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The trial seems to be ongoing right now, live tweets can be found here: https://twitter.com/CSaid https://twitter.com/CSaid But this doesn't look good for Ube

The trial seems to be ongoing right now, live tweets can be found here: https://twitter.com/CSaid https://twitter.com/CSaid But this doesn't look good for Uber at all: https://twitter.com/CSaid/status/935558449324212230 https://twitter.com/CSaid/status/935558449324212230 “Jacobs became aware that Uber thru Clark & Henley, had a sophisticated strategy to conceal, cover up or destroy docs w intent to impede govt investigations." and https://twitter.com/CSaid/status/935569588309327878 https://twitter.com/CSaid/status/935569588309327878 "Judge quotes Jacob's atty letter: Uber employees went to Pittsburgh to educate the AV group about ephemeral, encrypted communications "to prevent Uber's unlawful schemes from seeing the light of day"" I have seen people wonder on HN whether Uber gets flak due to their nature or are they inherently worse than other giants. While other companies are no saints the constant stream of stupid decisions makes it seem that Uber has (had?) a culture of always trying to find shady way of doing things.

vkou 9y ago
> “Jacobs became aware that Uber thru Clark & Henley, had a sophisticated strategy to conceal, cover up or destroy docs w intent to impede govt investigations." What does that even mean? Does this mean that all Uber employees have been trained to 'communicate carefully', that their e-mails get deleted after X months, and that sensitive conversations that could hypothetically, and out of context, be held in person, as opposed to electronically? If that's all it does, I would like to remind everyone - that's the kind of training that everyone in any Fortune 500 company receives. > "Judge quotes Jacob's atty letter: Uber employees went to Pittsburgh to educate the AV group about ephemeral, encrypted communications "to prevent Uber's unlawful schemes from seeing the light of day"" Which parts of that are verbatim? If someone who went through that training actually put the words 'our unlawful schemes' in an e-mail... Well, they are a complete idiot. If it were anyone but Uber, this would be too comically inept to be true.
- thisisit 9y ago
  The article relaying the whole communication has been published: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-Dramatic-turn-as-judge-says-Uber-12388930.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-... > The unit acquired leaked code from competitors via Github, dug up information on overseas drivers and researched global competitors, he said. While he didn’t believe that work was illegal, “I had questions about the ethics of it,” Jacobs testified. > Tactics included use of attorney-client privilege on written documents, and encrypted, ephemeral communications. > It also used “non-attributable devices” to communicate with third parties providing on-the-ground intelligence about threats to Uber, and to research Uber protestors, he testified.
  - vkou 9y ago
    > The unit acquired leaked code from competitors via Github, dug up information on overseas drivers and researched global competitors, he said. While he didn’t believe that work was illegal, “I had questions about the ethics of it,” Jacobs testified. Fair point... But I'm not sure this has any bearing on Waymo vs Uber. This can, however, expose them to all sorts of patent litigation from the parties whose code they looked at. > Tactics included use of attorney-client privilege on written documents, and encrypted, ephemeral communications. I'm not sure about the former, but the latter is SOP at any company that has a legal department and regulatory concerns. > It also used “non-attributable devices” to communicate with third parties providing on-the-ground intelligence about threats to Uber, and to research Uber protestors, he testified. Shady shit, but not sure what bearing this has on Waymo vs Uber.
    - revelation 9y ago
      You don't understand. The problem is the letter itself, not even necessarily what it says. The letter should have been handed over as part of discovery. It wasn't. It only came to the judge through an independent case.
      - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
        And therefore, since Waymo just now finds out about this, they get more time to see if there's anything in this that affects their case. And Uber has nobody to blame but themselves for the delay.
      - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
        Too late to edit my other reply. But I want to add a correction here. If I understand correctly, it didn't come to the judge through an independent case. It came to the judge because the judge referred the situation (Uber hiring Levandowski after Levandowski took documents from Waymo) to federal prosecutors. Those federal prosecutors got back to the judge with stuff that Uber should have turned over as part of discovery, but didn't. The judge is not amused.
- awalton 9y ago
