"Gaining access to information about weak future sales" = He was threatened directly by the NSA that they would cut existing and not provide future contracts to the tune of approximately 3bn worth of revenue if he didn't play ball.
How is he supposed to notify the public of this fact when there's an implicit gag order in the requesting? So he has two options, take the financial hit for doing the right thing and telling them to go fuck themselves, or selling the stock and taking the legal hit for breaking insider trading laws.
There don't seem to be that many cases: http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/insidertrading/cases.shtml
The SEC brings tons of insider trading cases (the page you linked to points out that the ones on the page are just "examples"). See: http://www.mofo.com/files/Uploads/Images/130116-Insider-Trad... (Page 3.). The SEC and DOJ together brought 86 insider trading cases last year. Two recent convictions were Raj Rajaratnam (hedge fund manager) in 2011, and Raj Gupta (former chief executive of McKinsey) in 2012. It's a favorite go-to for the SEC because it's relatively easy to prove as far as financial crimes go.
In July the FISA court ruled that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures "on at least one occasion."
And yet I've read so many assurances from the legal eagles here on HN that since the relevant service providers already had these records, there was no way the Fourth Amendment applied. After all, it's just about your papers in your house! Because 18th Century!
Yeah, I knew that was bullshit, but it's nice to learn that even the craven, supine FISA court agrees. Try again guys!
The difference is though, when a coder finds out why the program is doing what the user doesn't want it to do, he will say "See, there you go, we can fix it now" where the lawyer will say "See, there you go, it turns out you're in the wrong because the law says so", the deeper embedded in the fabric of the legal profession they are the harder it seems to be for them to consider the possibility that although it's the law, it can still be utterly and completely wrong.
i remember when the qwest insider trading scandal first broke back in 2001 - it fit with the times - bernie ebbers, worldcom etc - corrupt telecom executives.
it is quite disturbing to think that a CEO might have been targeted in this way for refusal to cooperate with the NSA.
so much so, that i have a hard time believing that this is actually the case. lots of people in jail have elaborate theories for why they are innocent.
the market topped in 2000. spring of 2001 the market was already in serious trouble. nacchio would undoubtedly have known about earnings shortfalls that would occur as part of the implosion of the telecom bubble. the company had a number of accounting irregularities and was engaged in phony broadband deals with enron. qwest would not have escaped the market troubles with an NSA deal.
let's keep some perspective here people.
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_7230967?source=comment...
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-ns...
The difference is that snitches exist to inform police of criminal activity, not to spy (or enable spying) on their customers.
