John C. Smith

The theft of U.S. trade secrets was costing American companies billions of dollars a year in lost sales when President Bill Clinton signed the Economic Espionage Act into law on Oct. 11, 1996. Although theft of proprietary data and products has been designated a federal criminal offense, it occurs every day, according to John C. Smith, president of the John C. Smith Group High Technology Investigations & Security Consulting of Silicon Valley and Roseville, Calif. For eight years, Smith served as the senior criminal investigator for the high technology theft/computer crime unit in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, working high-technology crime in