More Details on Arrested Saudi OpenAI Employee, Who is Seeking Release on Bail (justice.gov) 56
More details are emerging about Saudi OpenAI employee Abdulrahman Alfozan, who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly planting a recording device in an executive conference room. Previously Alfozan "was an engineer at Meta," notes the New York Times, "before joining a start-up that went through Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up accelerator. He gained permanent residency status in the United States in 2020, according to court documents, and was hired by OpenAI in July 2025."
14 months later the conference room recording device was inserted in a USB port on the back of a television, and then concealed in toilet paper, according to a statement from America's Justice Department. (There's even a photo of a device — and a photo of Alfozan entering the executive conference room and appearing to look behind the television where the device was inserted.) The FBI's says a chatbot account associated with Alfozan's spouse showed prompts asking about installing and obfuscating a recording device. And the complaint alleges that OpenAI security personnel also found a bag Alfozan left in a different room which contained his wallet, his ID, and another recording device.
Discussions in that room included "highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research," according to the FBI, "as well as nonpublic information about Open AI's technical progress and strategic decisions..."
"If convicted, Alfozan faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by 3 years of supervised release."
Friday Alfozan's lawyersrequested his release from custody, saying Alfozan agrees to wear an ankle monitor, remain at home, surrender his passport and "not possess any covert audio or video recording or surveillance device." They argue that the one-way ticket he'd purchased to Saudi Arabia just continues a long-standing habit of buying one-way tickets over the years for air travel, since his tech career often involves last-minute changes to meeting schedules, and "70% of the airline bookings in his email since January 2021 (96 of 138) were one-way tickets."
His lawyers also presented 46 letters of support, including letters from former Meta colleagues, ten company founders and chief executives, and more than a dozen engineers and engineering managers.
14 months later the conference room recording device was inserted in a USB port on the back of a television, and then concealed in toilet paper, according to a statement from America's Justice Department. (There's even a photo of a device — and a photo of Alfozan entering the executive conference room and appearing to look behind the television where the device was inserted.) The FBI's says a chatbot account associated with Alfozan's spouse showed prompts asking about installing and obfuscating a recording device. And the complaint alleges that OpenAI security personnel also found a bag Alfozan left in a different room which contained his wallet, his ID, and another recording device.
Discussions in that room included "highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research," according to the FBI, "as well as nonpublic information about Open AI's technical progress and strategic decisions..."
"If convicted, Alfozan faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by 3 years of supervised release."
Friday Alfozan's lawyersrequested his release from custody, saying Alfozan agrees to wear an ankle monitor, remain at home, surrender his passport and "not possess any covert audio or video recording or surveillance device." They argue that the one-way ticket he'd purchased to Saudi Arabia just continues a long-standing habit of buying one-way tickets over the years for air travel, since his tech career often involves last-minute changes to meeting schedules, and "70% of the airline bookings in his email since January 2021 (96 of 138) were one-way tickets."
His lawyers also presented 46 letters of support, including letters from former Meta colleagues, ten company founders and chief executives, and more than a dozen engineers and engineering managers.
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The penalty for treason against the United States is execution, by the way.
Suggesting that OpenAI is "the United States" is fascism, by the way.
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Saudi Arabia did not allow women to drive until 2018. What's your point?
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How long have you been a sovereign citizen?
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I award you full points for managing to accurately diagnose something as "fascism" in this instance.
I honestly appreciate that.
what's the preferred alternative?
I say the alternative is to move the work in-house.
Jobs fundamental to national security should be government jobs.
I say they don't want them to be because you have to treat government employees like people, by and large, unless they're getting Doge'd or what have you. Most don't get paid very well, which is unfortunate on multiple levels, but they do generally get pretty good benefits. And, you could address the pay gap between private and public sector jobs. You'd have to, since
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I don't have a moral objection to moving the work in house, but I have practical doubts about the execution.
Governments deliver excellent results quickly only under narrow circumstances, and all of the examples I can think of are essentially some form of authoritarian rule.
For instance, In WW2 we had USA, Germany, and USSR, and they were nominally three entirely disjoint political systems, but all of them adopted nationalized command economies, and restricted personal freedoms and non-wartime activities of
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Jobs fundamental to national security should be government jobs.
Armalite: We have this nice civilian rifle. A model 15. Want to buy it?
Government, option 1: No. We've already got the M-14. Sure it's old and heavy, but our troops need the workout.
Government, option 2: Sure. Make these few changes, call it an M-16 and we'll take a few million of them.
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If a Saudi national was stealing the secret of how Palmolive dish detergent softens hands and exfiltrating it back to the Saudis,
Saudis have no need. They all have very soft hands.
They import foreigners to do all that kind of work.
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BTW, i was corrected in a different thread.
I should have said espionage, Not treason.
No declared war (Yet).
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You're one of those idiots who think there is an official "Declaration of War" form.
But you're not smart enough or educated enough to know that there is a "War Powers Act" and when Congress appropriates funding and says, "This meets the requirements of the War Powers Act" that it means it is a declaration of war. No, no, it's an "authorization" of actions that covered by the definition of war, but no, no, it's not a "war."
Fucking moron. You think you're fighting the good fight, but you haven't even learned
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You're not even smart enough to read my comment and know what I said, though. So your response is not responsive.
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Absolutely. Completely true. And Congress considered, but chose not to vote to support (or vote to stop) the current military action, which means that the Trump Administration is currently in violation of the Constitution. Perhaps in other ways, too, but that's the not the subject at hand.
