Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets | Hacker News Reader

Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

reuters.com

139 pointshtiek86 comments

After reading the comments here, I think it might be better to move the source article to another one with more historical context, like https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/19/21187651/anthony-levandow...

Things I learned from that article that aren't apparent in this one:

- Uber was forced to pay more than $244 million to Waymo in the separate lawsuit between them.

- The $179 million that Levandowski owes to Google comes from a third lawsuit between him and Google over poaching engineers from Waymo.

Update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633861 suggests that the article is being shadow edited. It now contains information on those two points, but I don't think it did when many of the comments on here were written.

Even if they dont "use" anything he stole, 30 months of someone else's life in jail is a zero price to pay for Uber to get even a small amount of competitive knowledge. Even something like an internal calendar of expected timelines would be super useful and cant be unseen.

I'd argue the opposite that this was extremely expensive for Uber.

The legal nightmare which resulted a loss in 0.34% of equity and combined with having to throw away whatever they had[0] before as part of the deal with Google is not cheap at all.

Anecdotally, I have engineering friends on the Uber self driving team and they talk about how they are just starting over again and how far behind they are as a result of it.

This is definitely a path Uber would not choose to go down again in hind sight. All to say, Uber did pay a significant price for "30 months of someone else's life".

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/uber-waymo-lawsuit-settlement/

Thanks for sharing.

Downvoted for having manners. Lol. Dont ever change, HN.

It's a gamble, though. Say you're Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, and you believe 3 things for sure: 1. Uber's completely doomed if self-driving cars show up and Uber doesn't own it, 2. Sexual harassment is a good idea, and 3. Uber's behind the top players in self-driving car research.

Say you believe that there's a 25% chance that this Google guy can get you to the front of the self-driving car race, and there's a 50% chance you'll get caught. Based on those 3 assumptions at the top, this is a worthwhile risk.

Sure, he wouldn't do it again with hindsight, both because it didn't work out and because his board fired him for creating a culture of sexual harassment, but the risk was probably worth it, strategically if not ethically.

Exactly. Cracked up at the harassment bit.

> 25% chance that this Google guy can get you to the front of the self-driving car race

This is the absurd assumption

The document was an open meeting minutes team spreadsheet. It’s how Google runs their teams, tabs like OKRs, Metrics, Weekly Updates, Progress, etc. Definitely a valuable document but trade secret? jail? Bankruptcy? Meanwhile, Waymo just raised 2.5Billion.

Let's also not forget that Uber got away with killing Elaine Herzberg. "Move fast, break things"

Does he still owe any of the $179M to Google or does that go away? Is he still in bankrupcy?

I'm wondering this as well!

I believe that any gains that result from a crime have to be given back to the relevant parties. If you trade on insider information you forfeit your profits for example. Maybe since this is a settlement he was able to keep it. Idk. Perhaps a lawyer could chime in.

What do you have to do to get a job where you could be liable for $179M for "violating employment contracts"? The mind boggles. I hope they had free soda at least.

First you collect a $120M bonus with the stipulation that you not poach employees, then you poach the employees anyway and sell your new company for $680M. Then you're liable for $179M.

If that amount is for civil damages, I think that would be a separate matter, but the last two paragraphs of the article leave little doubt that he is, and that Uber is not picking up the tab unless he can force them to (...would it be in the interests of Google (Alphabet? Waymo?) to help him do so? It would hurt Uber. Could it do so, if it wanted to, e.g. by hiring lawyers on his behalf?)

Update: The article has just been shortened, and the paragraphs on that issue have been removed...

Update 2: they are back again, apparently slightly reworded, IIRC the original...

> Update: The article has just been shortened, and the paragraphs on that issue have been removed...

I thought I was going crazy. I could swear it mentioned it but now it's gone.

> Update 2: they are back again, apparently slightly reworded, IIRC the original...

Not for me? It's gone still.

He may well get out of paying the $179M.

"Uber indemnifies workers under its employment agreements. But Uber has said in financial filings that it expects to challenge paying the big judgment against Levandowski, who was fired from the company in 2017."

https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levandowski-files-ba...

Note that Uber paid out $9.7M to Google on behalf of Lior Ron, one of Levandowski's Otto employees. So they already established the pattern.

