He was stressed and secretive
By Rennie Whang
The New Paper
Saturday, May 25, 2013
US Researcher's Death in S'pore
HE USED to talk all the time, then he changed and became secretive, said a friend of late US researcher, Dr Shane Todd. Dr Joseph Romen Cubillo, 43, testified Wednesday at the Coroner's Inquiry into the death of Dr Todd, who was found hanged in his flat here on June 24 last year.
"Shane had been stressed since February 2012. This was when I noted that he became secretive about all his projects," said Dr Cubillo.
But he said he wasn't aware of the scope of Dr Todd's work, or if he was working on any defence-related projects at the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), where they were colleagues in different departments.
He said Dr Todd was "always concerned about violating American intellectual property law and import/export policy".
From December 2010 to June 2011, the two worked on a project with a US-based start-up firm, Aurrion, which included the development of a planar laser. It was for telecommunications, but could be used either for military or commercial purposes, Dr Cubillo said.
The Aurrion chief executive officer had been friends with Dr Todd from their days at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where Dr Todd had got his PhD.
He said Dr Todd told him that his IME supervisor, Dr Patrick Lo, had on a few occasions pressured him to ask for very intimate details of Aurrion's technology, with the aim of understanding and copying it.
"I remembered Shane was almost moved to tears. Shane told me that (Dr Lo) had verbally asked for (files which are the complete design of a chip)."
Calling it a breach of a non-disclosure agreement, Dr Cubillo said: "Asking (for this file) of laser technology is something that cannot be done... It's like asking for the PIN code of your credit card."
He said he remembered one occasion in December 2011 when Dr Todd told him he wanted to resign from IME over this. "He was very upset. He said he cannot work in a company where the top management does that kind of thing." Dr Cubillo said he told Dr Todd not to resign.
"I told him that when you do research, do what you love, you are born to do.
"If somebody asks you to do it, just don't do it. I don't see any contradiction, you can still do your job. Doesn't mean (when) you have a problem with top management, you resign."
Dr Cubillo said he wasn't aware of IME's whistle-blowing policy, pointed out by
Senior Counsel Philip Jeyaretnam, who is representing IME.
Never briefed
He had never been briefed about the document which is found on the institute's intranet, he said.
"To tell you the truth, I'm very happy there is a whistle-blowing policy now. I can use it in the future," he said.
Dr Cubillo had made an audio recording of an April 11 meeting in which Dr Lo told several employees to be "very careful" about what they said in their police statements.
He recalled that he had been working that day when he got a call from a human resources officer, to "go see (Dr Lo) to be coached on what to say during the later statement, and I refused to go".
He said the staff member called half an hour later, saying he "must go to the meeting or you will suffer the full consequences".
He said he asked her to send an e-mail as the meeting had been arranged without this usual verification. The staff member eventually did so.
Dr Cubillo said that apart from asking them to review their statements to protect customer confidentiality, Dr Lo also said: "Huawei can sue us."
"When people tell you (that), it's a way of saying, you should be thinking of modifying your statement. That is how I understood it," he said.
Dr Cubillo said he did not manage to record this part as the mobile phone he used to record had run out of memory by then. He gave a police statement on April 18 and gave a revised statement the next day, crossing out the names of four or five IME defence-related customers "to avoid any trouble with IME," he said.
Also raised in court yesterday was the issue of the temporary file that had been on Dr Todd's external hard drive. While the file is dated June 27 last year, three days after Dr Todd was found dead, its corresponding parent file is dated June 22 last year.
This discrepancy in dates had been raised by Mr Ashraf Massoud, a California-based IT analyst engaged by Dr Todd's parents.
But State Counsel Teo Lu Jia said that the Investigation Officer's (IO) laptop ran on Windows Vista, on which the last access date is disabled by default. It was previously mentioned that the external drive was with the IO at that time.
Two US pathologists also took the stand to say that Dr Edward Adelstein, a medical examiner engaged by the Todd family who testified on Tuesday, was mistaken in suggesting that Dr Todd could have been killed with a taser and carotid armlock (neck chokehold).
There were no taser marks on the body and it rarely kills, said Dr David Fowler, chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland, in the US.
Dr Valerie Rao, chief medical examiner of District 4 and part of District 3 in Jacksonville, Florida, in the US, added that if had there been a chokehold, there should have been signs of a struggle between the assailant and the victim, with the victim trying to fight off the arm choking him.
On Dr Adelstein's claim that Dr Todd had headbutted his assailant in self-defence, Dr Rao said: "If there was headbutting, there would definitely be haemorrhage under the scalp."
But the pathologist who opened Dr Todd's scalp found no injury there.
The inquiry continues today.
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