While it may look easy (and astonishingly lucrative) to pull a case of high-stakes espionage, one South Korean and three US-based individuals are learning the hard way that crime doesn't pay. The Seoul Central Prosecutors Office is accusing an unnamed employee of Posdata Co., a developer of WiBro, "of sending email with proprietary information to three former employees who live in the US." Additionally, it was suggested that the trade secrets (which cost about $95 million to fully develop) were being offered up "for around $190 million" to an unnamed US company. All in all, four culprits were arrested in the ordeal, and while "some data" was transferred, the boys in blue caught on and stopped the gig before any major secrets were divulged. Should've tried the bag drop method, eh?

We all knew Apple was going to announce the iPhone at yesterday's Macworld keynote, but we didn't really know, y'know? Despite years of anticipation, false starts, and promised rumors, we can't decide if we're more impressed by what Apple managed to pack into the iPhone's slender frame or their ability to keep the entire thing an absoloute secret. Fortune takes a look at the process, covering the highly secretive cooperation with cell-carrier Cingular, the unusually distributed effort within Apple itself, and the increasing strain placed on the personal lives of employees tasked with long hours and strict confidentiality. Perhaps most interesting was the creation of "bogus prototypes" that they used with not only Cingular executives but with Apple exployees themselves. Lucky for us, an insider deep inside the core of Apple sent us this cameraphone snap of an early prototype featuring a (now absent) external antenna. What is that, a granny smith? Sweet! Errr, rather, sour.

We've heard stories about companies banning the use of certain kinds of products, such as cameraphones or digital audio players, since they could potentially be used to snap pics of or download classified info. But in what must be a first-of-its-kind case, Samsung has actually banned employees from using one of the company's own products out of industrial espionage fears. Ki-Tae Lee, CEO of  Samsung Electronics Telecommunications Network, has apparently warned employees not to pick up the company's SGH-B570 cellphones, because the music-playing phone's 8GB capacity "is more than enough to steal all confidential data about our company." No word yet as to whether Lee is also banning Samsung's various thumbdrives, USB hard drives and audio players, which can also be used to slurp company data. Also, we have to admit to being just a little disappointed that all of the company's confidential data can fit on a single 8GB cellphone. What does that say about Samsung's R&D capabilities?

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