4 ms·

Waymo vs. Uber: unsealed court documents reveal damning evidence

48 points by PleaseHelpMe 9y ago

Multicomp 9y ago
"Yeah, uh huh, I shredded the 5 drives...after copying them to a new WD passport that I've yet to connect to a work computer."
- gvb 9y ago
  Context: Here, the story takes a bizarre twist. The investigators visited the shredding facility twice in an effort to confirm Levandowski’s story, but when they showed Levandowski’s picture to employees, no one recognized him. Levandowski also claimed that he had paid in cash and had not received a receipt. But the shredding facility told investigators that “all destructions are recorded on a triplicate, carbon-copy receipt” with details about date, time, service and payment. Although investigators did find a record of five disks being destroyed and paid for in cash, the shredding happened on an entirely different day in March, and the signature was “illegible.”
aetherson 9y ago
I read the report. It certainly demonstrates that Levandowski retained Google data (but we knew that already), that Levandowski recruited to form Otto before he left Google (but we knew that already), that Uber always planned to buy Otto, dating back to before Levandowski left Google (if we didn't know that, we had pretty strong suspicions), and that Levandowski is kind of a scuzzball (but again, we knew that). But it doesn't appear to offer any good evidence that Google's trade secrets made it to Uber. Which is what actual "damning evidence" would be.
- mabbo 9y ago
  It's not about whether they succeeded, it's about whether they tried. And it seems they did indeed try.
  - aetherson 9y ago
    Levandowski and the Otto guys aren't on trial. The question is whether Uber received trade secrets, not on whether or not Levandowski took trade secrets away from Google (which, again, does not seem to be in doubt). I don't see anything in the report which provides even strong suggestions that Uber received material from Google. I mean, I don't think that the report rules it out, either. But at most, it kind of hints that Levandowski was the kind of guy who might have tried to get the data over to Uber. Which we basically already knew. That's certainly not damning evidence. I bet that Uber's lawyers will point to some of the clown car antics documented in this report and say, "Come on, if these guys actually had moved trade secrets over to Uber, obviously they would have left material evidence that they did so. Clearly they were not great at covering up their actions."
MBCook 9y ago
This is just a civil case, so we go by preponderance of the evidence right? If Uber/Otto are shown to have done incredibly weird/questionable stuff but Google/Waymo can’t show any of the information was used would Uber/Otto still be liable for anything?
- aetherson 9y ago
  I am not a lawyer. One of the ways a suit can be dismissed is if the judge determines that even if all of your side's evidence is accepted purely on its face, the result is not evidence of an actionable case. This is exactly to prevent it from being the case that you can get in front of a jury and say, "Well, I don't actually have evidence for my case, but look what a terrible person the respondent is," and making an appeal to emotion. Of course, this is all human judgment, lines are fuzzy, and you can't predict any given case. But it's supposed to be that you have to show preponderance of evidence of something that is a valid reason to sue, not, like, preponderance of evidence that the respondent is a slimeball and it seems plausible that his character is such that he might have done something that you have no evidence of.
  - CPLX 9y ago
    Yeah sure. But the stuff in this report is evidence. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with how actual litigation works, but it's not always the case that you have crystal clear surveillance video of something or "I did the bad things" written in a recovered email. You have to decide what the most plausible version of events is given the preponderance of the evidence. You have to use what you can see to decide the most likely scenario that you can't see. All this deleting end hiding things is evidence of bad acts, it speaks to the behavior and intent of the people in question, and it's entirely and thoroughly inconsistent with the actions of someone who was behaving ethically. People talk about circumstantial evidence like it's a "gotcha" that means there's no real evidence. That's a common fallacy. Circumstantial evidence is evidence. And activity consistent with a cover up is in fact evidence that supports allegations of underlying bad behavior. The legal system isn't a computer program, it uses people and their judgement and intuition about human behavior to figure things out. That's by design.
revelation 9y ago
My favorite part is Levandowski emptying his empty trash during the interview. That said, apparently you do not need to know anything about file systems to pass a Google interview.
ukulele 9y ago
The people in question all lied so much that you can't even put together a straight narrative... seems to be a moderately effective defense.
- gvb 9y ago
  That is where depositions come in. Keeping all the lies consistent across time and consistent between different involved people is incredibly hard. The deposition process is used to expose those inconsistencies. “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.” ― Mark Twain IMHO that is why Uber stonewalled Waymo for as long as possible on this evidence and worked so hard to give Waymo as little time as possible for depositions. This is also why Waymo is looking for relief (e.g. delay) from the courts. IANAL, but I expect the judge will be sympathetic to Waymo's requests given how egregious Uber's behavior was.
beager 9y ago
Rather than the main road of remarking about how the bad optics and evidence continue to get worse, I will say that this also reaffirms my sense that Uber is just not that good at the sort of machiavellian maneuvering that the SV crowd lauds them for. Ethics aside, this makes them seem less than competent at their unethical behavior.
- wpietri 9y ago
  Yeah. I can almost respect calculating evil. There's something impressive about a very competent villain. But this fits right into Travis's long history of self-aggrandizing arrogance. So very many scandals[1], most of them entirely unnecessary. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-travis-kalanick-scandal-pr-disaster-timeline https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-trav...
fstuff 9y ago
If this is a dup where's the main thread?
- beager 9y ago
  That's what I was thinking. This is a dupe but the main thread didn't get upvoted at all. Convenient way to bury unsavory news.