  From SFChronical: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-Dramatic-turn-as-judge-says-Uber-12388930.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-... > While he didn’t believe that work was illegal, “I had questions about the ethics of it,” Jacobs testified. > He confirmed that Uber used encrypted, ephemeral messaging “to protect sensitive information and ensure we didn’t create a paper trail that would come back to haunt the company in any potential criminal or civil litigation.” It also used “non-attributable devices” to communicate with third parties providing on-the-ground intelligence about threats to Uber, and to research Uber protestors, he testified. ...sound like "Just another Fortune 500" to you?
  - cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
    Sounds like union busting activities from the 1870s well into the 1940s, so business as usual in the neo-gilded age.
  - exelius 9y ago
    Actually, yes. I have seen Fortune 500 C-level execs use this exact behavior. When there is a merger in the works, use of burners and anonymous e-mail accounts are commonplace. Not that it excuses Uber's behavior, but corporate execs don't trust that their comms aren't being monitored (by either the govt or hackers in their systems). I-banks and traders have spied on them for years, so it's not an unfounded fear.
    - jhall1468 9y ago
      > When there is a merger in the works, use of burners and anonymous e-mail accounts are commonplace. That's to prevent leaks from driving the stock price up, and causing the buyout cost to increase. That's a little different than using it to hide the fact that they were knowingly breaking the law. Do you understand the difference?
      - mostlyskeptical 9y ago
        > That's to prevent leaks from driving the stock price up, and causing the buyout cost to increase. That's a little different than using it to hide the fact that they were knowingly breaking the law. Do you understand the difference? You're making the assumption that they did it for that reason. It could be that covering up the crimes was just a side effect.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >Does this mean that all Uber employees have been trained to 'communicate carefully', that their e-mails get deleted after X months, and that sensitive conversations that could hypothetically, and out of context, be held in person, as opposed to electronically? >If that's all it does, I would like to remind everyone - that's the kind of training that everyone in any Fortune 500 company receives. Both of the Fortune 500 companies I've worked for have also followed that up with something to the tune of "and if you don't want it quoted in the New York times you should think about why you're discussing it in the first place."
- Retric 9y ago
  Having worked at multiple large companies I can say this is unusual behavior. Most companies want to maintain a paper trail to defend their actions because on average it's a net gain, not assume their actions are problematic and by default remove all evidence as soon as possible.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    Not a lawyer, but I don't think it's unusual to have a retention policy that says when documents should be deleted. This is apparently legal as long as it's a blanket policy. (For example, by default all email gets deleted after a year, unless someone takes action to save it.) Of course anything under legal hold has to be kept. It's also not unusual to make sure employees know about attorney-client privilege and how to use it properly, or that you should avoid discussing legal matters in a discoverable medium under the assumption it may be used against the company in a lawsuit. This is basic employee training stuff. So, yeah, no. Sometimes maintaining a paper trail is the thing to do but this isn't the only thing companies do.
    - Retric 9y ago
      While a specific retention policy is always a good idea 1 year is very short and would often cost you information for any annual process. Their are various standards like 5 years in banking or 7 years in healthcare. And some industry's are required to maintain records for significantly longer than that
  - eddieplan9 9y ago
    I worked for a big pharma (#2 in the world by most measures), and their email retention policy was 90 days. If you have built any enterprise messaging software, you know you have to support retention policy or it won’t sell to the big companies. Slack can be configured to be aggressive as delete-after-one-day
    - Retric 9y ago
      Not to call big parma ethically challanged, but international documents are more likely to Hirt them than help.
- ouid 9y ago
  this is so downvoted that I can't even read it.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    Drag your mouse over it to highlight the text.
    - ouid 9y ago
      that doesn't improve readability for me, instead of light grey on lighter grey, it becomes isoluminant light grey on light blue
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        Then either something got screwed up in your config or your monitor is severely miscalibrated. Highlighted text should not be hard to read, and the blue should not be light at all. Toss something like this in usercontent.css? ::selection { color:white; background:black;} ::-moz-selection { color:white; background:black;}
