{"id":932114,"date":"2026-10-14T01:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T01:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/932114\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T01:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T01:10:11","slug":"openai-engineer-arrested-accused-of-planting-listening-device-inside-companys-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/932114\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI engineer arrested, accused of planting listening device inside company’s office"},"content":{"rendered":"

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U.S. federal agents arrested a Saudi national who was an OpenAI engineer and charged him with installing \u200ba hidden audio recording device in an \u200bexecutive conference room at the AI company, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The \u200bcase highlights growing security concerns around sensitive AI research \u200bas companies and governments compete fiercely for the talent and technology that could confer economic and strategic advantages.<\/p>\n

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, had worked as an engineer \u200bat OpenAI since July 2025, the Justice Department said in a statement<\/a>. An email sent to an address \u200bassociated with that name did not elicit a response, and it was not immediately clear who his lawyer was.<\/p>\n

OpenAI \u2060discovered the recording device \u2060plugged into a USB port on the \u200cback of a television in an executive conference room at one of its San Francisco buildings on Sept. 30, according to the department.<\/p>\n

Device concealed in toilet paper<\/p>\n

The thumb-sized device, \u2060which had a microphone and \u2060could connect to a camera, was concealed in toilet paper, \u200caccording to an FBI complaint. It was installed on or about Sept. 28, but its stored data was encrypted and inaccessible. Investigators later found a similar customized device in Alfozan’s personal bag.<\/p>\n

OpenAI said in an \u2060X post<\/a> that it \u200bhad used its internal AI \u200bmodels to identify the individual responsible for planting the device and trace \u200bits origins.<\/p>\n

The company said it had evidence that the employee intended to place additional recording devices in sensitive areas of its offices to secretly record meetings.<\/p>\n

“At this \u2060time, we \u200chave no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated,” the company said. <\/p>\n

WATCH | A call for global safeguards for AI:\"\"<\/p>\n

OpenAI CEO tells world leaders to help guide AI’s future<\/p>\n

Top AI leaders briefed the UN Security Council this week on the dangers of artificial intelligence. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, called for global safeguards while leaving standards up to individual governments. U.S. President Donald Trump told the UN that he rejects AI regulation.<\/p>\n

OpenAI referred the matter to the FBI, which \u200cis continuing to investigate. The Saudi embassy in the United States \u200bdid not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.<\/p>\n

“Abdulrahman Alfozan allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer\u2019s \u2060executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company\u2019s super intelligence technology,” FBI director \u2060Kash Patel said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Alfozan also used an AI productivity agent to seek information about meeting-room \u2060calendars and capabilities for about a month through Sept. 16, according to the FBI complaint. He has been a legal \u2060permanent resident of the U.S. since September 2020. <\/p>\n

If convicted, Alfozan faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 US fine \u2060and \u2060three years of supervised release.<\/p>\n

Alfozan studied at \u200bthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously worked at Meta and \u200bMicrosoft.<\/p>\n

Reuters could not independently verify \u2060the details mentioned in his LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n

Separately, the tech industry outlet the Information reported that \u200bOpenAI was in early talks to acquire Trail of Bits, a startup that identifies and fixes vulnerabilities in open-source software. The talks were ongoing and could \u200bfall apart, the report said, citing people \u2060familiar with the matter. <\/p>\n

OpenAI and Trail of Bits did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.<\/p>\n

OpenAI said on \u200bFriday it fired three researchers after an investigation found they had violated company policies \u200bon handling sensitive information.<\/p>\n

The \u2060statement came after the researchers, Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, published a letter detailing the circumstances of their dismissal and arguing that the abrupt firings could create uncertainty among employees and undermine a culture that had allowed researchers to raise safety \u2060concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-932114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}