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If I recall, Google/Waymo claimed in their filing that he had never used the Subversion repository in question from that laptop in the course of his employment,

If I recall, Google/Waymo claimed in their filing that he had never used the Subversion repository in question from that laptop in the course of his employment, until that moment. They further claim he actually searched MoMA for how to access it as well as how to do end-to-end setup. He then left not long after that checkout. That is unusual, if true.

kbenson 9y ago
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 wasn't used might have been that he ended up not doing any work (or any work that required the laptop) during the period he wanted it. A single normal SVN checkout during the setup would get every file in the repo by default. Basically, I don't think it's hard to construct an entirely innocent narrative of events (assuming SVN access was normal for him). The later developments do make it look fishy, but since I doubt anyone would have thought anything amiss with the list of actions without the later events, it's far from a smoking gun when taken by itself.
- huac 9y ago
  Google alleges he then copied the files onto a portable hard drive and wiped the laptop, which shows a pretty strong intent to deceive.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    Sure, when it's summarized like that, it sounds bad, and it maybe bad. But compare that to this slightly expanded timeline summary from reading the actual filing[1]: The laptop in question connected to Google only 3 times between March 2, 2015 and November 25, 2015, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes. ~ 2 hours on Oct 22, ~2 hours on Nov 20, and "briefly" on Nov 25. (My interpretation? It was almost always off and not in use). Windows was reinstalled on Nov 26th. On Dec 3, searched were done on Google's internal search system for how to log in and setup access through SVN to the driving car project ("chauffer"). Tortoise SVN was downloaded and installed on Dec 11. It then "downloaded over 14,000 files from the SVN repository". (My interpretation? A SVN checkout of the entire repo was done). A USB card reader was attached on Dec 14 for about 8 hours. On Dec 18, the laptop was reinstalled with Goobuntu (Google's custom Ubuntu). The machine stayed on and checking in to Google normally from the time of the install until Dec 21, when it received a "machine certificate", within a minute of which it was not seen again on Google's networks, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes (My interpretation? It was off again). The filing goes on to talk about some Google drive exports of documents that don't necessarily look good for Levandowski. My purpose here isn't to convince anyone that he's innocent, just to point out that Google's allegations are worded in a way to cast the most suspicion while being technically true. Through the omission of the timeline it sounds like his actions were all taken at once, which looks a little more premeditated, when instead it was over a period of a couple weeks. It's entirely possibly that Levandowski purposefully obfuscated his actions by spreading them out temporally, so this isn't evidence he didn't do what is alleged, but I think it's important people have the facts before making judgments based on Waymo's lawyer's accounting, which is obviously as beneficial to Waymo as possible, as should be expected. 1: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-of-Gary-Brown-PUBLIC.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-...
    - huac 9y ago
      Sure, Google's interpretation is not particularly generous. But even the most charitable reading of the facts would find that Levandowski downloaded the files to an external disk, relatively close to when he left the company. All of that is bad for Levandowski, but it's unclear if any of those files got used by Uber, which is where the case may very well fizzle out.
      - kbenson 9y ago
        > But even the most charitable reading of the facts would find that Levandowski downloaded the files to an external disk Actually, no. All they have is that a few days after an SVN sync, a USB card reader was attached for 8 hours. There is no evidence presented that he actually copied any files, much less the synced SVN files, to whatever was connected with the USB card reader. He could have plugged it in to copy his personal SSH keys to the machine and left it in until he left for the day for all we know. There is separate information that he exported a single Google Drive file to a personal device on January 11, titled "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015". There are further logs about other high level engineers that subsequently left that also exported Google Drive files to personal devices prior to leaving as well.
        throwaway13234 9y ago
        This. Everyone should read the expert testimony themselves and come to their own conclusion. It's not long. Just a few pages.
    - btown 9y ago
      Thanks for writing this up. The court of public opinion IMO should adhere to "innocent until proven guilty," and summaries like yours are the only things that make that possible.
      - CydeWeys 9y ago
        This is a civil suit, not a criminal one, so the standard of judgment at play is "preponderance of evidence", not "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". The summary does seem to make it pretty clear which way the preponderance of evidence goes. That'd be an awful lot of coincidences to have all that stuff lining up in one particular way -- it just seems unlikely.
  - throwaway13234 9y ago
    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 copied to an external drive. The have an expert testimony with specific details from logs about a card reader being inserted but no specific details about a storage device or files being copied? Does the lack of these details but specificity of other details not strike anyone else as odd? 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. That's it. I'm not saying that there isn't the possibility of wrongdoing, but the expert testimony certainly doesn't support the allegations enough to meet the criteria of "preponderance of evidence" for me at least. The testimony definitely doesn't meet the criteria of being a smoking gun, yet that is how it has been reported.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      > 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.
      - throwaway13234 9y ago
- hackunomatter 9y ago
  Well, if he has a rock-solid benign explanation, why doesn't he come on the stand and testify?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - zaphar 9y ago
    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.
    - tjalfi 9y ago
      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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        This is not a criminal proceeding.
        kbenson 9y ago
        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.
    - bradleyjg 9y ago
      It's one thing to take the fifth out of an abundance of caution when all it might do is raise some suspicion. It's another thing when doing so is likely to cost you $250MM. It's hard to look at this course of events and conclude that Levandowski probably did nothing wrong.

