Ex-Googler Levandowski gets 18 months in prison for trade-secret theft:
Ex-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski yesterday was sentenced to 18 months in prison following his March guilty plea for stealing a confidential document related to Google's self-driving technology.
Levandowski's lawyers last week asked a judge in US District Court for the Northern District of California to let him off without any prison time, arguing that a year of home confinement, a fine, restitution, and community service would be sufficient punishment. The federal government asked for a 27-month prison sentence.
While handing down the 18-month sentence, US District Judge William Alsup said that a sentence without imprisonment would give "a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets," according to a Reuters report. Levandowski was originally charged with 33 counts of stealing trade secrets by downloading thousands of documents to his personal laptop in December 2015 shortly before he left Google to work on his startup, Otto, which was acquired by Uber for a reported $680 million in August 2016. In a plea deal, Levandowksi admitted to stealing one document called "Chauffeur TL weekly updates," which tracked the progress of Google's "Project Chauffeur" that later became Waymo. Prosecutors dropped the other charges.
Levandowski won't have to serve the sentence right away, as Alsup ruled that he can go to prison after the coronavirus pandemic subsides, according to Reuters and other news outlets.
Levandowski also must pay $756K to Waymo
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Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency
Anthony Levandowski – President Trump granted a full pardon to Anthony Levandowski. This pardon is strongly supported by James Ramsey, Peter Thiel, Miles Ehrlich, Amy Craig, Michael Ovitz, Palmer Luckey, Ryan Petersen, Ken Goldberg, Mike Jensen, Nate Schimmel, Trae Stephens, Blake Masters, and James Proud, among others. Mr. Levandowski is an American entrepreneur who led Google's efforts to create self-driving technology. Mr. Levandowski pled guilty to a single criminal count arising from civil litigation. Notably, his sentencing judge called him a "brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs." Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.
Wikipedia entry on pardon within the United States.
See also: Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski among list of last-minute Trump pardons
Trump's last-minute pardons include Bannon, Lil Wayne and scores of others
Trump Reportedly Abandoned Pardons For Snowden And Assange
Trump declines to pardon Assange, Snowden, or 'Joe Exotic' – here's the 143 people he chose
Previously: Text Messages Between Uber's Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski Released
The Fall of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick
Uber Shutting Down Self-Driving Truck Division
Ex-Uber Engineer Levandowski Pleads Guilty To Trade Secrets Theft
Uber Accuses Levandowski of Fraud, Refuses to Pay $179M Google Judgment
Ex-Googler Levandowski Gets 18 Months in Prison for Trade-Secret Theft
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @03:56PM (32 children)
Such privilege. Sounds like Ellen Degeneris complaining about how hard it is to be confined IN A FUCKING MANSION during lockdown.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:02PM (13 children)
$680 million for 18 months in prison, where do I sign up?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:21PM (2 children)
He pleaded guilty of stealing 1 document. That document called "Chauffeur TL weekly updates" is basically useless for an engineer, and I don't think he got paid for that 1 document.
The whole thing smells like Google got angry for not paying enough to an engineer and went after him for risking their dominion. This document is all that stuck.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:34PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:39PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:30PM (9 children)
It's like stealing GPL code. Most of the stuff you need for creating software is LGPL or ClassPath permissive licenced - only someone who lacks creativity (a moron or just lazy) needs to steal GPL code. So why not use the permissively licensed stuff and you can do whatever you want with it. Including only having to redistribute the LGPL or ClassPath libraries you used, keeping your special sauce code closed.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:07PM (8 children)
First of all it's not stealing. It's infringement.
Secondly the alleged damages are mostly exaggerated.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:14PM (7 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:13PM (6 children)
Not familiar, but did he really make copies of documents and physically walk out the door with them?
More likely, given today's work patterns, he copied the documents out of Google's servers via VPN into his home computer - where they legally resided until he terminated employment, then when he started working with Uber he shared them back via network to his new coworkers.
His "theft" would then have amounted to not having scrubbed his home drives after termination and of course sharing sensitive bits therein later.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:18PM (5 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:23PM (3 children)
a *copy* is not *theft*.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:38PM
It's rather dishonest to conflate the two.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:44PM (1 child)
Next you'll be arguing that the Canadian Navy guy who was found guilty of passing secrets to foreign powers should have only been found guilty of copyright infringement and not theft of government secrets.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @10:15PM
Without knowing what case you are blathering about, I'd bet that he was actually found guilty of espionage.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:58PM
So, it sounds like these were documents he didn't require access to as part of his normal work duties.
