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Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#251

Post by austenallred »

throwaway13234 wrote: post #247

Statement from Levandowski's lawyers: https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/05/19/levandowski-waymo-fifth.pd... "The bite of the Court’s May 11, 2017 Preliminary Injunction Order, as it relates to nonparty Anthony Levandowski, can be summarized quite simply: 'Waive your Fifth Amendment rights... or I will have you fired. The choice is yours, Mr. Levandowski.' But, even when framed as a “choice,” this command runs counter to ne…

As easy as it is to hate on Uber, this is indeed troubling. Odd that you can tie such things to Constitutional rights.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#252

Post by obstinate »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #94
tyingq wrote: post #5

Of course, whatever salary he was making is far less interesting than the direct benefit of the original Otto acquisition.

Levandowski got $250 million in Uber stock during the Otto acquisition and per a story on Techcrunch as of May 3rd, none of it had vested yet. Doesn't seem likely it will either.

If there is any justice, Google will claw back significant fractions of the $120M it paid him through arbitration. It's unacceptable for this guy to sail off into the sunset after doing what he has done (if indeed it is proven that he did it).

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#253

Post by joshuamorton »

tjalfi wrote: post #238
zaphar wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the fifth is not automatically a sign of guilt despite what some people might think. As I understand it it's not out of the realm of possibility for a lawyer to advise doing so even for completely innocent clients. It's not hard to get tripped up on the stand and sound guilty even when you aren't.

This. The video Don't Talk to the Police[0] has several concrete examples of how not taking the fifth amendment can be to your disadvantage. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

This is not a criminal proceeding.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#254

Post by joshuamorton »

austenallred wrote: post #251
throwaway13234 wrote: post #247

Statement from Levandowski's lawyers: https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/05/19/levandowski-waymo-fifth.pd... "The bite of the Court’s May 11, 2017 Preliminary Injunction Order, as it relates to nonparty Anthony Levandowski, can be summarized quite simply: 'Waive your Fifth Amendment rights... or I will have you fired. The choice is yours, Mr. Levandowski.' But, even when framed as a “choice,” this command runs counter to ne…

As easy as it is to hate on Uber, this is indeed troubling. Odd that you can tie such things to Constitutional rights.

The thing to note here, is that as far as Alsup is concerned, Levandowski isn't a party to the case. There's Uber and Waymo. Uber has been instructed to get information for Waymo as part of a civil proceeding in which Levandowski is not a party. To do anything less than their fullest to compel Levandowski to give that information to Waymo would make Uber liable.

Its worth remembering that, at this point, this is only a civil suit, so among other things, silence can actually be used against you (adverse interference).

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#255

Post by rmellow »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #190
rmellow wrote: post #185

Not mentioned in the article: Uber is investing in a self-driving research unit in Toronto, Canada led by Raquel Urtasun [1]. Seems like a move to dodge all this Waymo brouhaha and benefit from Toronto's deep learning scene. [1] https://www.techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/uber-hires-raquel-urta...

Or they decided to hire a researcher and her small team of grad students to feed them research before publishing.

There are quite a few positions open in Toronto[1], which leads me to believe that actual development of self-driving is happening in the city.

The current state of immigration in the US has been reported to drive developments in deep learning to Canada[2].

[1] https://careers-uber.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searchCatego...

[2] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a-new-ai-hub-in-c...

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#256

Post by tjalfi »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #50
csours wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of those things would also go on a list called "illegal things companies have done". Probably not a good idea to do something illegal in the middle of a lawsuit.

There are many ways to make an employee's life worse without doing anything illegal. You tend to see them in dysfunctional companies.

Here is an example from a previous job.

The location was a factory for a company you have heard of. Temporary employees were 99 and 44/100% of the workforce. One staffing agency, call it Agency A, had the main contract for the site and they were required to give some of the work to their competitors. It was policy to assign temps from other agencies impossible schedules so that they would quit and be replaced by temps from Agency A.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#257

Post by kbenson »

throwaway13234 wrote: post #244
huac wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google alleges he then copied the files onto a portable hard drive and wiped the laptop, which shows a pretty strong intent to deceive.

Can you show me where in the expert testimony this is? I haven't yet found this exact allegation myself. I've seen the media parrot this over and over again. The expert testimony identified a specific model card reader attached to the computer a full three days later. It didn't say that a memory card was ever inserted into the card reader and mounted a logical volume. Nor did the expert testimony mention any files co…

> Does the lack of these details but specificity of other details not strike anyone else as odd?

Not particularly. There's only so much they can log easily by tying into the system. Card reader insertions are easily tracked through OS level event logs in most operating systems, but generating a log entry for every file copy that happens is quite another level of granularity.

It's sort of like street level cameras. They may catch someone going into a a house or business, but unless you have prior knowledge that there is a camera inthe house or business that the state should have access to, omission of footage of what happened inside does not insinuate that something is being omitted on purpose.

> The only copying of files that were specifically identified in the expert testimony was the copying of about a half dozen files to Google drive.

Yep, and only one of them was by Levandowski. "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015"

There's only so much that the expert testimony was able to establish. But what it did do was get the judge to authorize more discovery, so Google will apparently get a lot of data from Uber to search through to find their smoking gun, if it exists.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#258

Post by kbenson »

joshuamorton wrote: post #253
tjalfi wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The video Don't Talk to the Police[0] has several concrete examples of how not taking the fifth amendment can be to your disadvantage. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

This is not a criminal proceeding.

But the case has been referred to the authorities for a possible criminal case. In that light, there may be more reason to keep quiet.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#260

Post by will4274 »

hackunomatter wrote: post #220
kbenson wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it was also a previously unused laptop, so it's not all that unusual for someone setting up a work system to make sure their work access is set up. It is odd that it happened towards the end, and that it wasn't used afterwards, but I can also see it being something I might do in preperation if I had to take a short trip and hadn't set up a remote work laptop yet or my prior one was causing problems. That it…

Well, if he has a rock-solid benign explanation, why doesn't he come on the stand and testify?

Despite what you learned as a kid, you can get caught in a lie when you tell the truth. Part of the "game" of adversarial court is trying to get as many legally admissible statements from opposing witnesses as possible. Once enough statements have been entered into evidence, lawyers find contradictions - it doesn't matter how small. Humans don't say the exact same thing every time - it's not too hard to create the appearance of a contradiction where none exists - and sometimes prosecutors get it wrong and think they hear a contradiction where none exists. Good defense lawyers keep their clients (innocent or guilty) out of the witness box as much as possible.
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