kbenson 9y ago

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 wasn't used might have been that he ended up not doing any work (or any work that required the laptop) during the period he wanted it. A single normal SVN checkout during the setup would get every file in the repo by default. Basically, I don't think it's hard to construct an entirely innocent narrative of events (assuming SVN access was normal for him). The later developments do make it look fishy, but since I doubt anyone would have thought anything amiss with the list of actions without the later events, it's far from a smoking gun when taken by itself.

huac 9y ago
Google alleges he then copied the files onto a portable hard drive and wiped the laptop, which shows a pretty strong intent to deceive.
- kbenson 9y ago
  Sure, when it's summarized like that, it sounds bad, and it maybe bad. But compare that to this slightly expanded timeline summary from reading the actual filing[1]: The laptop in question connected to Google only 3 times between March 2, 2015 and November 25, 2015, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes. ~ 2 hours on Oct 22, ~2 hours on Nov 20, and "briefly" on Nov 25. (My interpretation? It was almost always off and not in use). Windows was reinstalled on Nov 26th. On Dec 3, searched were done on Google's internal search system for how to log in and setup access through SVN to the driving car project ("chauffer"). Tortoise SVN was downloaded and installed on Dec 11. It then "downloaded over 14,000 files from the SVN repository". (My interpretation? A SVN checkout of the entire repo was done). A USB card reader was attached on Dec 14 for about 8 hours. On Dec 18, the laptop was reinstalled with Goobuntu (Google's custom Ubuntu). The machine stayed on and checking in to Google normally from the time of the install until Dec 21, when it received a "machine certificate", within a minute of which it was not seen again on Google's networks, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes (My interpretation? It was off again). The filing goes on to talk about some Google drive exports of documents that don't necessarily look good for Levandowski. My purpose here isn't to convince anyone that he's innocent, just to point out that Google's allegations are worded in a way to cast the most suspicion while being technically true. Through the omission of the timeline it sounds like his actions were all taken at once, which looks a little more premeditated, when instead it was over a period of a couple weeks. It's entirely possibly that Levandowski purposefully obfuscated his actions by spreading them out temporally, so this isn't evidence he didn't do what is alleged, but I think it's important people have the facts before making judgments based on Waymo's lawyer's accounting, which is obviously as beneficial to Waymo as possible, as should be expected. 1: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-of-Gary-Brown-PUBLIC.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-...
  - huac 9y ago
    Sure, Google's interpretation is not particularly generous. But even the most charitable reading of the facts would find that Levandowski downloaded the files to an external disk, relatively close to when he left the company. All of that is bad for Levandowski, but it's unclear if any of those files got used by Uber, which is where the case may very well fizzle out.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      > But even the most charitable reading of the facts would find that Levandowski downloaded the files to an external disk Actually, no. All they have is that a few days after an SVN sync, a USB card reader was attached for 8 hours. There is no evidence presented that he actually copied any files, much less the synced SVN files, to whatever was connected with the USB card reader. He could have plugged it in to copy his personal SSH keys to the machine and left it in until he left for the day for all we know. There is separate information that he exported a single Google Drive file to a personal device on January 11, titled "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015". There are further logs about other high level engineers that subsequently left that also exported Google Drive files to personal devices prior to leaving as well.
      - throwaway13234 9y ago
        This. Everyone should read the expert testimony themselves and come to their own conclusion. It's not long. Just a few pages.
  - btown 9y ago
    Thanks for writing this up. The court of public opinion IMO should adhere to "innocent until proven guilty," and summaries like yours are the only things that make that possible.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      This is a civil suit, not a criminal one, so the standard of judgment at play is "preponderance of evidence", not "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". The summary does seem to make it pretty clear which way the preponderance of evidence goes. That'd be an awful lot of coincidences to have all that stuff lining up in one particular way -- it just seems unlikely.
- throwaway13234 9y ago
  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 copied to an external drive. The have an expert testimony with specific details from logs about a card reader being inserted but no specific details about a storage device or files being copied? Does the lack of these details but specificity of other details not strike anyone else as odd? 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. That's it. I'm not saying that there isn't the possibility of wrongdoing, but the expert testimony certainly doesn't support the allegations enough to meet the criteria of "preponderance of evidence" for me at least. The testimony definitely doesn't meet the criteria of being a smoking gun, yet that is how it has been reported.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > 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.
    - throwaway13234 9y ago
hackunomatter 9y ago
Well, if he has a rock-solid benign explanation, why doesn't he come on the stand and testify?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zaphar 9y ago
  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.
  - tjalfi 9y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      This is not a criminal proceeding.
      - kbenson 9y ago
        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.
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
    It's one thing to take the fifth out of an abundance of caution when all it might do is raise some suspicion. It's another thing when doing so is likely to cost you $250MM. It's hard to look at this course of events and conclude that Levandowski probably did nothing wrong.