Comment by eh8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eh8 | Hacker News Reader

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The headline is true but suggests a far more sinister implication than what is actually going on.

A few things that need to be taken in context here.

- The materials in question were sent to China, Taiwan, Canada and Ireland.

- As others have mentioned, Honeywell sent commercially-available schematics to the above countries, not classified information. The article mentions that Honeywell sent parts relating to the engine, this could literally just be a valve or bearing component. I doubt this kind of information is usable unless you have a ton of additional documentation describing their function and utility as a sub-assembly.

- Honeywell reported this themselves. A bunch of articles on this topic use the phrase 'Honeywell admits...' as if this was some kind of smoking gun.

The knee-jerk reaction claiming that Honeywell has committed treason or something like it is unreasonable. Methinks incompetence from the sales department is to blame here rather than malice.

See Reddit threads discussing same topic:

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/n5vglg/honeywell...

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/n5tcqg/honeywel...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/n4gwma/honeywell_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/n5n1jc/honeywell_admi... -

The fact that they sent the designs to Canada, of all places, should suggest that their actions were unintentional - Canada is one of our closer military allies.

Historically Canada didn't really protect itself against foreign adversaries performing IP Theft. They might be based there due to the lax immigration system. [0] [1]

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-milita...

[1] https://www.blogto.com/city/2013/01/that_time_toronto_went_s...

>IP Theft

Imaginary Property Theft

Generous/humane immigration system.

You could probably chalk it up to a home-grown file sharing repository. Instead of buying a quality commercial product they lashed together something built of free and cheap parts. It probably replicated the files to all the mentioned countries to cache them in case they were needed and the DIY system didn't check whatever security level flags were set.

Or it's basic misdirection.

I did say "suggest" - although Occam's razor suggests that my answer is more likely to be right.

For wrongly distributed non-readily available military schematics, I think it's safe to say that Occam's razor isn't a great axiom to take.

I don't see how any of those qualifiers have anything to do with my point. Mistakes happen all of the time.

How does that change things with regard to the status of controlled information?

Wait, commercially available means that (AFAICT) anyone with a bit of money in any country can buy it, right? E.g. off the shelf stuff. Like screens,switches, pumps, brackets, etc.

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