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Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

techcrunch.com

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Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#51

Post by __jal »

kmonsen wrote: post #42
ergothus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your assessment in general, the problem is that when you take the set of "criminals", and then further drill in to "criminals that actually get accused", you rapidly change the ratio of "clever" to "think-they-are-clever". I'm not saying all criminals are stupid [Edit: stupid, careless, ignorant, poor at prediction, poor at risk calculation, take your pick] ...just that many are. And the really…

I think you should change stupid with careless, or calculated risk or something like that.

I think we need less auditing of other people's word choice, to be honest.

/meta

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#52

Post by shostack »

codazoda wrote: post #30
jankassens wrote: post #10

How would Uber find files on some employees personal device?

It's a good question, since the article also says that the employee is refusing to cooperate on 5th amendment grounds (which is likely smart).

I wonder how much of that is the point of this exercise--to make the employee look guilty as hell.

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#53

Post by ekidd »

YCode wrote: post #3

Offhand, this kind of sounds like a parent asking their teenager to go and search their own room for drugs. "Nah, I didn't find anything. I found this plastic bag that looks like it mighta had something in it, but I'm pretty sure my friend left it here and it was empty when he brought it." "Okay son, go search again."

> Offhand, this kind of sounds like a parent asking their teenager to go and search their own room for drugs.

I have expressed this attitude to corporate lawyers before, and asked them how the system deals with bad actors.

Basically, if a judge catches you lying during discovery, they can issue a default judgement against you and impose very serious additional damages. For example:

http://newenglandinhouse.com/2015/06/09/default-judgment-aff...

Furthermore, the lawyers in question can be disbarred:

https://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/litigationnews/civil...

A sufficiently annoyed judge has a broad range of sanctions available for punishing people who get caught gaming the system. (Some of these sanctions may take years to fully play out, though.)

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#54

Post by ABCLAW »

jerf wrote: post #7
themgt wrote: post #2

'“To the extent Uber tries to excuse its noncompliance on the grounds that Mr. Levandowski has invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to provide Uber with documents or assistance, Waymo notes that Mr. Levandowski remains — to this day — an Uber executive and in charge of its self-driving car program. Uber has ratified Mr. Levandowski’s behavior and is liable for it,” Waymo attorney Charles K. Verhoeven wrote in a le…

No, that's a completely non-substantiative quote from an attorney for one side that contains the implicit assumption that Uber really does have the documents and is actively committing crimes in discovery to prevent the discovery from working. Not only is it not an unbiased source, it's basically a source being paid to be biased. Which is fine; I am generally down with the philosophy of adversarial justice. But you s…

Judge Alsup's comments on pages 14 and 15 of the transcript mirror the statement you're attempting to discredit. Perhaps it is a bit more concerning when the argument is made by the trier-of-fact himself.

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#55

Post by __jal »

komali2 wrote: post #27
CalChris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, that's a completely non-substantiative quote from an attorney for one side that contains the implicit assumption that Uber really does have the documents Implicit assumption? The first paragraph of the TechCrunch article says: Uber admitted today that it had found one of the documents Waymo alleges was stolen by a former employee — who left its self-driving car effort to join Uber’s — on the employee’s personal…

Until the facts of the case come out, don't fall into the dangerous dark hole of fully buying into either story. The other day I booted my old galaxy s3 to put a new ROM on it and turn it into a dashcam. I found on it that google drive had offline backed-up some documents from a company I had worked at several years ago, and no longer did. Should I be sued for trade secret theft?

Given that your example has essentially no similarity with the situation in question, why would you ask?

That is not a rhetorical question - I'm pretty sure you're capable of distinguishing the facts of the Waymo case[1] from "some documents ...[from] several years ago".

So, why?

[1] Meetings and other shady activity before quitting, logs of ~14k documents pulled, immediate aqui-hire, etc. etc. etc.

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#56

Post by radlad »

vuln wrote: post #36
komali2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the facts of the case come out, don't fall into the dangerous dark hole of fully buying into either story. The other day I booted my old galaxy s3 to put a new ROM on it and turn it into a dashcam. I found on it that google drive had offline backed-up some documents from a company I had worked at several years ago, and no longer did. Should I be sued for trade secret theft?

