WebTV technology on the run.......................
mercurycenter.com
Posted at 10:50 a.m. PST Saturday, December 18, 1999
WebTV Box Tours New York
Someone diverted secret technology from Microsoft Redmond headquarters
BY NOAM LEVEY
AND CECILIA KANG
Mercury News Staff Writers
The box marked WebTV in Microsoft Corp.'s Mountain View mail room probably looked like the perfect gift, a new toy worth a couple hundred dollars that no one would miss.
But it was no ordinary box. After it disappeared last week, police investigators were told it held a prototype machine worth a million dollars. And Microsoft wanted it back.
They'll get it. A cross-country hunt for the missing piece of high-tech wizardry found it Friday in the Manhattan home of a man who thought he had just received a great Hanukkah present.
Microsoft officials, who feared that their next-generation technology had been filched by high-tech rivals, can breathe a little easier.
Investigators believe the thief didn't even know what he was stealing.
Microsoft's current generation of WebTV boxes, which sit on top of the TV and allow users to surf the Internet from their televisions, sell for about $200 at most retailers. But the VCR-sized box that disappeared could be worth millions, said detective Ted Rodgers, who worked the case out of Mountain View.
``It's like any new technology out there,' Rodgers said. ``It could be the next big thing, and if it's the next big thing and sells, it will generate millions. Or it could flop.'
Microsoft spokeswoman Pam Kahl would say only that the missing item was ``a very valuable box from a Microsoft perspective.'
According to police, someone with access to the mail room at Microsoft's WebTV facility in Mountain View changed the address label on the WebTV box last week and rerouted it from Redmond, Wash., to New York City.
The alarm bells went off when workers at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters received only the cord that was supposed to connect to the box.
Searching through United Parcel Service shipping records left by the unwitting thief, investigators learned that the missing machine was shipped to East 96th Street in Manhattan, and Thursday afternoon, Mountain View police alerted their counterparts at the New York Police Department.
Investigators from the city's Computer Investigation and Technology unit swept in and confronted an unsuspecting Scott Posner, who told police he had just given the box to his father, who lived 10 blocks south.
Samuel Posner hadn't even unpacked it. He handed it over without incident, according to New York police.
Rodgers, who also works on Silicon Valley's high-tech crime task force, said the Posners did not say who sent the special gift.
But he said investigators are confident this was not high-tech espionage.
``It was just a really stupid theft,' Rodgers said. ``There is no indication there was any kind of conspiracy to steal WebTV technology.'
Police are continuing their investigation. There have been no arrests. |
