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posted by on Sunday April 16 2017, @12:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the guilty-as-sin dept.

An Uber engineer accused of data theft against Google must privately explain the circumstances behind invoking his Fifth Amendment right to the judge in the case:

During a Wednesday court hearing, a federal judge said that if an Uber engineer accused of a massive data theft from his former employer is going to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to protect against self-incrimination and not hand over materials demanded as part of a recent subpoena and upcoming deposition, then he must at least explain himself privately to the judge.

"What I've told you is that you can submit the privilege log to me, in camera, without giving it to anyone else and I can evaluate it, which aspects, if any would be incriminating," US District Judge William Alsup said, addressing a lawyer representing the engineer, Anthony Levandowski, during the hearing. "I'm not ruling against the ultimate assertion of the privilege, but you've got to do more than just say in court, Fifth Amendment—you have to do a privilege log and go through the process."

The case pits Waymo against Uber, which in turn is in a tense situation with one of its own employees, Levandowski, the head of its self-driving division. Levandowski is now set to be deposed by Waymo lawyers this Friday at their San Francisco offices. He must also respond to a subpoena by handing over materials that he is accused of stealing— thousands of secret documents from his time with Waymo parent company, Google. On Wednesday, Judge Alsup quashed four of the six distinct items requested in the subpoena, but allowed first the most substantive, the allegedly "misappropriated materials," to stand. (The third item, "All communications between You and Uber between January 2015 and August 2016," will also remain.)


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by zocalo on Sunday April 16 2017, @01:09PM

    by zocalo (302) on Sunday April 16 2017, @01:09PM (#494791)
    Not totally clear on this either, but my understanding is that the judge isn't asking Levandowski to incriminate himself, but rather to explain his rationale behind pleading the fifth. Quite how Levandowski is supposed to do that is going to depend on the circumstances, but it could well be that he fears the data he has been instructed to hand over includes information that would incriminate himself - e.g. logfiles showing his illegal access to servers. In that case his reply to the judge could be a rather generalise and non-specific "I believe the data requested might contain information that may incriminate me", rather than the more specific "Log file FOO contains details of my illegal access of servers on the date of..."
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