UC Berkeley Professor Uses Secret Camera To Catch PhD Candidate Sabotaging Rival (mercurynews.com) 62
A UC Berkeley professor, suspecting years of targeted computer damage against one Ph.D. student, secretly installed a hidden camera that allegedly caught another doctoral candidate sabotaging the student's laptop. The student now faces felony vandalism charges and is due for his first court appearance on Dec. 15. The Mercury News reports: A UC Berkeley professor smelled a rat -- over the years there had been $46,855 in damage from computers that failed, and nearly all of it seemed to affect one particular Ph.D. candidate at the college's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department.
The professor wondered if the student's luck was really that bad, or if something else was afoot. So he installed a hidden camera -- disguised in a department laptop, and pointed it at the student's computer. According to police, the sly move captured another Ph.D. candidate, 26-year-old Jiarui Zou, damaging his fellow student's computer with some implement that caused sparks to fly out of the laptop.
Now, Zou has been charged with three felony counts of vandalism, related to the destruction of three computers on Nov. 9-10. The charges allege the damage amounted to more than $400 each time, though the professor who reported the vandalism, and the affected student, told police they suspect Zou of the additional incidents that had been going on for years, court records show.
The professor wondered if the student's luck was really that bad, or if something else was afoot. So he installed a hidden camera -- disguised in a department laptop, and pointed it at the student's computer. According to police, the sly move captured another Ph.D. candidate, 26-year-old Jiarui Zou, damaging his fellow student's computer with some implement that caused sparks to fly out of the laptop.
Now, Zou has been charged with three felony counts of vandalism, related to the destruction of three computers on Nov. 9-10. The charges allege the damage amounted to more than $400 each time, though the professor who reported the vandalism, and the affected student, told police they suspect Zou of the additional incidents that had been going on for years, court records show.
Barry Kripke finally (Score:4, Funny)
caught Sheldon Cooper. [youtube.com]
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He no Sheldon Cooper. He look like this:
https://apec2025.eventscribe.n... [eventscribe.net]
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deport him!
Well, actually, yeah, if he's not a citizen.
Why should we continue to tolerate a criminal guest?
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For the same reason we tolerate criminal citizens, I would suppose. Otherwise, you would deport the citizens as well.
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That makes exactly zero sense.
We handle criminal citizens internally because they are family, not guests.
We deport criminal guests precisely because they are guests, not family.
It's so painfully self-evident that anybody arguing otherwise is probably being deliberately obtuse, and that's being generous.
Re: The Chinese Way (Score:1)
Part of me thinks they actually, truly, believe that making the distinction at all is immoral.
I don't really get it either* but Occam's Razor and all.
*I have a conjecture though: it's rich kids who do this, and it's because in their entire lives, they've been surrounded by immigrants who are either their peers or their servants. The concept of dysfunction existing abroad and sticking to many who come here unfiltered is just alien to them.
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I don't care if somebody is an immigrant or not. Their actions are what I care about. Either they hold to and live by values I respect and am compatible with, or they don't. That's not immutable characteristics, that's choices. If they hold to the values I this country hold, they're my brother, full stop. If they don't, they need to go somewhere else that works for them, because that place isn't here and I'm not okay with terraforming it to fit them instead of us.
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Well, I wouldn't personally characterize imprisoning someone as "tolerating" them, but that's the viewpoint and verbiage I was responding to.
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For the same reason we tolerate criminal citizens, I would suppose. Otherwise, you would deport the citizens as well.
I always imagined we don't deport citizens because then we'd end up with Australias all over the place.
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For the same reason we tolerate criminal citizens, I would suppose. Otherwise, you would deport the citizens as well.
I always imagined we don't deport citizens because then we'd end up with Australias all over the place.
I may be slightly biased on that point, and we’re not without our own problems, but having a few more Australias around doesn’t sound so bad an idea. Oganise one in the northern hemisphere and we’d have a place for winter holidays and beach weather all year round that didn’t involve us having to travel overseas
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Otherwise, you would deport the citizens as well.
Where would we deport them to?
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Don't. He's fit for a Wall Street job.
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we have to many Ph.D's and when you need to do thi (Score:1, Troll)
we have to many Ph.D's and when you need to do this to keep your slot = the college system is broken.
Re:we have to many Ph.D's and when you need to do (Score:5, Insightful)
we have to many Ph.D's and when you need to do this to keep your slot = the college system is broken.
They are students not PhDs. And you don't "need" to do this to keep "your slot". Nobody is entitled to a slot. What you have to earn is not owed to you.
It's a competitive system, and you have to maintain certain level of merit and academic progress.
There is a right way. Either follow the rules or quit, and go do something more productive. And somebody deciding to become a criminal does not mean the system is broken.
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we have to many Ph.D's and when you need to do this to keep your slot = the college system is broken.
They are students not PhDs. And you don't "need" to do this to keep "your slot". Nobody is entitled to a slot. What you have to earn is not owed to you.
It's a competitive system, and you have to maintain certain level of merit and academic progress.
There is a right way. Either follow the rules or quit, and go do something more productive. And somebody deciding to become a criminal does not mean the system is broken.