Curious to hear from those who have been following the details more closely: was there _any_ legal basis to Levandowski's claims?

It's easy to write him off as an extremely greedy sociopath, but I wonder if he was walking along some precarious line or "loop-hole" that eventually too many attempts to cross bit him in the butt.

No, there is no legal basis for using corporate resources for personal gain. It's not a gray area, it's a bright line.

No poaching agreements are a bit more of a grey area though

My company was retained by Uber to assist in the investigation and discovery during the Waymo lawsuit. While the case settled, there’s a great deal of public information from court filings, depositions, and testimony. One deposition that’s worth reading is the one by Google’s security staff. They log everything and it’s basically open and shut that he downloaded version control repos at the time of his resignation (after not having logged into his corporate computer for months). His personal guilt has never been in much doubt.

great example of how white collar crime does not get punished. “no more than 30 months” for a theft implicated at multi-billion dollar values. that’s even less with good behavior credit

I take a different lesson: when a large company is affected, the small guy gets up to 30 months. When a small-time engineer gets his idea stolen by a big company in a similar way, they have zero recourse.

To be clear, I think both should be punished, but the large corp stealing ideas NEVER will.

This wasn't "an idea" being stolen, it was years of work and documents, nearly 10GB of it. That's very different from a big company taking someone's idea and recreating something similar from scratch.

Not "stolen" but copied. Google was not deprived of anything whatsoever.

No, exclusivity of the inventions and knowledge was a -- perhaps the -- key piece of value they held.

Claiming that exclusivity is they key value is ludicrous.

The key value of autonomous vehicle IP is the ability to autonomously drive vehicles. Unless you're a patent troll.

In this case, the IP was never utilized in the marketplace against them, so they suffered no significant amount of damage.

It's reasonable that they sued to stop the use of their illegally copied IP. It's reasonable that he's punished. But it should be proportionate to the damage, which was minimal.

That's similarly ludicrous.

Autonomous vehicle IP is enormously more valuable if Google is the sole supplier. The value to Google is significantly less if Google plus multiple competitors have it.

Your claim basically devolves to no harm, no foul, and that's not how our legal system generally works. The attempted theft was of great value.

Our legal system does usually involve "proving damages".

Obtaining autonomous vehicle IP is not equivalent to having autonomous vehicle product in the market.

As an example: Boeing could almost certainly publish all of the IP for the 787 jet and not risk spawning a single legitimate competitor. Very few organizations in the world could do anything with it.

What's truly valuable to a Google or Boeing is their financial, engineering, manufacturing, and operations resources. And other less tangible things.

Which is why severe punishment for illegally copying IP doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, it should be illegal and should be stopped, but it's not that big a deal in most cases.

It just seems like a big deal because "tHey StolE tHe SeCreT cOdEs!" as if it's a James Bond movie.

It's a case of confusing the golden goose with the golden eggs.

To your point. He started the program. Not that there is no fault - it's just ironic - Google mad people are "stealing" from them and they made billions by stealing all our data... In the end Google ended up shutting down its main SDC rival's entire program, recuperating all their money including employee salary, and raising 2.5 billion. Not too shabby

Well, to nit a point slightly, his comp alone should indicate he was not a small-time engineer. He effectively had a bigger payout that most founders with a semi-successful startup exit.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/waymos-uber-lawsuit-reveals-...

Well, I would like to agree with you, but unfortunately only larger companies have the resource and willingness to actually build the necessary infrastructure to prove someone stealing an idea

Is your complaint that his sentence is too light? Or that non-white collar crime is punished too harshly?

foolfoolz is complaining that the sentence is light compared to non-white-collar crimes

For example, if you can get 12 years for shoplifting $40 [1] or life in prison for stealing $153 of video tapes [2] that stands in stark contrast to starting a company with stolen IP and selling it for $680M and getting 2.5 years.

Some people see this as part of a pattern where the justice system, run by upper-middle-class types, is unduly lenient on other upper-middle-class types, or unduly harsh on poor people. They would also point to the likes of Brock Turner who had gone to the same college as the judge sentencing him; and controversial presidential pardons [3] of friends and major donors.

It's not a completely hard-and-fast pattern, of course; Bernie Madoff got a 150 year sentence.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shop... [2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r... [3] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/prob...