leggomylibro 9y ago
I think that most companies have 'N-month email retention policies', where N is somewhere between 1-6. Did the malfeasance happen more than a few months ago? Gee, sorry, no internal communications; that's policy. Did someone keep incriminating communications from more than a few months ago? Oooh, that's against policy - the recalcitrant employee has since been terminated and clearly does not represent our lofty ideals. But I don't think that most companies go out of their way to use encrypted platforms to shield communications which they know are likely illegal from investigators.
- patmcguire 9y ago
  For Google, at least, I believe it's 18 months. And that's quite new, it happened after the Oracle fiasco, which had all sorts of goodies like: Subject: Java class libraries With talks with Sun broken off[,] where does that leave us regarding Java class libraries? Ours are half-ass at best. We need another half of an ass. That came out in discovery.
  - revelation 9y ago
    It is such a shame groklaw is no longer a thing. Another Snowden casualty.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      I missed that, how was groklaw connected to Snowden?
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/groklaw-shuts-down-as-the-post-snowden-chilling-effect-continues/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/groklaw-shuts-down-as-the-... https://www.csoonline.com/article/2133906/privacy/groklaw-shutdown-shows--chilling-effect--of-nsa-surveillance.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/2133906/privacy/groklaw-sh... http://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-concerns-cause-pj-to-close-groklaw/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-concerns-cause-pj-to-cl...
pfarnsworth 9y ago
If you look at CSaid's twitter stream, it looks a lot better for Uber now and Waymo looks like it might be in the judge's crosshairs.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  Are you sure she didn't just mistype? There's nothing that supports Waymo being in trouble.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    "Judge: Turns out Uber's server is only for the dummies, the real stuff goers on on the shadow system. There's enough under oath here for me to believe there's a 50-50 chance this will turn out to be something v bad for Uber; or 50-50 it's a dry hole" "Judge to Waymo lawyers: You’re making the impression this is a total cover-up. Your client is in a bad way now. You’ve made me upset. U should be saying we’ll open our doors, get to the bottom of this. Instead you’re fighting every little thing." "Media coalition argues for open courtroom. Waymo says it needs to shield info re deals with 7 entities, including Lyft. Judge says: I want the public to see how hypocritical this is. Waymo wants all the dirt on Uber to come out. But no no no, they don’t want any dirt on Waymo."
    - tacomonstrous 9y ago
      I think it's pretty clear that she meant to write Uber in the second tweet.
    - harbie 9y ago
      If you check anyone else that was livetweeting, it's clear that csaid mistyped the second tweet. Alsup addressed those comments at Uber's lawyers.
bm1362 9y ago
I use Keybase, Signal, even Snapchat daily. I wonder if a lawyer could pervert that into ‘shady’ behavior.
- saulrh 9y ago
  If you suffix that sentence with "...so the IRS will have trouble taking me to court for money-laundering", the lawyer wouldn't even have to "pervert" it. Privacy is not suspicious. Privacy with the explicit, stated intent of concealing illegal behavior is perfectly reasonably suspicious. Similarly - I would not bat an eye at the average car purchase, but I would think hard if someone asked me to recommend a car that would not be damaged if it hit someone. I would not give a friend access to my computer if they said they were going to use it to send spam email. Etc. This isn't about the privacy tech. This is about Uber being evil, knowing that they are doing evil, and trying to hide their evil from the courts. The fact that they worked at a high level to hide their evil destroys any pretense that it was accidental or unintentional.
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    > If you suffix that sentence with "...so the IRS will have trouble taking me to court for money-laundering", the lawyer wouldn't even have to "pervert" it. Privacy is not suspicious. Privacy with the explicit, stated intent of concealing illegal behavior is perfectly reasonably suspicious. [meme][1] Can't lose privacy [/1][2] If you don't tell people what you're doing in private [/2][/meme] But seriously, it's a bit of a catch-22; engaging in privacy preserving behaviour but later falling under suspicion of some illegal act shouldn't imply that you engaged in those behaviours for the intent of covering up suspected but not proven illegal acts. It's a real issue -- but it someone were so stupid as to say "haha, I did x so you couldn't prove it!" ... well, that's basically an admission of guilt, isn't it.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      The IRS doesn’t care about money laundering, they just want you to pay your taxes. The FBI in the other hand...