There is intense competition in research, whether it's as a PhD candidate or afterwards in a research lab. Everyone is looking out for themselves, trying to figure out how they can grab as much credit for themselves as possible. Sabotage is rare, but stealing ideas (or rather hearing something legally and then running with that idea independently) is very common. In teams, each researcher is primarily concerned with how they can get recognized as an individual for promotions and bonuses and how they can
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Of course, like anything, this can be taken to unhealthy and counterproductive extremes.
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That it's a competitive system is the problem. The world advances through cooperation.
Not exactly true. The world largely advances by Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Allocating scarce resources, such as money, to the projects and people who prove the most meritorious or effective or valuable usage of the resource. Of course Collaboration has a value, but it's largely involving or between researches who already passed the bar. You gotta have people reaching a certain level before a degree o
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If you need to do that to keep your slot then clearly we don't have too many PhDs - if we had too many PhDs there would be less competition.
And someone who is years into a phd program doesn't need to do anything like that to keep their "slot". There isn't an annual culling, the bottom X% aren't kicked out. The performance of one candidate doesn't impact the success of another candidate. You don't get a worse phd because someone else got a better one. There's competition to get in in the first place, but onc
Math... (Score:3)
Help me understand this math, how does 3 computers value out to $46,855? That's more than 15k per computer, which TBH, I've never seen a normal computer cost that much. Servers? yea, I've racked servers that have cost a quarter of a million... but not normal computers. What are these students working on?
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NVD RTX PRO 6000 $9K each
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Help me understand this math, how does 3 computers value out to $46,855? That's more than 15k per computer, which TBH, I've never seen a normal computer cost that much. Servers? yea, I've racked servers that have cost a quarter of a million... but not normal computers. What are these students working on?
The 3 are only the recent ones he was charged with. They believe he has been doing it for years
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They have him on video damaging 34 computers, for "more than $400" each time over a three day period.
There has been $46,855 worth of damage over "years", which they suspect was also done by the same person.
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3 not 34...
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Ongoing repairs might sum up.
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Back in the day, Sun workstations were popular because they were relatively cheap - after all $20,000 would get you a fairly nice workstation (in an era where a kick-ass PC would be running around $5000). Mo
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He's only charged with 3, but has been doing this a while. That said you could do this. I know my colleague (who simulates the stress on undersea support cables on their laptop) has a laptop that retails for $12k.
I asked her to teach me how to do it so I could justify to IT to get something better than the low tier bullshit I was saddled with XD
Good Luck Finding A Second Chance Elsewhere (Score:1)
Not going to say that it's impossible, but ignoring that their name has been reported on in the news and just focusing on the people in academia: it can be a very close-knit community.
I know of a case of a doctoral student getting kicked out their doctoral programme, and given the boot from their university because they failed to disclose a previously attempted doctoral programme at another university in another country. I don't know the details but former doctoral supervisor and current supervisor were in
Re: Good Luck Finding A Second Chance Elsewhere (Score:2)
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I was being sarcastic.
Re: Good Luck Finding A Second Chance Elsewhere (Score:2)
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Sabotage is quite common in grad school (Score:3)
USB Killer (Score:2)
I'd guess the device was one of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Are not hidden cameras illegal in California? (Score:2)
How can one use a hidden camera in California?
I thought it was illegal over there
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How can one use a hidden camera in California? I thought it was illegal over there
You can't record voice in CA without the party's approval, but silent video of a public place (lab) is legal.
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I am not a Californian lawyer, but a quick use of a search engine would indicate general public access is required for it to be considered a "public place". A laboratory behind security doors that's restricted entry to a few professors and selected students surely can't be considered a public space. It certainly wouldn't be under my local jurisdiction but we have a very different legal system.
Happy to be corrected.
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In the UK, many laboratories, depending on what they handle, require security cameras for regulatory reasons. I am highly dubious that California is any different. The regulations exist for really good reasons that don't evaporate in California. So there must be some loophole that allows restricted laboratories to have security cameras.
I would then note that most data centres have security cameras everywhere.
You are not allowed to put it in a toilet or shower room, but anywhere else is pretty much fair game
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Re:Are not hidden cameras illegal in California? (Score:5, Insightful)
He had permission from the building manager. Think about it: if it was illegal, how could any businesses or homes have any security camera?
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He had permission from the building manager. Think about it: if it was illegal, how could any businesses or homes have any security camera?
IANAL period, muchless in California, so grain of salt here, but:
In addition to this, in California, if you're recording because you reasonably expect someone will be committing a crime. In this case, not only did the student not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, the professor had a reasonable expectation that the student was committing a crime. Source [fresnocriminallawyer.com].
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Thanks for that link. Interesting that he never mentions home security cameras, doorbell cameras, etc, except possibly covered by some of the exceptions. Also interesting that "journalists" have an explicit exception; I wonder how they define "journalist" today, where everyone can be a journalist of some sort.
Real world similarity on the data side (Score:1)
I worked with a sociopath I'll call "Bill" who we strongly suspect deleted and sabotaged many things. Mayhem had a long history of following Bill, as we asked former colleagues to make sure we were not losing our minds. We learned to back-up and document stuff like crazy to work around it. Bill seemed to have a lot of experience covering his tracks, such as knowing which systems didn't keep logs.
Why am I not surprised (Score:2)
china leads (Score:2)
China leads in science.