However, the claim was that Congress hasn't "declared war" since WWII. Wars that Congress used their powers to approve between WWII and now:
Korean War
Vietnam War
First Iraq War
Second Iraq War
War in Afghanistan
War against Al
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The definition of treason is incredibly narrow and they couldn't even convict the Rosenbergs of treason.
Re: No. (Score:2)
As a passionate American, I'm sure you recognize he's innocent until proven guilty. While OpenAI and the FBI have certainly portrayed this guy as a spy, it's all by inference.. All we know is he was trying to record private meetings. Considering OpenAI agents have now been caught hacking governments and other companies, there are serious questions the state of the AI industry, and OpenAI's own board agreed with removing Sam Altman fo
Re: No. (Score:2)
My post was not political. Stop trying to make it so. I'd be happy to vote for whoever ran the country the best regardless of party. And the problem is that all the online snarky comments in the world don't change the fact that when you simply look around, the current group of people in charge have made everything more expensive and are making jobs go away. Who can vote to stay on that course? You can't vote for a
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Equating corporate espionage to treason is a bit riduculous. OpenAI is a private company. Many have suggested that US is an olygarchy and corporatocracy but surely it's not so bad that stealing company IP and other TOS violations is punished by execution.
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Have you ever worked for a US defense contractor?
For some of the roles at those companies, you need a SECRET (or higher) national security clearance.
So the "private company" thing is a bit of a false distinction because of how much classified/top-secret national security material is developed and held by "private" corporations in the US.
For example, the coatings and techniques for applying them to US stealth aircraft are secrets developed and/or held by US private companies.
Employees at those companies who
Letters of Support (Score:2)
Sounds like 46 more targets of investigation.
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They're reasonable targets of investigation. It takes a lot more than that to be reasonable grounds for arrest. (Actually, the investigation should probably be pretty superficial unless it turns up something more actionable.)
P.S.: Most folks investigated should never even know that it happened. Exceptions are things like people who get security clearances...who should ALL be/have been investigated.
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Most folks investigated should never even know that it happened. Exceptions are things like people who get security clearances
Maybe. Depends if it's some idiot subcontractor of OPM or the FBI. Even then ...*.
*Anecdote: Back when they did checks on me (The FBI directly. None of that subcontracted investigative bullshit.) they came around to interview a few of my neighbors. Turns out, one guy that they found at home to talk to was the neighborhood drunk (go figure). At the end of such interviews, they request that the details not be discussed with anyone else. Next thing I know, the kid from next door said the FBI was asking "Bob"
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With the current FBI (and DoJ) and HS, all Americans are "reasonable" targets of investigation.
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Yeah, this is really weird.
If I had a colleague who was accused of that, I wouldn't be drafting any letter of support unless some higher ups were forcing my hand.
What brand TV was it? (Score:2)
Up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for a single instance of turning a TV into a spying device? Interesting. [youtube.com]
Arrested on the spot? (Score:2)
TP (Score:2)
the conference room recording device was inserted in a USB port on the back of a television, and then concealed in toilet paper
In what world is a wad of toilet paper hanging off the back of a TV set not suspicious???
Re: TP (Score:2)
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They don't use toilet paper, they just splash a little water on it and call it clean.
So who was helping him? (Score:2)
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The most likely scenario is the Saudi government either asked him to spy or coerced him.
Re: So who was helping him? (Score:3)
Was it a transmitting or memory recording device? (Score:2)
Memory recording devices are harder to find with bug sweepers unless you audit all emi radiators in a room and sweep with something like a spectrum analyzer, rf preamplifier, and b-field probe. You also need access to the room twice. Once to install the device, and then to remove it.
Transmitting devices are easier to find unless they are very sophisticated. Simple ones use an always on carrier modulated by FM or AM. These are easy to detect with low end bug sweeping equipment. The more exotic ones store th
Re: Was it a transmitting or memory recording devi (Score:2)
Dumbest spy ever (Score:3)
Conceals (poorly) a recording device, then leaves a similar device lying around in a bag with his wallet and ID? It's so blatantly incompetent that it makes me wonder if this isn't some red herring in a larger plot.
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Yea, I agree there's something weird about that. Makes me wonder if he was actually just a "fall guy" (though possibly still complicit) and while the real perpetrator will never be found, they'll struggle to gather enough solid evidence to prove he did it, because it was actually some doppelganger or something like that.
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You'll find that industrial espionage is not the stuff of Ian Fleming novels, and most players in this game are actually precisely this stupid.
Seriously go out and google some of this shit, It's hillarious:
- TSMC employees were caught photographing sensitive documents they stole in a public Starbucks.
- The recent eBay security harassment campaign where company employees used their real names and company credit cards leaving a trail behind and were immediately caught. (Also they tried following the couple in
letters (Score:2)
Somebody needs to start looking into the folks who wrote those support letters.
The proper way to do this (Score:2)
You leave the USB device in maintenance with a note that says "please install in USB port on conference room TV" and don't sign it. They'd put it in as an anonymous ticket. Then you just need to visit maintenance at the busiest time with it in your pocket and drop the note on a desk that you know is outside camera range, then ask them while you're there about a legitimate request so you have a cover.
Insider Trading (Score:2)
I suspect this was part of a move to gain inside financial information to allow certain well connected investors in Saudi Arabia to put themselves in a good position for the future.