Uber Waymo Trial Delayed After Justice Department Jumps In, Unprompted, To Tell Judge That Uber Was Withholding Evidence
from the holy-shit dept
So lots of people were gearing up for the Waymo/Uber trial starting next week over Uber's alleged efforts to get Waymo's (Google's self-driving car project) trade secrets. There are a whole bunch of issues around this case that are interesting -- from questions involving what really is a trade secret to where the line is between controlling former employees and allowing people to switch jobs within an industry. But... all of that has been completely tossed out the window as more and more evidence piles up that beyond those key legal issues, Uber sure did some shady, shady stuff. This morning, the latest bombshell (in a long line of bombshells) is that the judge has delayed the trial after the Justice Department got involved, totally unprompted. No, really.
You have to piece together some of the details, because some of the key documents are heavily redacted, but let's try to unpack what appears to have happened. Earlier this year, the judge in the case, William Alsup, referred the case to federal prosecutors to also investigate whether anything criminal had happened. Normally, in such cases, federal prosecutors will spend quite a while looking into the details and no one -- including the judge who made the referral -- will hear boo from the DOJ until charges are filed (if that ever happens). Except... that's not what happened. Apparently while investigating the possible criminal behavior by Uber, the DOJ noticed that Uber had failed to hand over a key piece of evidence during discovery. Specifically, it appears to be a letter from a former Uber security analyst named Richard Jacobs, concerning efforts by Uber to access competitor trade secrets -- and to conceal that information (there is some suggestion that this involved using disappearing messaging apps).
This would have been required to be handed over during discovery, but was not. And no one would have known about it, had the acting US Attorney for the Northern District of California not decided, unprompted, to let Judge Alsup know about it -- leading Judge Alsup, just last week, to order Uber to hand it over to Waymo. You can get some of this from the heavily redacted filing made by Waymo's lawyers, in which you can hear their exasperation over just finding this out.
Also, Judge Alsup order Jacobs to appear in court and answer questions, and reports from the courtroom suggest it's been... messy. Reporters Kate Conger and Joe Mullin have been providing some fairly astounding color commentary. A few snippets from their tweets:
Q: Uber had a group dedicated to stealing trade secrets and confidential information from competitors, correct?
[extremely long pause]
A: I believe that’s a hyperbolic way to state something…
— kate conger (@kateconger) November 28, 2017
Jacobs says Uber used encrypted, ephemeral messaging to "make sure we didn’t create a paper trail that would come back to haunt the company in any potential criminal or civil litigation."
— kate conger (@kateconger) November 28, 2017
Waymo's lawyer, reading from the Jacobs letter, says that Uber also identified employees at other companies who might be willing to leak confidential information to them.
— kate conger (@kateconger) November 28, 2017
Jacobs' lawyer wrote that "Jacobs is aware that Uber used the MA Team to steal trade secrets, at least from Waymo, in the united states." But now Jacobs won't stand by that statement.
— Joe Mullin (@joemullin) November 28, 2017
Jacobs: Uber Market Analytics got training about how to "impede obstruct or influence" lawsuits and investigations against it. (From same lawyer who wrote letter on Jacobs' behalf.)
— Joe Mullin (@joemullin) November 28, 2017
Uh oh. Jacobs says that people on his team went to Pittsburgh to teach the autonomous vehicle group about secure communication to avoid getting caught up in legal discovery.
— kate conger (@kateconger) November 28, 2017
As computer security guru Matt Blaze points out, there are plenty of good reasons for companies to want to use secure communications -- but doing so explicitly to avoid having your conversations show up during discovery certainly doesn't look good in court.
Either way, Judge Alsup appears to be less than happy about all of this:
“We're going to put trial off … because even if half of what’s in that letter is true it would be a huge injustice to Waymo to have to go to trial now,” the judge said...
Judge Alsup also noted that "the public is going to hear everything" about this evidence, so there's likely to be more coming down the road.
Once again, there are all sorts of interesting legal questions underlying this case -- but as happens all too often, it appears that some fairly blatant bad behavior is likely to obscure much of that. While it may make for more entertaining stories, it can muck up some of the legal questions. Or, as lawyers sometimes note, bad cases make bad law. This is shaping up to be a bad case with a pretty clear pattern of incredibly bad behavior by Uber (which, of course, appears to be consistent with the company's reputation). And, unfortunately, that seems likely to distract from some actually important issues that could have a much wider impact, concerning questions around trade secrets and employment.
But, no matter what, withholding evidence like this during discovery -- not to mention some of that evidence being an explanation of how the company tried to avoid discovery -- is a double layer cake of extremely sketchy behavior. It seems unlikely that this will end well for Uber.