Yes, I get that... but there is an implicit "what should be fixed" attached to the complaint.

This white-collar punishment is going to hurt him badly. Is fairness best achieved by hurting him even more? Or is it best achieved by "only" hurting non-white-collar crimes with a punishment similar to this? It's important because the real question here is "are you complaining about his sentence, or the sentence of others?"

Personally I'm pro-reform. Would really like to see lighter sentences for a lot of things. So I'm not going to complain about this white-collar sentence at all. I'm going to complain about the harsh sentence for "people not like us."

30 months is a major punishment for downloading a doc that tracks technical goals and doing nothing with it.

It was much more than just a calendar.

Not according to the plea. You should try reading the article next time.

Did you read the indictment and do you know what a plea deal is? Why do you think google is lying about the 14000 files he downloaded? That could easily be proven or disproven and everyone knows it. It’s obvious they just threw him a soft ball on probably the least incriminating file they could to just get some money back rather than dragging the trial on forever then sentencing him to 100 years. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t take all the CAD files and act in what is clearly bad faith. Yeah, I could see a 24 year old legitimately doing that “for personal reference” but he is fucking 40 years old

I do know what a plea is. Legally, this calendar is the only thing he stole.

I understand Google made many claims but apparently the evidence was only strong enough for this one minor article to make through the plea negotiations.

Now put yourself in this "fucking 40 year old"'s position and think about what it means for a corporation like Google to make these claims. Even if they're false you can't afford to fight them.

The guy was steamrolled.

> I do know what a plea is. Legally, this calendar is the only thing he stole.

In the criminal trial yes.

> I understand Google made many claims but apparently the evidence was only strong enough for this one minor article to make through the plea negotiations.

Google isn't (officially anyway) involved in this plea deal. It's between levandowski and the DA who is charging him with a crime. Google won 170 million in damages in the civil suit/arbitration.

That was the charge that he pleased guilty to for the 30 month jail term deal. It probably wasn't the most significant charge.

The lesson if anyone is paying attention that if you’re going to steal $1, better make it a million.... but slow down before you hit Madoff levels. There is a sweet spot north of a million; less than a few billion.

Is there sufficient public data to plot and find the true sweet spot?

I'm not sure about seeing a chart of existing cases and illicit proceeds, but what is available is the United States Sentencing Guidelines §2B1.1. [0] The value amounts increase exponentially, while the points, which correspond to length of sentence, increase linearly. So, like the other poster said, go big. Take the base offense level for the crime, add the points in the chart for the dollar amount, and then reference the Sentencing Table in §5A [1]. Levandowski and other folks with no criminal history will be in column 1 of the chart. Keep in mind that this is only a guideline, and the judge is not bound by it. Let me know if you have any other questions!

To demonstrate:

  Insider Trading - Base Offense Level: 8
   Monetary Loss | Points Added | Total Points | Total Sentence Length | Dollars/month
   >      $6,500         2             10                6-12 months        $812
   >     $15,000         4             12               10-16 months        $1,153
   >     $40,000         6             14               15-21 months        $2,222
   ~~~~
   >    $250,000        12             20               33-41 months        $6,756
   >    $550,000        14             22               41-51 months        $11,957
   >  $1,500,000        16             24               51-63 months        $26,315
   >  $3,500,000        18             26               63-78 months        $49,296
   >  $9,500,000        20             28               78-97 months        $109,195
   > $25,000,000        22             30              97-121 months        $229,358
   > $65,000,000        24             32             121-151 months        $477,941
   >$150,000,000        26             34             151-188 months        $887,573
   >$250,000,000        28             36             188-235 months        $1,182,033
   >$550,000,000        30             38             235-293 months        $2,083,333

https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2018-guidelines-manual/2018-...

Edit: This isn't meant to encourage anyone to commit a crime of any magnitude. Doing that would likely violate the terms of my probation.

Just so we're clear who this commenter is:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/garrett-grimsley-north-carolina...

Well, the username, maybe not the commenter. Cnat ask for a better authority in matters of escaping punishment for heinous crimes. Religion-based hate speech, terroristic threats and Conspiracy to commit religious-based terroristic mass murder got less punishment than stealing economic value from a top-10 richest organization in America.

I had time to read the US Sentencing Guidelines cover to cover during my period of incarceration. If you don't trust my numbers then feel free to check the USSG for yourself, they're taken directly from the sources that I listed. That article refers to me, but you'd learn more about who this commenter is by reading my comment history (or asking me directly, I'm right here) instead of only that news story.

No doubt your numbers are accurate.

Don't steal from rich people is the secret. Madoff made a rookie mistake.

Two and half years is a hell of a lot of jail time. I seriously wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

My worst enemy could use a decade.

People have gotten used to ridiculously long sentences, but 2 years in jail would be absolutely terrible.

Think of it this way, people are currently SIP and going stir crazy with all the modern stuff.

Pretty sure he's going to Martha Stewart type powder puff federal facility.

To be sure, there are many hellholes in the US, but he's not going there.

Someone getting 2 years for stealing 100+ million in gold seems unusually short. But, somehow that changes if what they stole fits on a flash drive.

It’s interesting that we accept electronic money as real, but IP always feels like a stretch.

Rob a bank for 1/100000th the money and see how many more years than 2 you get

The question in criminal cases should be: how many people's lives were hurt by the crime, and how severely?

In this case, no one's life was the slightest bit injured. Uber is most likely too incompetent to be a real threat. Waymo has undoubtedly advanced far from the versions of everything that he copied illegally. It won't damage them at all. If anything, the lawsuit and criminal case were probably more damaging to their progress due to the distraction.

This is pretty similar to copying software or movies illegally. In almost all cases, there is no injured party. It's simply illegal by virtue of the powerful corporations demanding laws that they can use as a bludgeon.

Startups and other small companies don't get any of this "protection", but when someone copies code illegally from Google or Goldman Sachs, the FBI gets involved and makes them pay dearly. Prosecutors use the cases to make their bones.

I'm not suggesting that what this guy did was ethically or legally correct, just that it didn't actually harm any human life. It should probably be illegal but the punishment/fines should be capped at a very low level. The laws should primarily be designed to stop someone from continuing to use illegally copied data.

> Uber is most likely too incompetent to be a real threat

I don't necessarily disagree with all of your comment, but I feel like incompetence should not be a factor in determining punishment severity. Being unprofitable should not be a valid defense for illegal behavior.

Sure, agreed. The point there is just that copying IP isn't that meaningful if it can't be effectively utilized. Many parties have presumably copied Boeing and Airbus IP related to their jets, and yet none have effectively utilized it.

Stealing the golden eggs is not the same as stealing the golden goose.

It’s like justifying sexual harassment by being bad at sex

I'm against this barbaric tradition of putting people in cages for whatever XYZ crimes. I think the isolation of the rest of the society from the criminals is essential but should be done in a much more humane way. For instance, prisons should be a place to learn and develop one's mind with libraries, documentaries, education and tools of creation but still making sure the person cannot contact the rest of the society. Prisoners should be making living to pay for such facilities by doing work. You might wonder what if this actually promotes more crimes but you can increase the lengths of sentences and exponentially growing lengths for repeated offenses. A way to think of prison is just another society with its own economy and rules with strict isolation but otherwise similar in most other respects. For example, a "prison town" may have cafes, restaurants, theaters etc with everything being run by this isolated community which is not allowed to be in contact with the rest. I know this is crazy and rather radical ideal but small cages and solitary confinement is inhuman beyond thought.

> For example, a "prison town" may have cafes, restaurants, theaters etc with everything being run by this isolated community which is not allowed to be in contact with the rest