I don't find this to be the same. What you did could be defended easily by saying it was an accident and you behavior would have been nonmalicious. You didn't purposely back up some old files, start a new company with the same exact tech from those said files then sell the new company 2 months later for a cool 680mill. If you did that then yes your old employ would definitely have a case against you. If your story is…

Except this wasn't found on Levandowski's machine (the guy who sold Octo.)

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#57

Post by Hydraulix989 »

ekidd wrote: post #53
YCode wrote: post #3

Offhand, this kind of sounds like a parent asking their teenager to go and search their own room for drugs. "Nah, I didn't find anything. I found this plastic bag that looks like it mighta had something in it, but I'm pretty sure my friend left it here and it was empty when he brought it." "Okay son, go search again."

> Offhand, this kind of sounds like a parent asking their teenager to go and search their own room for drugs. I have expressed this attitude to corporate lawyers before, and asked them how the system deals with bad actors. Basically, if a judge catches you lying during discovery, they can issue a default judgement against you and impose very serious additional damages. For example: http://newenglandinhouse.com/2015/0…

It's pretty hard to catch if your only search interface is through the liar.

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#58

Post by __jal »

nikanj wrote: post #15
jerf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not particularly committing to either hypothesis right now. If Uber is indeed screwing around with discovery I would imagine they're going to end up in very big trouble. I for one would pretty much consider that prima facie evidence every executive even remotely involved in that decision, including simply being aware of it, should be immediately fired by the shareholders and everything possible clawed back from t…

Then again, a large part of Uber's success has been built upon shenanigans. It seems likely that they might develop an arrogance towards the legal system, after years of playing chicken with it.

You can generally predict Uber's behavior by assuming it behaves like a stereotypical frat house. The behavior is:

- Go for it and see if anyone complains

- See if ignoring the complainers makes them go away

- See if bullying the complainers makes them go away

- Can it be solved with money?

- Last resort: cheat.

- If you get caught, call the lawyers; in public, whine about the raw deal you're getting.

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#59

Post by throwaway729 »

fowlerpower wrote: post #40

This story is fascinating for tech people everywhere and we should all pay attention. We all have big dreams of starting our own company some day (I know do) and many of us work for big corporations that would rather we never go anywhere and work for as little as possible. (admittedly the markets are forcing them to pay us a lot but they aren't doing it out of good will). The outcome of this will teach us all very va…

> The outcome of this will teach us all very valuable lessons.

Lesson #1: Don't steal.

> I can't be the only one who is a little paranoid that if I start my own shit I'll be sued or that I may even be sued for some of the side projects I'm working on even though I've never taken any code or resources from my company.

Lesson #2: If someone accuses you of theft, deny it instead of pleading the fifth.

Assuming their accusations aren't truthful, of course.

Re: Uber finds one allegedly stolen Waymo file on an employee’s personal device

#60

Post by themgt »

ABCLAW wrote: post #54
jerf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's a completely non-substantiative quote from an attorney for one side that contains the implicit assumption that Uber really does have the documents and is actively committing crimes in discovery to prevent the discovery from working. Not only is it not an unbiased source, it's basically a source being paid to be biased. Which is fine; I am generally down with the philosophy of adversarial justice. But you s…

Judge Alsup's comments on pages 14 and 15 of the transcript mirror the statement you're attempting to discredit. Perhaps it is a bit more concerning when the argument is made by the trier-of-fact himself.

Yeah, reading through pages 14 -> 20 Uber sounds like they're in some shit. Essentially Levandowski wants to keep his criminal 5th amendment protections at the same time Uber is keeping him as head of the division and the judge thinks it already looks likely he stole 14,000 documents. Uber's almost trying to launder his criminal protections into their civil case while he's still running the department they accused him of stealing the IP for?

IANAL but this does not sound good:

Judge: "And if [Levandowski] doesn't testify to that at the deposition, well, I guess Uber -- you know, Uber is -- if you think this is going to help you, my preliminary view of it is it's not going to help you; and that if there's not a clear-cut path to showing that those 14,000 documents weren't used, then you're looking at a preliminary injunction."

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