vkou 9y ago

> “Jacobs became aware that Uber thru Clark & Henley, had a sophisticated strategy to conceal, cover up or destroy docs w intent to impede govt investigations." What does that even mean? Does this mean that all Uber employees have been trained to 'communicate carefully', that their e-mails get deleted after X months, and that sensitive conversations that could hypothetically, and out of context, be held in person, as opposed to electronically? If that's all it does, I would like to remind everyone - that's the kind of training that everyone in any Fortune 500 company receives. > "Judge quotes Jacob's atty letter: Uber employees went to Pittsburgh to educate the AV group about ephemeral, encrypted communications "to prevent Uber's unlawful schemes from seeing the light of day"" Which parts of that are verbatim? If someone who went through that training actually put the words 'our unlawful schemes' in an e-mail... Well, they are a complete idiot. If it were anyone but Uber, this would be too comically inept to be true.

thisisit 9y ago
The article relaying the whole communication has been published: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-Dramatic-turn-as-judge-says-Uber-12388930.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-... > The unit acquired leaked code from competitors via Github, dug up information on overseas drivers and researched global competitors, he said. While he didn’t believe that work was illegal, “I had questions about the ethics of it,” Jacobs testified. > Tactics included use of attorney-client privilege on written documents, and encrypted, ephemeral communications. > It also used “non-attributable devices” to communicate with third parties providing on-the-ground intelligence about threats to Uber, and to research Uber protestors, he testified.
- vkou 9y ago
  > The unit acquired leaked code from competitors via Github, dug up information on overseas drivers and researched global competitors, he said. While he didn’t believe that work was illegal, “I had questions about the ethics of it,” Jacobs testified. Fair point... But I'm not sure this has any bearing on Waymo vs Uber. This can, however, expose them to all sorts of patent litigation from the parties whose code they looked at. > Tactics included use of attorney-client privilege on written documents, and encrypted, ephemeral communications. I'm not sure about the former, but the latter is SOP at any company that has a legal department and regulatory concerns. > It also used “non-attributable devices” to communicate with third parties providing on-the-ground intelligence about threats to Uber, and to research Uber protestors, he testified. Shady shit, but not sure what bearing this has on Waymo vs Uber.
  - revelation 9y ago
    You don't understand. The problem is the letter itself, not even necessarily what it says. The letter should have been handed over as part of discovery. It wasn't. It only came to the judge through an independent case.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      And therefore, since Waymo just now finds out about this, they get more time to see if there's anything in this that affects their case. And Uber has nobody to blame but themselves for the delay.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      Too late to edit my other reply. But I want to add a correction here. If I understand correctly, it didn't come to the judge through an independent case. It came to the judge because the judge referred the situation (Uber hiring Levandowski after Levandowski took documents from Waymo) to federal prosecutors. Those federal prosecutors got back to the judge with stuff that Uber should have turned over as part of discovery, but didn't. The judge is not amused.
awalton 9y ago
From SFChronical: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-Dramatic-turn-as-judge-says-Uber-12388930.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-... > While he didn’t believe that work was illegal, “I had questions about the ethics of it,” Jacobs testified. > He confirmed that Uber used encrypted, ephemeral messaging “to protect sensitive information and ensure we didn’t create a paper trail that would come back to haunt the company in any potential criminal or civil litigation.” It also used “non-attributable devices” to communicate with third parties providing on-the-ground intelligence about threats to Uber, and to research Uber protestors, he testified. ...sound like "Just another Fortune 500" to you?
- cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
  Sounds like union busting activities from the 1870s well into the 1940s, so business as usual in the neo-gilded age.
- exelius 9y ago