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Filed Under: autonomous vehicles, discovery, doj, evidence, richard jacobs, self-driving cars, trade secrets, william alsup
Companies: google, uber, waymo
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"Uber sure did some shady, shady stuff. "
- crafted an android app that is quite literally malware
- created the "god view" privacy nightmare
- purchased "anonymized" data from unroll.me
- concealed documentation of their surveillance system
- included a feature that tracks users after rides
- indulged in price gouging repeatedly, including NY during Sandy, SF on New Year's Eye, Sydney during "siege"
- along with its partners, pushed people into subprime loans
- used a promotion that paired riders with "hot chicks"
- obtained the medical records of a customer who was a rape victim
- suggested digging up dirt on journalists
- established and maintained a culture of rampant sexism
- tracked and targeted Lyft drivers
- used the Lockito app to defraud customers
- concealed multiple massive data breaches
- paid off hackers to "delete" private data
- repeatedly lied to regulatory agencies
- allowed drivers with felonies and motor vehicle incidents to work in Colorado (and no doubt elsewhere)
- employed a full-blown sociopath as its CEO
- created and fostered a workplace culture of "anything goes" as long it makes money for Uber
Lots of things are missing from this list, but the bottom line is that Uber is a horrible company run by horrible people. (I don't mean the drivers: arguably, they're as much victims as are the customers.)
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Re: "Uber sure did some shady, shady stuff. "
Don't forget Uber's whole business is illegal in may places it operates, such as those that require taxi medallions, but they still do it anyway.
Taxi Medallions may have become a bad system that let incumbents get away with crap service, but they were invented for a reason. During the great depression a ton of people were basically becoming their own 'uber' taxi drivers in urban areas to try to make a living after losing their job. They got so flooded with taxi drivers that no one could possibly make a living as a taxi driver.
And so the taxi medallion system was invented, so that at least some people could make a living as a taxi driver, and the market wasn't ridiculously over-saturated with way more taxi drivers then were needed.
The way taxi medallions went wrong over the years is that the population continued to grow overtime, but the taxi medallion supply stayed static, when it should have been raised overtime with the growing number of people in the area & growing taxi demand.
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Re: Re: "Uber sure did some shady, shady stuff. "
I just don't see how medallions are better for anyone other than it being an enabler for wealthier "bad" taxi drivers at the cost of poorer "better" taxi drivers.
I wonder what the secondary effects of artificially inflating the costs of a segment of transportation is.
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Re: Re: Re: "Uber sure did some shady, shady stuff. "
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Re: "Uber sure did some shady, shady stuff. "
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-whistleblower-says-company-erased-data-during-raid -on-montreal-offices-1.3895678
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/justice-et-faits-divers/actualites-j udiciaires/201505/26/01-4872822-saisie-chez-uber-des-donnees-auraient-ete-modifiees-a-distance.php
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Isn't this considered conspiracy?
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One commenter here railed about criminal Uber for years.
Starting with its lies that employees are "independent contractors".
While Masnick talked it up, only six days ago admiring its "concept" of hailing taxis on the Internet instead of the telephone, never mentioning that Uber is losing money (about 30%) on every ride: subsidized by venture capital is all that allows it to go on.
SO YET AGAIN: WHO WAS RIGHT?
But now when the crimality can't be denied, Masnick distances himself.
By the way: why make so much of DOJ providing relevant KEY information "unprompted"? -- When the judge tasked them to investigate? -- I think you just can't quite help being riled EVERY time justice works as should.
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Re: One commenter here railed about criminal Uber for years.
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Re: One commenter here railed about criminal Uber for years.
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Whenever someone invents and perfects them enough to use Uber can just buy their own fleet of self driving taxi's for much cheaper then the R&D costs (which may not even return anything worthwhile to them).
If their owners think it's a good investment then fine, invest some of their own personal money on it in another company. Don't make your business invest in something that will literally cannibalize a profitable business. Especially when others are already spending plenty of money researching the exact same thing.
The tech expertise to make an app to grab a taxi, and making a self driving car isn't even remotely close either, nor does it overlap all that much.
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Re:
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Re: Re:
I don't know about McDonald's, but most of their operations are franchised, and the individual franchisee would be making those decisions, rather than the corporation.
How any of that applies to Uber who are building what are essentially only durable (maybe, maybe they will last 10 years) rather than more permanent assets such as land or buildings is another question.
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Re:
Beside that, Uber isn't profitable. Maybe they will be once they start using self-driving cars. Even if they're the worst company on Earth they represent expenditure and competition in a world that can use more of that. They're paving the way for Lyft to eat their lunch.
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Re:
*Forgot some words.
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Re: Re:
/s
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Uber delenda est!
Let the hammer come down hard on Uber and shut it all down, NOW.
Cheers /butter and popcorn ready/
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Of all the judges to pull this crap in, Judge Alsup is probably one of the last ones you'd want.
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