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Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

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Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#191

Post by obmelvin »

Gargoyle wrote: post #71
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

Doesn't sound like anyone stole anything. Waymo/Google still had the documents, and copying isn't theft. Right?

Wrong.

There's no way in hell an employee contract would ever let someone copy documents and use them after leaving the company. The intellectual property belongs to Google, not the individual creators and certainly not to any other employee.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#192

Post by w00tw00tw00t »

kartickv wrote: post #122
w00tw00tw00t wrote: post #69

I had an interview there where the manager asked me to leave my laptop behind and go for a walk. I was hesitant after hearing stories of Uber conducting electronic espionage against its competitors. They could easily bypass Macbook security with a USB device (I had heard of that on HN too) so I was very nervous to leave my laptop behind and noted its exact orientation and position on the table. Sure enough when I ret…

You didn't ask why?

as a candidate you're trying to please and build trust, so naturally I wouldn't raise questions that would indicate my lack of trust

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#193

Post by w00tw00tw00t »

whorleater wrote: post #182
tomjakubowski wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never felt the need to bring my own laptop to a job interview. If the company asked me to bring my own, I'd consider that strange or even suspicious.

It'd be really weird for them to request you to bring a laptop, but sometimes when a company flies you out for an onsite and your return flight is that night, your options are either 1) leave your laptop with the hotel as luggage (pretty bad) or 2) bring your laptop to the interview. There's no real reason for them to know you have your laptop with you however.

they did not offer to provide me with a laptop and the interview format was such that I could google things and share some of my personal projects etc

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#194

Post by jonstewart »

sriram_sun wrote: post #42

What kind of employee would download 14K files to a personal drive right before quitting? It is trivially easy to watch what files get copied over to external drives. I think you can follow the money trail here and find some answers for sure. Now if Uber/Otto has a clause that prohibits employees from bringing in confidential data from previous companies, how can they be held liable? Does Google have to prove that th…

We call them "bad leavers" in the forensics industry. There are enough of them to keep us in business.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#195

Post by jonstewart »

revelation wrote: post #63
Animats wrote: post #57

Google might have been better off with patents than trade secrets. There are financial penalties for theft of trade secrets, but once the secret is out, no injunctions. The one who stole it can use it. With patents, injunctions are available, although hard to get. Anyway, several companies are developing automotive LIDAR units which are better than Google's rotating things. Quantergy and Velodyne claim to be close to…

I doubt there is any hot technology in some LIDAR interface board in the first place.

Probably no way to improve TCP bandwidth either...

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#196

Post by DannyBee »

tptacek wrote: post #104
gwern wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think losing a lawsuit is definitely evidence for claims being false just as winning correlates with telling the truth about not doing wrong things, and if it is true that there is no correlation whatsoever between losing a lawsuit and making false claims, then the legal system has failed utterly (and incidentally, you have given me a great idea for a business model). Given the adversarial nature of the system and…

It's evidence, but it's not dispositive, especially in cases like Cruise, where the technicality that determines the outcome might give the defense a 60/40 edge after a court case that will itself cost many millions of dollars.

What he said. Particularly in patent and other IP cases, it's often cheaper to settle, even for a lot, than defend the lawsuit. You could say our system has failed utterly You wouldn't be wrong in that case. ....

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#198

Post by gdubs »

w00tw00tw00t wrote: post #192
kartickv wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't ask why?

as a candidate you're trying to please and build trust, so naturally I wouldn't raise questions that would indicate my lack of trust

Piece of unsolicited advice for the future: don't let anyone pressure you into doing anything you don't feel comfortable with. Ever.

If a place is worth working for they're not going to judge you for feeling more comfortable keeping your stuff with you.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#199

Post by dmix »

w00tw00tw00t wrote: post #189
AlexCoventry wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you check the logs to see whether it had been opened in the meantime?

No, how do you do that?

Well, logs are quite easily accessible on any OS.

Memory forensics would have 100% given you evidence that it was accessed and exactly what was done. There are plenty of guides on how to forensically dump memory but that depends on the OS.

But I'm also in this is FUD camp. I highly doubt any company would do such a risky thing such as mirror your machine data merely for an interview. This would be highly illegal and damage the companies reputation for a relatively minor benefit.

Especially when interviewing any software dev which any infosec person would assume they are dealing with a sophisticated target with a high chance of being detected. Meaning they would have to use very careful cloning techniques.

It would be much easier to get you on staff on a company machine and temporarily monitor you closely after the fact. There are plenty of ways to thoroughly vet someone beforehand without taking such a risk.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#200

Post by Harimwakairi »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #90
polishTar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a number of tradeoffs to be made between internal secrecy/silos and trust/openness in any company, and google tends to lean heavily towards trusting their employees when it comes to corp data + resources, designs, strategy etc. User data is an entirely different matter, and is appropriately treated as such.

It doesn't need to be about "secrecy", it's about "security". Even when you ignore the employee trust issue, and assume everyone at your company would never betray you, "least privilege" is still not just best practice for security, it's common sense. People should not be able to access data they don't need. If they need it, you can grant it. But the assumption should be that someone who doesn't use the design server…

Having access to code and data you don't technically "need" is often how people learn new skills and advance their careers without leaving the company. It's an important part of the culture.
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