FBI has arrested an Apple employee who was about to fly to China with a laptop full of confidential files which included Apple’s intellectual property. It was known that the person was about to pass the documents and information to a Chinese electric car manufacturer.
While Apple isn’t known in the general media to be at the forefront of autonomous self-driving car technology, it seems that spies are working hard trying to steal trade secrets. This isn’t the first time that Apple has faced this problem. Apple being completely secretive about their projects, they may have something up brewing in their labs which became a target of spies.
According to a report by NBC, the engineer in question started behaving suspiciously by taking photos at restricted areas within Apple which prompted their security team to look closer. This then led the team to find the files and documents on the engineer’s personal laptop. Apple found that the engineer also took a job at a rival autonomous self-driving car company in China.
“Apple takes confidentiality and the protection of our IP very seriously,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. “We are working with authorities on this matter and are referring all questions to the FBI.”