  Actually, yes. I have seen Fortune 500 C-level execs use this exact behavior. When there is a merger in the works, use of burners and anonymous e-mail accounts are commonplace. Not that it excuses Uber's behavior, but corporate execs don't trust that their comms aren't being monitored (by either the govt or hackers in their systems). I-banks and traders have spied on them for years, so it's not an unfounded fear.
  - jhall1468 9y ago
    > When there is a merger in the works, use of burners and anonymous e-mail accounts are commonplace. That's to prevent leaks from driving the stock price up, and causing the buyout cost to increase. That's a little different than using it to hide the fact that they were knowingly breaking the law. Do you understand the difference?
    - mostlyskeptical 9y ago
      > That's to prevent leaks from driving the stock price up, and causing the buyout cost to increase. That's a little different than using it to hide the fact that they were knowingly breaking the law. Do you understand the difference? You're making the assumption that they did it for that reason. It could be that covering up the crimes was just a side effect.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>Does this mean that all Uber employees have been trained to 'communicate carefully', that their e-mails get deleted after X months, and that sensitive conversations that could hypothetically, and out of context, be held in person, as opposed to electronically? >If that's all it does, I would like to remind everyone - that's the kind of training that everyone in any Fortune 500 company receives. Both of the Fortune 500 companies I've worked for have also followed that up with something to the tune of "and if you don't want it quoted in the New York times you should think about why you're discussing it in the first place."
Retric 9y ago
Having worked at multiple large companies I can say this is unusual behavior. Most companies want to maintain a paper trail to defend their actions because on average it's a net gain, not assume their actions are problematic and by default remove all evidence as soon as possible.
- skybrian 9y ago
  Not a lawyer, but I don't think it's unusual to have a retention policy that says when documents should be deleted. This is apparently legal as long as it's a blanket policy. (For example, by default all email gets deleted after a year, unless someone takes action to save it.) Of course anything under legal hold has to be kept. It's also not unusual to make sure employees know about attorney-client privilege and how to use it properly, or that you should avoid discussing legal matters in a discoverable medium under the assumption it may be used against the company in a lawsuit. This is basic employee training stuff. So, yeah, no. Sometimes maintaining a paper trail is the thing to do but this isn't the only thing companies do.
  - Retric 9y ago
    While a specific retention policy is always a good idea 1 year is very short and would often cost you information for any annual process. Their are various standards like 5 years in banking or 7 years in healthcare. And some industry's are required to maintain records for significantly longer than that
- eddieplan9 9y ago
  I worked for a big pharma (#2 in the world by most measures), and their email retention policy was 90 days. If you have built any enterprise messaging software, you know you have to support retention policy or it won’t sell to the big companies. Slack can be configured to be aggressive as delete-after-one-day
  - Retric 9y ago
    Not to call big parma ethically challanged, but international documents are more likely to Hirt them than help.
ouid 9y ago
this is so downvoted that I can't even read it.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Drag your mouse over it to highlight the text.
  - ouid 9y ago
    that doesn't improve readability for me, instead of light grey on lighter grey, it becomes isoluminant light grey on light blue
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      Then either something got screwed up in your config or your monitor is severely miscalibrated. Highlighted text should not be hard to read, and the blue should not be light at all. Toss something like this in usercontent.css? ::selection { color:white; background:black;} ::-moz-selection { color:white; background:black;}

leggomylibro 9y ago

I think that most companies have 'N-month email retention policies', where N is somewhere between 1-6. Did the malfeasance happen more than a few months ago? Gee, sorry, no internal communications; that's policy. Did someone keep incriminating communications from more than a few months ago? Oooh, that's against policy - the recalcitrant employee has since been terminated and clearly does not represent our lofty ideals. But I don't think that most companies go out of their way to use encrypted platforms to shield communications which they know are likely illegal from investigators.

