Judge criticises NDS' Peled

[SAT-WORLD]

Pay-TV broadcaster Echostar is suing smart-card encryption specialist NDS, alleging dirty tricks in what is now being described as “Spygate”. The judge stopped the $100m trial on Friday May 2, not happy with NDS’ president and CEO Dr Abe Peled (pictured, left).

From local reports it seems US District Court Judge David Carter was upset that Dr Peled had been in town on April 30 to meet with the NDS defence lawyers in order to make a deposition, but had left town without appearing before the Court. Judge Carter stopped the trial while Ray Khan, senior director of engineering at DirecTV was giving his statement, and sent out the eight-person jury, and told counsel for the plaintiffs and defendant that he needed time to think on whether to issue a “negative inference” to the jury.

Judge Carter cannot order the appearance of any non-local witness, and noted that it was entirely up to the NDS legal team to decide whether to put any executive onto the witness stand, but that he had stressed to both sides that he wanted to see as many live witnesses as possible on the stand and be subject to cross examination. The judge warned NDS attorneys that he may tell the jury that Peled left the Court in preference to staying and testifying.

“I hope (Peled) reflects on his decision,” the judge said. Charlie Ergen, CEO at Echostar, has testified in front of the Court. One witness on the list is Rupert Murdoch, although it is likely that he too will be a “no show”. NDS later Friday told the Court that Dr Peled would not be appearing in person. Judge Carter said: “I can just imagine the shareholder lawsuits.” The judge also commented on how NDS appeared to be putting well-intentioned but semi-knowledgeable people onto the witness stand.

Echostar, along with NagraStar, its j-v encryption system operated with Kudelski Group, are alleging that NDS deliberately compromised the NagraStar system. NDS, in its defence, is arguing strongly that all it did was reverse engineer the NagraStar cards in order to better understand their technology and to make the NDS VideoGuard product more secure. However, there’s little doubt in the murky world of smart card technology that there’s a great deal of dirty washing being exposed to public scrutiny.

Dr Peled told analysts on the NDS conference call May 1 that he expected the trial to wrap this month.

Source:Rapid Tv News