Tech Company Chairman's Computer Disappears During Conference

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGIN4EOG9DC.html

Sep 17, 2000 - 09:25 PM

By Frank Bajak
The Associated Press

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - A computer belonging to the founder and chairman
of a top telecommunications company was believed to have been stolen
from a hotel conference room where he had been speaking to
journalists.

The portable computer apparently contained valuable company secrets
involving Qualcomm Inc., which designs and produces chips for wireless
communications devices and holds hundreds of patents. Qualcomm CEO and
founder Irwin Jacobs told some journalists attending the meeting that
some of that information could be valuable to foreign governments.

Jacobs left the laptop unattended on a podium at the Hyatt
Regency-Irvine ballroom for 15 to 20 minutes Saturday after addressing
the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. He was speaking
with a small group about 30 feet away when it disappeared.

"We took it as a straight laptop theft, which is pretty typical for a
hotel," Irvine Police Sgt. Tim Smith said.

Qualcomm spokeswoman Christine Trimble wouldn't discuss details Sunday
except to confirm that the laptop was used by Jacobs for "business
purposes." Company officials would not say whether Jacobs had
contacted the FBI.

Qualcomm is the world's leading developer of a technology known as
CDMA, which seems to have won the global battle to become the standard
technology for making high-speed Internet access available on wireless
devices.

That sort of technology is expected to connect the Internet to
handheld devices, cars and even airplanes in the next few years -
initially in the Far East and Europe, markets considered to have a
potential value in the tens of billions of dollars.

Trimble said the laptop, valued at about $4,000, was password
protected and the data was backed up on a computer at Qualcomm's San
Diego headquarters. However, password-protected computers running
Windows' operating systems, as Jacobs' was, can easily be broken into.

If security on Jacobs' laptop was limited only to password protection
- rather than a more advanced encryption scheme - "it's extremely
unlikely that it will take any more than removing the hard drive and
hooking it up to another computer to read all the files," said Shawn
Abbott, chief technical officer of computer security company Rainbow
Technologies.

SABEW President Byron Calame, deputy managing editor of The Wall
Street Journal, said many people had access to the ballroom on
Saturday, including exhibitors and guests at the conference and hotel
staff.

More than 100 reporters and editors from across the nation attended
SABEW's 4th annual technology conference, a two-day event that ended
Sunday.


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