“Uber Is Accused of Espionage” and hacking and bribery

CNN reported that allegations are laid out in a 37-page letter written by a lawyer for the former Uber security analyst, Richard Jacobs, on May 5, 2017. A partially redacted version of the letter was made public in a court filing on Friday afternoon as part of an ongoing lawsuit. Uber is being sued right now by Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit that was formerly part of Google, for allegedly stealing trade secrets. Waymo seems to be claiming that a former employee downloaded confidential files from servers, just before going to work for Uber as part of the unit developing its own autonomous vehicle. Uber on Friday said it was aware of the allegations made in the letter.

“While we haven’t substantiated all the claims in this letter-and, importantly, any related to Waymo-our new leadership has made clear that going forward we will compete honestly and fairly, on the strength of our ideas and technology,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement.

The letter was sent to Uber by  Jacobs’ lawyer. He was a security analyst for Uber until April of 2017 when he resigned when got demoted.

He says he was demoted for “raising objections to and refusing to participate in unlawful activity.” But, a Uber manager testified that he was fired for “performance reasons.”

In a hearing this month, Uber’s deputy general counsel called Jacobs demands “extortionate.”

Uber has testified that the company paid Jacobs a settlement of $4.5 million to not reveal his accusations publicly. The judge now is acaused to delay the Waymo trial, which was supposed to begin jury selection November 29. Now jury selection is scheduled to start January 31. A report filed by special master John Cooper on Friday says Uber erred by not sharing the letter earlier. That means it is possible a jury could be told Uber withheld evidence.

“Uber improperly withheld the Jacobs Letter, which exposes the extreme lengths it was willing to go both to get a leg up on competition and hide evidence of bad acts. Separate and apart from the letter, Waymo has accumulated significant evidence that Uber is using stolen Waymo trade secrets, including copying aspects of Waymo’s LiDAR designs down to the micron, and we look forward to trial,” said a Waymo spokesperson in a statement.

Read the CNN report here

Tags: Technology, uber, criminal case, uber criminal case, Uber Is Accused of Espionage, Uber Is Accused,

Mohsen Daemi
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