UPDATED 23:09 EDT / JANUARY 30 2019

EMERGING TECH

Second Chinese Apple employee arrested for stealing self-driving car secrets

Just over six months since a former Apple Inc. employee was charged with stealing trade secrets relating to the company’s autonomous vehicle technology, another Chinese employee/spy has been caught doing the same thing.

According to documents released Wednesday, a Chinese employee of Apple has been accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of attempting to steal information relating to “Project Titan,” Apple’s self-driving car project.

The man in question, Jizhong Chen, is a Chinese national who has been with Apple since last summer when he was hired. About 5,000 people work for Project Titan in some capacity, but Chen was part of 1,200 core employees, working as an electrical engineer, according to the document.

The accused is said to have taken photographs of his workplace as well as copied information from his work hard drive to his personal computer. Apple’s global security team then found that Chen had more than 2,000 files “containing confidential and proprietary Apple material, including manuals, schematics and diagrams.”

On top of that, the FBI said, Chen had taken hundreds of photos, not only of his workplace but also of computer screens that contained sensitive information relating to Apple’s progress of Project Titan. The bureau said this was one way Chen could avoid getting caught copying data.

Allegedly he started taking these photos almost as soon as he was hired, although most of the details in the complaint relate to Chen’s photography in December. It seems Apple smelled a rat and Chen almost lost his job that month. He later told Apple he was moving on and had applied for a job at an autonomous vehicle firm in China.

While still employed by Apple, he told the company he was going to visit his sick father back home, but a day before he got on the plane, he was nabbed by the police. He’s now looking at possibly 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. According to Apple, the information acquired by Chen would be “enormously damaging.”

It’s no secret that the U.S. government has for years been watchful of trade secrets heading over to China, but since President Donald Trump’s trade war with the country, things have gotten more heated. In November, the Department of Justice revealed its “China Initiative” to prevent trade theft. A number of Chinese nationals have been charged with that crime in recent months, while Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has also been accused of doing the same.

Image: Jeremy Keith/Flickr

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