16 replies to this topic

[Peter Perfect]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the outcomes of spygate it'll have an impact on the way teams are managed and controlled from now on. It got me thinking that teams would have to now re-organise themselves in a few ways...

1. Lock everything down. Make sure every document/communication is completely controlled and checked dynamically for dubious content.

2. No longer allow material to be taken off site in any form. (Mandatory searches of any staff who have access)

3. Complete documentation of any new ideas to establish authenticity.

Are there any others?

How will this effect transfer of staff between teams?

Could teams use the result of spygate to go on the offensive?

[MikeTekRacing]

don't be a child (i am not saying it in a bad way), all you propose is done in any company that works with top of the art intelectual property. These kind of rules exist and are enforced all the around.
what these rules are meant to prevent people from getting acces to top secret material. for instance, a junior engineer can't steal that easy those things.
once the people have to have that material to do their job, you can't do anything more. when you have a highly ranked engineer doing the dirty work, you can't really protect yourself from it

[Peter Perfect]

Originally posted by MikeTekRacing
don't be a child (i am not saying it in a bad way), all you propose is done in any company that works with top of the art intelectual property. These kind of rules exist and are enforced all the around.
what these rules are meant to prevent people from getting acces to top secret material. for instance, a junior engineer can't steal that easy those things.
once the people have to have that material to do their job, you can't do anything more. when you have a highly ranked engineer doing the dirty work, you can't really protect yourself from it

What your saying is that there's no way a company can protect itself from what happened to McLaren?

[Ricardo F1]

Uh, McLaren did all of that. The only exception would be them needing to lock down laptops - or moreover just ban laptops.

[Bloggsworth]

This might be more of a problem for British based teams than others. Owing to the enormously high employment tax we have in this country, a lot of design and technical staff are on contracts as "suppliers", 30 days not being uncommon. To employ a person for 30 days, then try to force on them a restriction on who they can work for after the 30 days has ended would, I'm sure, be seen by British courts as ultra vires, not to mention restraint of trade. Were this sort of restriction accepted, it would allow The Acme Formula One Co. LTD., to employ every actual and potential F1 mechanic, engineer and designer for just one month, and effectively prevent them from ever working in the industry again.

Alternatively, it might force employers to treat the people who work for them properly, rather than have them moving around the industry saying "When I was at Acme, we did this..............."

[wj_gibson]

Enormously high employment tax my a*se!!!

[pedrovski]

I see renault have Oracle putting in a system for them.

"For Formula One teams, trade secrets are indispensable to victory. To safeguard highly sensitive information such as car designs and technical specifications, the ING Renault team turned to Oracle Information Rights Management (IRM), formerly Stellent SealedMedia."

[JSDSKI]

Originally posted by Peter Perfect Whatever the rights and wrongs of the outcomes of spygate it'll have an impact on the way teams are managed and controlled from now on. It got me thinking that teams would have to now re-organise themselves in a few ways...

Nothing will really change.

Espionage and theft has been a part of industrial development for a very, very, long time and certainly predates F1. The rules of espionage are now defined for F1. You can't have moles and you can't have employees of other teams feeding you info during the season. Staff transfers, photo spying, brain storming, gossip, etc. will continue. The teams will make some process changes such as you recommend, but the actual activity won't be altered. The free flow of information helps more teams than it hinders - even the victims are actively spying even as we post. So, it will continue.

[Bloggsworth]

Originally posted by wj_gibson
Enormously high employment tax my a*se!!!

In the company I work for the employment tax is twice that of income tax............

[Clatter]

Originally posted by Peter Perfect


What your saying is that there's no way a company can protect itself from what happened to McLaren?

A company can protect itself only so far, there has to come a point when the rules are in place and they have to trust their staff to follow those rules.

[Clatter]

Originally posted by Bloggsworth


In the company I work for the employment tax is twice that of income tax............

What is this employment tax? Is it something that only applies to contractors?

[EvilPhil II]

Well for example Coughlan was earning between £300,000 and £400,000 at Mclaren.

So in the UK if he was employed as a permanent member of staff his tax would work out as follows;


Gross Income
£400,000.00

Taxable Income
£394,775.00

Tax
£151,414.40

National Insurance
£6,912.00

Take Home
£241,673.60

[Tenmantaylor]

Coughlan earned that much? Im impressed.

[skinnylizard]

i am sure they already have all kinds of security systems in place to counter theft of information.

its just not foolproof. you can probably tighten measures, so maybe hard data is not leaking out. But people have information and people talk.

[Melbourne Park]

Originally posted by skinnylizard
i am sure they already have all kinds of security systems in place to counter theft of information.

its just not foolproof. you can probably tighten measures, so maybe hard data is not leaking out. But people have information and people talk.

Its also likely not very helpfull.

Anyway lots of people talk to eachother - consider how JPM said everyone does that, and mentioned how Pedro de La Rosa was often asking other teams about setups and such. No doubt, he was also telling them about McLaren.

What's the big deal? By the time you copy something, its out of date anyway.

Ferrari tried to copy the Mass Damper which they discovered in the Renault. But it did not help them at all - it was a total waste of resources trying to follow something which they did not understand the concepts behind it, notably the Michelin tyre's characteristics.

If in F1 you are not copied, then its best to through the technology out, because other teams have found it not to be useful otherwise you'd see it in/on other cars. That's a reference to I think Williams - or maybe it was RBR's Willis who said that.

Individual items aren't useful - with the speed of change, the key is understanding the entire concepts.

[Rinehart]

Originally posted by Peter Perfect
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the outcomes of spygate it'll have an impact on the way teams are managed and controlled from now on. It got me thinking that teams would have to now re-organise themselves in a few ways...

1. Lock everything down. Make sure every document/communication is completely controlled and checked dynamically for dubious content.

2. No longer allow material to be taken off site in any form. (Mandatory searches of any staff who have access)

3. Complete documentation of any new ideas to establish authenticity.

Are there any others?

How will this effect transfer of staff between teams?

Could teams use the result of spygate to go on the offensive?

Personally I think that the FIA should now take spying/espionage out of the rules. If teams want to challenge another teams behavoir through commercial law, through proper courts, good luck to them.

I just think the FIA have demonstrated that they are incapable of deciding (1) what constitutes PROOF that spying has occured (2) what constitutes NORMAL spying (e.g listening to a radio) and what is exceptional (3) it is unpoliceable in light of spygate (e.g. Honda requesting SA not to use new parts).

[EvilPhil II]

Originally posted by Tenmantaylor
Coughlan earned that much? Im impressed.

Yeah it was confirmed in the transcripts before they realised that they had not protected them correctly. £300,000 to £400,000 was the official statement.