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U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#51

Post by raiyu »

dheera wrote: post #43
raiyu wrote: post #23

White collar crime vs blue collar crime. White collar crime steal $179MM of assets and get 27 months of home arrest. Blue collar crime rob a bank to steal $10,000 and spend 10 years in prison.

> $179MM of assets Uh, that's only if you think they are worth $179M. I might be your competitor, think your software is crap, and worth $0 to me. This is a heavily subjective number. $10000 in hard cash though is $10000 no matter how you look at it. I do agree that white vs blue collar crime is an issue but I don't think that's the issue here. On the other hand though I am dismayed at the fact that this guy is getti…

That is absolutely true. But given that a competitor did pay for those assets, literally, then a market value for those assets was established.

If he had stolen the IP, and the acquiring company decided to pay $0 for it and not take it, then your assessment would be correct.

But a company decided that those assets were worth north of $100MM and paid for it.

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#52

Post by knightofmars »

ttmb wrote: post #17
dheera wrote: post #10

Honest question here. Why are we, the taxpayers, paying for 27 months of free housing and food for this guy? Considering he's not a physical threat to society, only an intellectual one, I'd much rather he be slapped with a financial punishment large enough to be meaningful.

So let's say I did the same thing. I don't have any money, so there is no meaningful financial punishment that can be applied to me. In which case, we'll need an alternate punishment, ie - jail. In which case we've just set up a punishment system where poor people go to jail and rich people don't.

>In which case we've just set up a punishment system where poor people go to jail and rich people don't.

One could make a good case that this is already the state of the justice system in the United States. The simple act of being able to afford a better attorney alters the outcome of a trial.

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#54

Post by lhorie »

jonathanjaeger wrote: post #29
raiyu wrote: post #23

White collar crime vs blue collar crime. White collar crime steal $179MM of assets and get 27 months of home arrest. Blue collar crime rob a bank to steal $10,000 and spend 10 years in prison.

While this is a fair point (due to the difference in money), there is something to be said about the trauma imposed on people who are witness to a bank robbery, not to mention the potential lives hurt/lost if things go sour. I'm not saying in your above example that the 27mo and 10yr sentences should be shorter or longer, I'm just noting that there are reasons the two aren't equal.

> If you are convicted of misdemeanor grand theft, you face up to 364 days in county jail and a maximum fine of $1,000. If you are convicted of felony grand theft, you face a sentence of 16 months, two or three years in county jail and maximum fine of $10,000[1]

[1] https://www.wklaw.com/theft-sentencing-punishment/

Theft (i.e. stealing without violence, as opposed to robbery) can still carry penalties of several years of prison.

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#55

Post by jjoonathan »

tome wrote: post #28

Top comment: unfairly lenient Second-top comment: unfairly strict https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23989857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23989843

Would we prefer that the mob immediately settle on one option, grab its pitchforks and torches, and get to work?

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#56

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

runako wrote: post #42
raiyu wrote: post #23

White collar crime vs blue collar crime. White collar crime steal $179MM of assets and get 27 months of home arrest. Blue collar crime rob a bank to steal $10,000 and spend 10 years in prison.

Re: peer comments noting the difference between violent & non-violent crime. The penal code is full of blue-collar crimes that carry exceedingly stiff penalties. For example, possession of 12 grams of LSD carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years under federal sentencing guidelines.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that being in possession of 48,000 good strong doses of LSD would seem like a fairly good reason to assume the person is somewhat organised in their criminal leanings.

Calling it blue collar is somewhat of a stretch.

Whether I agree with the spirit of the law in that context is somewhat orthogonal.

Full disclosure: many years ago I moved about 33,000 tabs of LSD on to the streets, took me about three years though.

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#57

Post by vkou »

raiyu wrote: post #23

White collar crime vs blue collar crime. White collar crime steal $179MM of assets and get 27 months of home arrest. Blue collar crime rob a bank to steal $10,000 and spend 10 years in prison.

A better example would be this case:

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2019...

Caught spray-painting a federal building in political protest? (Which costs less than a hundred dollars to clean up.) Prosecutors were seeking ten years for that adventure.

Actual sentencing was probably a bit less than a year, but I likewise doubt Lewandowski will serve all 27 months.

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#58

Post by manquer »

ttmb wrote: post #17
dheera wrote: post #10

Honest question here. Why are we, the taxpayers, paying for 27 months of free housing and food for this guy? Considering he's not a physical threat to society, only an intellectual one, I'd much rather he be slapped with a financial punishment large enough to be meaningful.

So let's say I did the same thing. I don't have any money, so there is no meaningful financial punishment that can be applied to me. In which case, we'll need an alternate punishment, ie - jail. In which case we've just set up a punishment system where poor people go to jail and rich people don't.

That’s the difference between American view of prison as only punishment and deterrent and not rehabilitation.

If a criminal is violent and needs to isolated from society or needs rehabilitation programs skills training etc to live a moral /legal life then perhaps prison can offer those .

Even with traditional non white collar crimes , like say prostitution or small drug dealers offender are often victims as well , putting them in prison is counter productive.

The punishment philosophy is based on the premise that punishment is an deterrent and severe punishment will make people not break the law. This is outdated view.

Decision making when committing a crime is not driven by fear of imprisonment. People do not always make rational decisions , especially under the influence of a substance . our risk perception and tolerance is not statistically optimal plenty of games and tv shows revolve around this .

Logical reasoning arguments aside , on pure numbers rate of incarceration and convictions, recidivism per capita in the U.S. is by far the highest in developed economies and the difference is very stark compared to say Norway where rehabilitation is the focus, famously prisons are so empty they rent it out to other countries, a mass shooter complains about not having access to latest play station.

I am not even touching on the problems with the slavery , for profit incentives , the dis proportionate racial representation , racial /economic sentencing biases for similar crimes in the U.S.

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#59

Post by zerr »

nostromo wrote: post #44
raiyu wrote: post #23

White collar crime vs blue collar crime. White collar crime steal $179MM of assets and get 27 months of home arrest. Blue collar crime rob a bank to steal $10,000 and spend 10 years in prison.

Stealing intellectual property and trade secrets isn't the same as stealing hard assets. Bernie Madoff was a white collar criminal that stole real money from clients and is serving life in prison. Google may have been damaged, but they can still use their software that was stolen.

Interesting, can pure money be treated as virtual goods? and reversing that crime must be easy, no? Like banks reversing those transactions, or invalidating the stolen records and re-allocating funds to affected clients?

Re: U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head

#60

Post by [deleted] »

jxf wrote: post #41
macspoofing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-violent vs violent crime. There is a difference.

Courts have ruled that robbery is not necessarily violent. If you walk into a bank and say "Excuse me, could I trouble you for a moment of your time? Please hand me all the money in the safe", that's not violent: no threat is made, no gun is brandished, and so on. (It is still a robbery, of course.) https://blog.federaldefendersny.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/...

[deleted]
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