BusinessWeek recounts the sad tale of Hanjuan Jin, an American citizen who allegedly decided to ditch her old job at Motorola — but not before downloading a bunch of trade secrets, taking a new job in China, and brokering an espionage deal with the Chinese military. Unfortunately for her (and maybe China?), Jin was stopped before her one-way flight out of Chicago in ’07, where customs agents found her illicit carryon. Now she’s facing decades in prison.
But over what? BW says the trade secrets in question are related to Motorola’s push-to-talk tech, which I haven’t seen anyone use since perhaps sometime in a mall circa 2002. Jin’s attorney is singing the same tune, taking the it’s not a big deal because what she stole wasn’t worth anything defence. Now of course, Motorola doesn’t see it this way, saying the lost obsolete chirp tech is worth millions. And God forbid the Chinese army gains the ability to use a walkie talkie!
It’s a complex case, because, yes, we can’t have our citizens scooting off to China with trade secrets in tow. But on the other hand, push-to-talk? Was she also planning on selling the secrets of colour television and the cotton gin? Is being a traitor so bad when your treachery is so hugely half-arsed? [BusinessWeek]
Original image: StijntS/Shutterstock
Sean
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:35 AMDecades? Not likely. The source article states that the last person conviceted got 15months for secrets worth $20million. How much do you get for secrets worth $0?
Wok
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 1:12 PMIts an act of war!
Tech like this can very likely lead to future things that are more popular and useful. They can also be built on other less known complex tech.
Teal
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 1:31 PMI think this is a little bit more serious. If the chinese millitary is willing to do a prebrokered deal for this stuff, then it’s got to have applications for them
SmileySmoke
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 3:43 PMi think you mean: implications for them
and i agree but to not incur a trade war nothing will be said apart from the usual stern diplomatic words
DarthDVD
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 7:07 PMum…… push to talk is very useful for communications for police, security and may have a military applation as well.
I know I found it very useful in 2006 (it was a nokia) when i was doing car pertrols.
and the radio system what i used after was………. poor. very very poor with very limited range.
Steve
Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 6:24 PM$600M = 0?! iDEN was an obsolete 2G technology. Even worth than Tetra which is an open standard technology. Motorola “expert” claims iDEN is better than 4G because it has 50X better spectrum efficient than CDMA!