Undichte Stelle bei Boeing?

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Boeing employee arrested for information theft
Man says investigation was retaliation for raising safety issues
June 10, 2006

A Boeing Co. employee from Kent was arrested for investigation of theft after he allegedly downloaded proprietary information he was not authorized to have from company computers.

Some of the information is believed to have been passed to The Seattle Times, which has published a number of Boeing-related stories over the last year or so based on "internal Boeing documents." The newspaper had no comment. Boeing said it has fired the worker, whom it declined to identify.

Gerald Eastman, 44, said in a telephone interview Friday that he is the Boeing worker who was fired. He said he is the victim of "whistle-blower retaliation" for raising safety issues within Boeing. He has not been charged with a crime.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Eastman filed complaints about Boeing in 2002 and 2003. The federal agency investigated and found nothing that required enforcement action against Boeing, said FAA spokesman Alan Kenitzer.

Eastman said he filed a complaint by e-mail against the FAA on Friday with the inspector general's office of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Seattle P-I does not usually identify people who have been arrested unless they are charged, but Eastman agreed to talk about his case. Eastman said police took all his personal computers, including ones that "have not been used for years." The King County Prosecutor's Office said Friday the Eastman case is under investigation. Police are analyzing computer data to determine if a crime was committed.

Boeing acknowledged it had recently fired an employee for violating company policy after an internal investigation into the downloading of information from Boeing computer servers. John Dern, a spokesman for Boeing's corporate offices in Chicago, said Boeing is cooperating with law enforcement authorities, who are investigating.

For more than a year, Boeing has been quietly trying to determine the source of leaks to The Seattle Times, which has published a number of Boeing-related stories that cited "internal Boeing documents." Contacted Friday, the paper's business editor, Becky Bisbee, and reporter Dominic Gates declined comment about the arrest.

Eastman, who said he joined Boeing in August 1987, would not say if he took sensitive information from Boeing computers, or if he gave any of it to The Seattle Times. "I won't comment on any relationship I may have with a reporter," he said.

Eastman was arrested May 17 and released the next day, according to a King County Jail log. He was initially arrested for investigation of computer trespass and theft. Eastman, who worked in Boeing's propulsion unit in quality assurance, said he was told by Boeing on May 23 that he was being fired. "It was retaliation," he said. "It was for being a whistle-blower."

The FAA said Eastman filed safety complaints with the agency in 2002 and 2003. Both were investigated and the problems cited by Eastman were found to be "procedural non-compliance," the FAA spokesman said. Boeing took corrective measures and no enforcement action was taken, he said.

Originalartikel zu finden unter: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/273471_boeingarrest10.html