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发帖数: 2123 | 3 The FBI has accused a second Apple employee of attempting to steal trade
secrets from the company regarding its secretive self-driving car program,
according to a recently unsealed affidavit. NBC's Bay Area affiliate first
reported the news.
This is the second employee in six months to be accused by the FBI of
stealing trade secrets from Apple's self-driving car unit. In July, federal
agents accusedformer Apple engineer Xiaolang Zhang of allegedly stealing
proprietary information about the project and trying to bring it to XMotors,
based in China.
Jizhong Chen was hired by Apple in June 2018 as a hardware developer
engineer on the autonomous vehicles project, according to the sworn
affidavit by an FBI agent that was originally filed on Jan. 22. The agent
alleges an employee reported Chen after seeing him "taking wide angled
photographs of the Project in the Building, which the employee found '
suspicious.'" Apple then allegedly asked to look at all of Chen's personal
devices, according to the affidavit, and found Chen had backed up his work
computer onto a personal hard-drive, violating Apple's policies.
Apple's review found about 100 photos taken inside Apple's building that
housed the project on his personal devices along with "over two thousand
files containing confidential and proprietary Apple material, including
manuals, schematics and diagrams," according to the affidavit.
Chen allegedly told Apple he backed up the work to his personal devices "as
an 'insurance policy' to support his job applications after being placed on
a PIP," referring to the Performance Improvement Plan the agent claims Apple
placed Chen on in December 2018. Apple allegedly found confidential and
proprietary information on Chen's devices collected prior to his placement
on the improvement plan.
While Chen allegedly told Apple he was applying for internal jobs, the
company later learned he had applied for two external jobs, one of which was
at a China-based direct competitor to Apple's autonomous vehicles project,
according to the affidavit.
Apple suspended Chen without pay after speaking with him on Jan. 11, the
affidavit says.
In a statement, Apple said, "Apple takes confidentiality and the protection
of our IP very seriously. We are working with authorities on this matter and
are referring all questions to the FBI."
Chen's lawyer declined to comment. The assistant U.S. attorney assigned to
the case and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Apple's self-driving group has faced recent headwinds. Last week, CNBC
reported that the company had dismissed over 200 employees from Project
Titan, as the initiative is known. |