patmcguire 9y ago
For Google, at least, I believe it's 18 months. And that's quite new, it happened after the Oracle fiasco, which had all sorts of goodies like: Subject: Java class libraries With talks with Sun broken off[,] where does that leave us regarding Java class libraries? Ours are half-ass at best. We need another half of an ass. That came out in discovery.
- revelation 9y ago
  It is such a shame groklaw is no longer a thing. Another Snowden casualty.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    I missed that, how was groklaw connected to Snowden?
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/groklaw-shuts-down-as-the-post-snowden-chilling-effect-continues/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/groklaw-shuts-down-as-the-... https://www.csoonline.com/article/2133906/privacy/groklaw-shutdown-shows--chilling-effect--of-nsa-surveillance.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/2133906/privacy/groklaw-sh... http://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-concerns-cause-pj-to-close-groklaw/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-concerns-cause-pj-to-cl...

pfarnsworth 9y ago

If you look at CSaid's twitter stream, it looks a lot better for Uber now and Waymo looks like it might be in the judge's crosshairs.

tacomonstrous 9y ago
Are you sure she didn't just mistype? There's nothing that supports Waymo being in trouble.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  "Judge: Turns out Uber's server is only for the dummies, the real stuff goers on on the shadow system. There's enough under oath here for me to believe there's a 50-50 chance this will turn out to be something v bad for Uber; or 50-50 it's a dry hole" "Judge to Waymo lawyers: You’re making the impression this is a total cover-up. Your client is in a bad way now. You’ve made me upset. U should be saying we’ll open our doors, get to the bottom of this. Instead you’re fighting every little thing." "Media coalition argues for open courtroom. Waymo says it needs to shield info re deals with 7 entities, including Lyft. Judge says: I want the public to see how hypocritical this is. Waymo wants all the dirt on Uber to come out. But no no no, they don’t want any dirt on Waymo."
  - tacomonstrous 9y ago
    I think it's pretty clear that she meant to write Uber in the second tweet.
  - harbie 9y ago
    If you check anyone else that was livetweeting, it's clear that csaid mistyped the second tweet. Alsup addressed those comments at Uber's lawyers.

bm1362 9y ago

I use Keybase, Signal, even Snapchat daily. I wonder if a lawyer could pervert that into ‘shady’ behavior.

saulrh 9y ago
If you suffix that sentence with "...so the IRS will have trouble taking me to court for money-laundering", the lawyer wouldn't even have to "pervert" it. Privacy is not suspicious. Privacy with the explicit, stated intent of concealing illegal behavior is perfectly reasonably suspicious. Similarly - I would not bat an eye at the average car purchase, but I would think hard if someone asked me to recommend a car that would not be damaged if it hit someone. I would not give a friend access to my computer if they said they were going to use it to send spam email. Etc. This isn't about the privacy tech. This is about Uber being evil, knowing that they are doing evil, and trying to hide their evil from the courts. The fact that they worked at a high level to hide their evil destroys any pretense that it was accidental or unintentional.
- justinjlynn 9y ago
  > If you suffix that sentence with "...so the IRS will have trouble taking me to court for money-laundering", the lawyer wouldn't even have to "pervert" it. Privacy is not suspicious. Privacy with the explicit, stated intent of concealing illegal behavior is perfectly reasonably suspicious. [meme][1] Can't lose privacy [/1][2] If you don't tell people what you're doing in private [/2][/meme] But seriously, it's a bit of a catch-22; engaging in privacy preserving behaviour but later falling under suspicion of some illegal act shouldn't imply that you engaged in those behaviours for the intent of covering up suspected but not proven illegal acts. It's a real issue -- but it someone were so stupid as to say "haha, I did x so you couldn't prove it!" ... well, that's basically an admission of guilt, isn't it.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    The IRS doesn’t care about money laundering, they just want you to pay your taxes. The FBI in the other hand...