Doesn't matter, really, once you've triggered the corporate lawyers and they think you are a target worth destroying, they're coming for you no matter what.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:04PM (4 children)
"Alsup ruled that he can go to prison after the coronavirus pandemic subsides"
I don't have a problem with that.
And who is Ellen Degeneres? I almost feel I should be getting outraged.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:16PM
Ellen DeGenerate [vogue.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:21PM (2 children)
Ellen Degeneres was one of the two hosts of (now discontinued) The Universe of Energy ride at Disney's Epcot Center, at Walt Disney World, Orlando FL.
She is famous for some reason. She is a lesbian and activist for LGBT rights. She has some sort of TV show.
That's all I know. I think it is all that I need to know.
The ride described above is the most video I've ever seen of her. She does a good job along with Bill Nye.
Hope that helps.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:35PM
Thank you, yes I do feel a little outraged now. Much better.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:06PM
and more [theguardian.com]
The cracks started to show with reports of her treatment of guests like shit when the lights and cameras are off - like telling guests they can't use the nearest washroom on the set because it's reserved for the Jonas Brothers; followed with hiring non-union workers to do her show from her mansion and leaving all the people who have worked with her for 17 years high and dry (contrast that to Jimmy Kimmel paying his staff from his own pocket at the start of the pandemic); and her claims she had no idea what was going on. Either she's lying or is even more self-absorbed than insiders say she is.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:30PM (8 children)
I have worked a few times with people like this. The arrogance is usually so astounding.
They take code/docs from previous employers then try to use it in current projects.
One guy showed up with 20 pages fully debugged properly commented code.
"this did not exist yesterday where did it come from"
"dont worry about it"
"No I *am* going to worry about it, for if you copied it from catches wind of it this company will hang us out to dry in a heartbeat and who we work for will end up with egg on their face. get rid of it. this conversation never happened this code never happened. if you want to re-write the code, not just reformat it add it to the backlog and we will crank it out but get rid of it."
he then spent the next hour trying to convince me of the merits of the code. Which was never in question.
"This pull request is closed and not merged".
At that point he decided I was not a 'team player' and spent the next year fighting me on every tech decision.
That is nor your code. You may have wrote it. But it is not yours.
The chances they will find it are very small. But it can happen. Do a code share between to subsidaries and something matches out.
Hell I spent months arguing with our code scanner lawyers about was a public table in a published open protocol. They could not wrap their head around there was no license cost on it and the only way to make the protocol work correctly was with that table. All because the table matched out in some other 3rd party library they had the code to which did something similar.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:12PM (7 children)
Ha-HA! What a hecking snitcheroonie!
But you're also right, which is why any person worth their salt would be slick enough to not only change the code but commit in increments to look convincing. Reword or add/remove comments as needed. Change variable and method names, expand or contract logic by using standard libraries or reinventing the wheel, change the order in which method definitions are written, maybe use bitwise stuff instead of integers and arithmetic operators. Break classes and methods up into sub components and consolidate others.
College papers and drug tests are the same way. They're not there to discourage cheating, they're there to filter out the dumb cheaters from the smart ones. In the age of TurnItIn you'd have to be an absolute fool to just hand in a paper somebody else wrote. But if you have raw material for a paper than you can be prepared for a good grade in hours rather than days or weeks. Change the title and section names, obviously, then scan though the paper and re-write all parts to your style (using a thesaurus to substitute bigger words), rearrange the order of sections if possible. Substitute a few of the sources using the free book previews found online for related books.
Cheating is an art, and the stakes are pretty high for people who are sloppy at it. Look at all these "big-name" journalists who are getting caught for line-by-line copying of others' work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:43PM (6 children)
Unless they weren't the ones who wrote it in the first place, in which case you don't want them around. You won't be happy when they plagiarize your crap to get ahead.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:30PM (5 children)
So with that statement are you admitting that Indian and Chinese code workforces are a bad thing? Because what you just described is everything they can't do. Hell, their code won't even compile.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:51PM (4 children)
Same with China.
