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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

#71

Post by runako »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #56
runako wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stree…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/01/23/s...

SCOTUS says the medium weight counts. So I'm guessing 12 grams is a lot fewer doses according to the courts?

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

#72

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

sandworm101 wrote: post #38
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.

>> rob a bank to steal $10,000 Lol. Those that do actually succeed in robbing a bank get away with far less than $10,000. There will be a dye pack if you grab anything more than what the cashier has in front of them. It is most often less than $1000.

This depends on how you rob the bank.

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

#73

Post by credit_guy »

I was thinking I'd read that the head of the Uber self-driving car division at the time of the killing of Elaine Herzberg [1] is being pursued by prosecutors for her wrongful death.

Instead, it's about some IP stuff.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg

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

#74

Post by felipemnoa »

cle wrote: post #63
wjn0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> possession of 12 grams of LSD Reader's note: that's between 50k and 100k doses. Not that I disagree with your point.

Not when you include the blotter paper in the weight, which is what police often do, in that case it'd likely be <10 doses.

To clarify, you are assuming (a big if since the poster made no mention of this) that 12g includes the weight of the paper and if you were to discount that weight then you would get a lesser amount of LSD? i.e. If the paper weighs 11 g then the actual LSD amount would be 1g.

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

#75

Post by jmpman »

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.

Let’s say an employee working for Bank A developed software there. Left Bank A to work for Bank B. Brought his software with him. Bank B has had to spend less money to develop that software and is more profitable had their employee not stolen the code. Bank A and Bank B are competitors. How much would this be considered theft?

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

#76

Post by CydeWeys »

qppo wrote: post #49
sadfev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was blatant theft of IP and some might consider corporate espionage. He was a high level exec at Waymo, who stole the IP which represented the core competency just before he jumped ship to Uber.

> some might consider corporate espionage I don't know about "consider," he plead guilty to theft of trade secrets and was charged with crimes defined by the Economic Espionage Act. But I think most engineers don't know that stealing IP from your former employer is a federal crime punishable up to 10 years.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Almost all engineers should at least know that doing so is wrong. And this guy was an executive, not just an engineer.

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

#77

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

cle wrote: post #67
luckylion wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do the judges also include the blotter paper?

Yes: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/500/453/

This is also why you should NOT attempt to dissolve drugs into drinks if you're caught with them... because they can use the liquid weight of the drink as your charged amount.

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

#78

Post by cle »

felipemnoa wrote: post #74
cle wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when you include the blotter paper in the weight, which is what police often do, in that case it'd likely be <10 doses.

To clarify, you are assuming (a big if since the poster made no mention of this) that 12g includes the weight of the paper and if you were to discount that weight then you would get a lesser amount of LSD? i.e. If the paper weighs 11 g then the actual LSD amount would be 1g.

It's not a big if, this is standard practice in the US legal system. They weigh the drug + medium. If you have 1-9 grams, including the paper, minimum first offender sentence is 5 years. With the paper that's only a few doses.

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

#79

Post by munk-a »

IMTDb wrote: post #65
munk-a wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a huge exaggeration - but I'd like to see some explanation of why that's in any way relevant to the trial. Maybe the DOJ should be requesting funds from congress to help improve prison safety or even look at upscaling work-release programs - or maybe the executive branch could pardon all those low level drug offenders and the DOJ could finally remove mandatory sentencing rules around possession charges. Maybe in…

If we consider p(him dying) = 1 if convicted to a death sentence. The point of the lawyer if that p(him getting covid in prison) * p(him dying of covid as a healthy 40 year old) ≈ 1. If it's not a huge exaggeration, please run me through the numbers. Because p(him dying of covid as a healthy 40 year old) I would love to pay those attorney's fee with few lottery tickets if that's how this guy plays with statistics.

That's fair yea - so I think there a few ways this lawyer's statements can be proven to be nonsense.

The numbers in that formulary are mostly unknown so I'd be more comfortable attacking the statement from the angle I outlined above but I agree the numbers clearly don't match what the lawyer is implying.

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

#80

Post by nostromo »

jmpman wrote: post #75
nostromo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s say an employee working for Bank A developed software there. Left Bank A to work for Bank B. Brought his software with him. Bank B has had to spend less money to develop that software and is more profitable had their employee not stolen the code. Bank A and Bank B are competitors. How much would this be considered theft?

A: I steal your house. You are now homeless.

B: I steal the blueprints to your house. You still have a house, but you paid for an architect and I didn't.

B still sucks, but almost everyone agrees A is much worse. And that's why if you steal $20m from a bank, the sentence is much worse than if you copy software that a bank spent $20m to develop.

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