A SYSTEMS engineer has been hauled to criminal court by his former employers for allegedly sabotaging a computer program he developed.
SMC Marine Services has accused Thangavelu Boopathiraja, 36, of secretly setting passwords within the program before leaving the company.
The password protection, discovered months after his resignation, has left the company unable to check, modify or upgrade the system, lawyers for SMC told a district court yesterday.
SMC is taking criminal action against Thangavelu under the Computer Misuse Act, for preventing access to the computer program without authority.
This is believed to be the first private prosecution involving the act.
Thangavelu denies setting the passwords and has claimed trial.
The hearing, scheduled for five days, began yesterday. SMC is represented by lawyers from Alban Tay Mahtani & de Silva, while Thangavelu's lawyers are from Rodyk & Davidson.
Both sides will be calling expert computer witnesses.
The defence's position is that SMC's prosecution of Thangavelu, who set up a competing company selling a similar product, is aimed at putting him out of business.
The Straits Times understands that SMC also has a pending civil suit against Thangavelu in the High Court fixed for trial next month on related issues.
Thangavelu, a former Indian national who is now a Singapore citizen, was employed by SMC between February 2004 and August 2006.
SMC is in the business of transporting bulk cargo using tugboats and barges.
At the time, Thangavelu was developing a vessel-monitoring system that allowed real-time information, such as fuel usage, to be sent from the vessels to SMC's office.
The system included computer hardware onboard a tugboat, which requires codes to function.
According to the prosecution's opening statement, the software tool that is used to write the codes allows a programmer to add password-protection features.
But these passwords can only be set intentionally, said the statement.
Yesterday, SMC's director-in-charge of vessel operations and marketing, Mr Habib Anwar Mansoor Sheriff, testified that Thangavelu was the one who wrote the codes and loaded them into the tugboat's computer.
Anyone convicted of preventing access to a computer program without authority can be fined up to $10,000 and jailed up to three years.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on June 14, 2008.