Same with Russia
Same with Eastern Europe.
I've never said otherwise. And nowadays we're either going to bring back more manufacturing from China or else. Many of us are ready to pay more for stuff not made in China where there's a choice. Problem is that in many cases there IS no choice. Walmart is the biggest offender/enabler, but most tech companies are guilty.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @07:35PM (1 child)
I try not to shop much at Walmart, but last time I was there I found they have a decent set of bath towels made in the USA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:18AM
Those towels may be labeled "made in USA", but with WalMart's history, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the only thing done in USA was sewing on the labels... Just say'n.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:48AM (1 child)
This is pretty much all there is to know all about know-it-alls like you who don't know shit but feed off of each other's ignorance on this website. Seriously, why did you use Mumbai? It is neither capital of India nor software hub. It has a stock exchange... But that is not related to the story at hand.
And then you talk about Indian judicial system in the same breadth as China, then Russia and then Eastern Europe. Are you certified retard? My god how do you conduct yourself day to day with this much ignorance? That's privilege you know, that you aren't being taken advantage of every second of your life.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday August 07 2020, @12:05PM
Want to go to court? Be ready for a 15-year delay before you get a judgment. And that's a big problem for companies that outsource to shitholes with a broken legal system - effectively no legal recourse when they incorporate your stuff into competing products.
Then there's China. Massive counterfeiting operations run by the same plants that are making your product under contract, so they become your biggest competitor, and you're paying them for that "privilege ". And subsidizing their Muslim prison camps. A million prisoners. Funded with exports.
But back to India - 600,000,000 people without an indoor toilet. You could literally stand them in line and they'd reach to the moon - and this was before social distancing and the pandemic. And it will never be fixed because the tax base isn't there to pay for it, because everyone dodges taxes. Their choice, but they have to live with the consequences, including infrastructure that fails every year when the rains come.
Way back when, a local company had designed a working ultra cheap Linux tablet for the masses, tried to get it manufactured in India, got fed up after 2 years of constant demands for bribes at all levels, and abandoned the project. That's typical. Wonder how Apple is going to do, having moved IPhone production there. Maybe they have enough clout to actually get things working normally, but it's still going to be a problem for everyone who has to deal with a country where the legal system is broken. Like Russia. Like China.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:56PM (3 children)
Only a white guy wouldn't get the book thrown at him. I hope he ends up at a PMITA not one of those lovely white collar places. Given the short sentence he really needs his shit packed to send a message to other pasty privileged assholes that just because the sentence is short doesn't mean it will be a walk in the park.
Said as a white guy myself, who prefers honesty and integrity, even in a world of corporate shitbags.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:13PM
Hang onto your huwhite privilege. You might need to wield it when the mobile guillotine comes for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:13PM
It looks like he is getting a sentence that is appropriate for what he did. Not everything should be 35 years in solitary confinement in a super max.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:28PM
rape for making a copy of some stupid document? oh please. and fuck google anyways.
(Score: 0, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 06 2020, @03:58PM (7 children)
Let's look at the word “ex-googler”:
So when taking the more narrow sense, an ex-googler is someone who no longer searches with Google. In the broader sense, it would be someone who no longer uses internet search engines.
But the summary makes it clear that it is actually a Google ex-employee (someone who no longer is employed by Google). No mention is made whether and how he searches the internet.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:19PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:21PM (1 child)
Sudden attack of pedantry with wrong choice of meaning. Why did you even feel the compulsion to comment?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:38PM
All the search results I bothered to read from searching "ex-google" using ddg return the word referring to an ex-employee of google.
Same as it's understood that an ex-microsoftie is a former employee of Microsoft. Or an ex-musician is someone who played music, not someone who listened to it while playing Guitar Hero.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:23PM (1 child)
I still find it somewhat amusing that we are using Google as a verb (or googling etc). That in some regards tells us how powerful and pervasive their reach is. There are a few others such as Xerox, but I suspect it's somewhat less common now.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:38PM
What? I bing all the time, right after I pets.com.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:23PM
Uh, no.
An ex-googler is someone who uses Duck Duck Go. [duckduckgo.com]
Just type into your browser address bar: ddg.gg
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Friday August 07 2020, @12:55PM
How about ex google-ite? google-ista?