove code from the building or use it in another project? I'm not sure that it simply being company policy is enough, in my opinion.
Has anyone here ever taken code from one employer with the intent of using it again if needed, simply to save time and not having to duplicate research? Should you be considered a criminal for that? Should you have to pay back the time the company paid you to write that code?
It seems like the lessons are:
1) Don't talk to police, even if you did nothing wrong and they tell you they are on your side. Lawyer up.
2) Don't steal code, but if you do then encrypt it and put it on a portable media device. Uploading to a foreign SVN repository using the companies network wasn't very smart, don't do that.
3) Ensure that your employees know the company's policy on removing code from the premises. It seems pretty obvious but I believe that Sergey honestly didn't think he was doing anything wrong.
If there are no repercussions this will happen again.
I guess he can sue them in civil court but does he have the money for the lawyer? Does he have a chance?
I think the real issue is whether or not he was acting maliciously, what the damage to Goldman Sachs was (basically none), and whether or not the punishment fit the crime.
Maybe companies should be forced to have an exit interview for programmers with access to information the company deems sensitive and make sure the programmer knows that they are not allowed to take any code with them.
I seriously doubt Goldman Sachs had any problem with him using/participating in non-secret open source as long as it was part of his work for them. Claiming this was stealing is sophistry - sure, he doesn't sound like a very clever (in the sense of cover-your-ass) guy, but if he'd have been open about what he did, there's no doubt that if he indeed was in anyway important to the company they would have OK's considerably more leeway if it contributed to their bottom line.
As is, they're simply abusing the lack of legal canny of their victim here. Which just goes to show - don't work for Goldman Sachs if you're smart - why take this kind of risk if you can get lots of other opportunities...
It seems like a waste of everyone's time to even pursue a case such as this after it's determined that the person didn't have malicious intentions.
Could the owner of the modified code successfully sue Goldman Sachs?
0) Don't work for Goldman Sachs. Dance with the sharks, and they'll bite your arm off eventually.
1) Avoid GS like the Satan. Actually avoid the whole financial industry.
Yep, but that prosecutor lied just to try to win the case. He was disbarred and sentenced to one day in jail and a $500 fine after attempting to ruin several peoples lives just so that his win/loss stats would be slightly better.
Courts have said that the players can pursue charges against the prosecutor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nifong
They also didn't bring charges against the woman who falsely accused the lacrosse players of rape. She has since been convicted of several crimes including attempted murder and second-degree murder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Gail_Mangum#Arrests_sin...
I've seen it on other Wikipedia pages about hot issues, but those pages were the worst. I wouldn't trust a thing I read there (or about any hot issue on Wikipedia).
But that was the reverse situation. The local prosecutor was representing the weak (a local stripper) against the powerful (the Duke lacrosse players, some of whose parents were powerful inside-the-beltway PR experts). They ran a nationwide media campaign vilifying the alleged victim and the prosecutor; you're a local DA or a stripper and you turn on CNN and see that? What hope do you have to compete? Hire a national PR team? I remember the NY Times coverage (which I usually greatly respect) pretty much repeating the lacrosse players' side point by point.
Think of all the egregious prosecutorial misconduct you've read about; why was this one disbarred? When the United States Attorney General is weighing in on a local rape case and the state bar is threatening you, you know have messed with the wrong people as a prosecutor.
Whatever happened between the lacrosse players and the stripper, the outcome had nothing to do with the facts or justice. They were tried (really she and the prosecutor were) in the press and were successfully prevented from having their day in court, where they are given an equal chance to speak -- it is supposed to be the leveler in our democracy.
Goldman Sachs didn't "jail" this person. Goldman Sachs is a corporation, and therefore doesn't prosecute nor jail people.
Please leave this nonsense on Reddit.
Quotes from the book, p.148 (EDIT: These quotes are in the article here also!!):
"What Serge did not yet know was that Goldman has discovered his downloads- of what appeared to be the code they used for their proprietary high speed trading stock market trading- just a few days earlier, even though Serge had sent himself the first batch of code months ago. They'd called the FBI in haste and had put McSwain [FBI agent who arrested Serge] through what amounted to a crash course in high-frequency trading and computer programming. McSwain later concluded that he didn't seek out independent expert advice to study the code that Serge Aleynikov had taken, or seek to find out why he might have taken it. "I relied on statements from Goldman employees", he said. He had no idea himself of the value of the stolen code ("representatives of Goldman told me it was worth a lot of money"),or if any of it was actually all that special ("representatives of Goldman told us there were trade secrets in the code")."
"The FBI's investigation before the arrest consisted of Goldman explaining some extremely complicated stuff to McSwain that he admitted that he didn't fully understand- but trusted that Goldman did. Forty-eight hours after Goldman called the FBI, McSwain arrested Serge."
So effectively Goldman got Serge arrested, using a clueless agent as a pawn. Some of the code was originally open source, none of the code involved trading strategies (the really valuable stuff) and Goldman's word was enough to convince the FBI that Serge was a dangerous criminal and a flight risk, and ruined his life.
Wrong. In HFT, the 'strategies' are the least complex part. They are often dead simple. A well written (fast) exchange connection is at least 70% of the game.
He's a thief and he got caught, but the HN community don't like that narrative.
And he didnt steal code, he backed it up on a subversion repo. There was unlikely any malicious intent, yet you labelled him a thief. If he was so obviously a thief, why would HFT experts be furious what happened to him, once they learned the details? Why were charges dropped? Why use an agent with no clue in the matter as a pawn? What you're saying doesn't make sense.
"Goldman Sachs Steals Open Source, Jails Coder"
Which is a lie.
It depresses me that even HackerNews upvotes headlines they know are untrue, if it suits the cultural narrative.
Also, from the point of view of efficiency in society, this is a particularly nasty cost since its borne not by those that cause it (the officers), nor by those hiring them (the government), nor is it ever accounted for as a loss. I think this encourages malpractice. Certainly if you observe how the police go about enforcing the law once they've decided somebody is guilty in their own eyes there doesn't seem to be any kind of restraint whatsoever. To the extent they can, they're single-party judge, jury and enforcement in one, exactly the kind of thing the idea of a justice system is supposed to prevent.
The author, Michael Lewis, actually conducted an informal trial in a restaurant, with (neutral) HFT experts, who were even more furious than Serge was when they learned how he'd been treated.
I wouldn't be surprised if non-technical executives in Goldman simply saw a Russian leaving for a competitor, and assumed he was stealing valuable secrets without investigating properly.
Worst part is, even after the details become apparent (see other comments here), Goldman or the FBI are completely unable to admit any fuck ups, and continue hounding him.
In March 2011, Aleynikov appealed the conviction, asking the Second Circuit to review the District Court's decision denying his original motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state a claim.[9]
On February 16, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument on his appeal and, later that same day, unanimously ordered his conviction reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered, with opinion to follow.[10] Aleynikov was released from custody the next day.
On April 11, 2012, Dennis Jacobs, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, published a unanimous decision in a written opinion[10] stating:
On appeal, Aleynikov argues, inter alia, that his conduct did not constitute an offense under either statute. He argues that: [1] the source code was not a "stolen" "good" within the meaning of the NSPA, and [2] the source code was not “related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” within the meaning of the EEA. We agree, and reverse the judgment of the district court.[9]
In the course of these events, Aleynikov has spent 11 months in prison. Aleynikov has divorced, lost his savings, and his career is ruined.[11]
The government did not seek reconsideration of the Second Circuit's ruling, thus ending federal action against Aleynikov.[12]