48 points by PleaseHelpMe 9y ago

"Yeah, uh huh, I shredded the 5 drives...after copying them to a new WD passport that I've yet to connect to a work computer."

gvb 9y ago
Context: Here, the story takes a bizarre twist. The investigators visited the shredding facility twice in an effort to confirm Levandowski’s story, but when they showed Levandowski’s picture to employees, no one recognized him. Levandowski also claimed that he had paid in cash and had not received a receipt. But the shredding facility told investigators that “all destructions are recorded on a triplicate, carbon-copy receipt” with details about date, time, service and payment. Although investigators did find a record of five disks being destroyed and paid for in cash, the shredding happened on an entirely different day in March, and the signature was “illegible.”

aetherson 9y ago

I read the report. It certainly demonstrates that Levandowski retained Google data (but we knew that already), that Levandowski recruited to form Otto before he left Google (but we knew that already), that Uber always planned to buy Otto, dating back to before Levandowski left Google (if we didn't know that, we had pretty strong suspicions), and that Levandowski is kind of a scuzzball (but again, we knew that). But it doesn't appear to offer any good evidence that Google's trade secrets made it to Uber. Which is what actual "damning evidence" would be.

mabbo 9y ago
It's not about whether they succeeded, it's about whether they tried. And it seems they did indeed try.
- aetherson 9y ago
  Levandowski and the Otto guys aren't on trial. The question is whether Uber received trade secrets, not on whether or not Levandowski took trade secrets away from Google (which, again, does not seem to be in doubt). I don't see anything in the report which provides even strong suggestions that Uber received material from Google. I mean, I don't think that the report rules it out, either. But at most, it kind of hints that Levandowski was the kind of guy who might have tried to get the data over to Uber. Which we basically already knew. That's certainly not damning evidence. I bet that Uber's lawyers will point to some of the clown car antics documented in this report and say, "Come on, if these guys actually had moved trade secrets over to Uber, obviously they would have left material evidence that they did so. Clearly they were not great at covering up their actions."

MBCook 9y ago

This is just a civil case, so we go by preponderance of the evidence right? If Uber/Otto are shown to have done incredibly weird/questionable stuff but Google/Waymo can’t show any of the information was used would Uber/Otto still be liable for anything?

aetherson 9y ago
I am not a lawyer. One of the ways a suit can be dismissed is if the judge determines that even if all of your side's evidence is accepted purely on its face, the result is not evidence of an actionable case. This is exactly to prevent it from being the case that you can get in front of a jury and say, "Well, I don't actually have evidence for my case, but look what a terrible person the respondent is," and making an appeal to emotion. Of course, this is all human judgment, lines are fuzzy, and you can't predict any given case. But it's supposed to be that you have to show preponderance of evidence of something that is a valid reason to sue, not, like, preponderance of evidence that the respondent is a slimeball and it seems plausible that his character is such that he might have done something that you have no evidence of.
- CPLX 9y ago
  Yeah sure. But the stuff in this report is evidence. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with how actual litigation works, but it's not always the case that you have crystal clear surveillance video of something or "I did the bad things" written in a recovered email. You have to decide what the most plausible version of events is given the preponderance of the evidence. You have to use what you can see to decide the most likely scenario that you can't see. All this deleting end hiding things is evidence of bad acts, it speaks to the behavior and intent of the people in question, and it's entirely and thoroughly inconsistent with the actions of someone who was behaving ethically. People talk about circumstantial evidence like it's a "gotcha" that means there's no real evidence. That's a common fallacy. Circumstantial evidence is evidence. And activity consistent with a cover up is in fact evidence that supports allegations of underlying bad behavior. The legal system isn't a computer program, it uses people and their judgement and intuition about human behavior to figure things out. That's by design.

revelation 9y ago

My favorite part is Levandowski emptying his empty trash during the interview. That said, apparently you do not need to know anything about file systems to pass a Google interview.

ukulele 9y ago

The people in question all lied so much that you can't even put together a straight narrative... seems to be a moderately effective defense.

gvb 9y ago
That is where depositions come in. Keeping all the lies consistent across time and consistent between different involved people is incredibly hard. The deposition process is used to expose those inconsistencies. “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.” ― Mark Twain IMHO that is why Uber stonewalled Waymo for as long as possible on this evidence and worked so hard to give Waymo as little time as possible for depositions. This is also why Waymo is looking for relief (e.g. delay) from the courts. IANAL, but I expect the judge will be sympathetic to Waymo's requests given how egregious Uber's behavior was.

beager 9y ago

Rather than the main road of remarking about how the bad optics and evidence continue to get worse, I will say that this also reaffirms my sense that Uber is just not that good at the sort of machiavellian maneuvering that the SV crowd lauds them for. Ethics aside, this makes them seem less than competent at their unethical behavior.

wpietri 9y ago
Yeah. I can almost respect calculating evil. There's something impressive about a very competent villain. But this fits right into Travis's long history of self-aggrandizing arrogance. So very many scandals[1], most of them entirely unnecessary. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-travis-kalanick-scandal-pr-disaster-timeline https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-trav...

fstuff 9y ago

If this is a dup where's the main thread?

beager 9y ago
That's what I was thinking. This is a dupe but the main thread didn't get upvoted at all. Convenient way to bury unsavory news.