What happens if someone commits a crime in a prison town? Double secret prison?

No soup for them!

No, you send them to solitary confinement, just as they do in prison?

Ok but lets start by freeing the poor descendants of slaves before we rush to worry about spoiled elites.

After admitting his guilt and serving his time, would you refuse to work with him again? It seems like he was a brilliant guy who made a bad mistake. I don’t think he’s unemployable. Isn’t prison punishment enough? Time is the only irreplaceable resource we have.

Seriously? What exactly is brilliant about stealing designs? If he was so brilliant, he’d know what to do better or differently. He’d have been able to work around Google’s IP. That’s true brilliance.

Not only is he a thief, by his own admission, but it probably wasn’t the first time he did this. The way he stole the designs he wasn’t worried about getting caught. This is not something someone does for the first time. It’s a pattern of behavior built up over a long time.

I’m seriously worried about the lack of basic morals in technology where behavior like this, like Andy Rubin’s, etc.... goes unpunished because these people are “brilliant.”

Did you read any of the news articles? This isn't about stealing designs...

He downloaded schematics and pcba designs, documents, etc, onto a thumb drive and transferred those contents outside of Google. Call it whatever you want. It’s called theft.

* The files that Levandowski is alleged to have stolen contain drawings and schematics pertaining to circuitry and LIDAR laser-sensors that were used in Google’s self-driving cars. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and $250,000 fine, plus restitution, for every count.*

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/27/20835368/google-uber-engi...

Why are you pulling from an article from last August? There is news happening in real-time about this with updates. The DOJ dropped all those charges. If they could have proven it they wouldn't have allowed a plea. He was accused not convicted...He plead because he's bankrupt from a civil suit with Google and the DOJ let it drop because their case isn't strong enough. Look at the Fitbit case. And funny enough - GOogle went on to buy them just a few months after.

This is purely about stealing.

> agreed to plead guilty on Thursday to taking sensitive documents

> Prosecutors accused Levandowski of stealing materials in late 2015 and early 2016 after deciding to leave Google and form his own company

> I downloaded these files with the intent to use them for my own personal benefit, and I understand that I was not authorized to take the files for that purpose

That's the material in the article. Any hints of said thief's brilliance must be elsewhere, if they exist, and the burden to produce them is on those who would claim they should be given weight.

I have worked with ex-cons back when I worked in food service, making pizzas for rich suburbanites. I say give him a chance to redeem himself. But I'm a romantic...

I agree that people should have a chance to redeem themselves, but serving time is meant to redeem him in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the profession or industry.

The onus is on him to demonstrate why his reputation in the industry should be restored.

The problem is that at the level that he was operating at, he would need to reenter industry in a leadership position of some sort, and most people would not trust him as a leader after this.

The ex-cons you worked with didn't have this issue because they probably didn't commit their felonies in food service, but rather in some other criminal situation or enterprise.

Also, fair or not, most people have less sympathy for those who commit felonies after they're already wealthy or powerful, versus people who commit felonies when they are largely poor or powerless. The criminal justice system, however, could be argued to have the exact opposite bias.

I think he will need to try extra hard after this to prove his honesty. But black black ball him entirely? I would still give him a chance. Just my opinion.

Sure, but who first?

Not similar. Andy Rubin's behavior was lewd behavior that his bosses tolerated, not theft or any crime.

Another term for what you call "lewd behavior" is sexual harassment and it is a crime.

I'm trying to be as vague as possible here so as not to identify myself, but I knew him fairly well. I can tell you it wasn't just a mistake. Anthony doesn't have the same... qualms as you and I.

Yeah, I've never met the guy and I'm always careful about trusting media reports directly in this kind of a witch hunt, but goddamn he spent at least 10 years double-dealing and behaving with incredibly poor ethics.

He might be good at the self-driving car stuff or he might not, I have no idea, but I wouldn't trust him with a ham sandwich.

I've heard this multiple times on this board, and given his public behavior, he definitely fits some of the 'lack of consciousness' traits of a sociopath.

No doubt he is capable.

I think he'll end up somewhere and just fine. Someone will be willing to take a chance on him.

Personally I'm not smart enough / likely to end up working with him. But just for the sake of argument if I was I would be wary.

He took all that stuff with him... that no doubt included the work of people around him, and that showed a lot of disregard not just for his employer, but his peers. I could 'understand' if someone had a problem with their employer (still a bad choice!), but the disregard for his coworkers to me signals something else as far as his moral / ethical choices / standards... if there are any.

Do you trust that guy not just to walk off with your work, but to even represent it accurately to others? Have your back when you need it? Not sure I would.

Makes you wonder how much he earned the original $120M bonus vs just negotiating a reward scheme using ubnderhanded techniques like kickbacks and then gaming metrics or misrepresenting other people's work.

Yeah if he burned his coworkers like he did, I wonder how often he has done it to benefit himself.

I'd hire a guy who was an ex-con, but not if his criminal history related directly to the thing I'm hiring him to do. I'd hire a guy who robbed a bank 20 years ago to design a bridge or build houses. A guy who screwed over his employer, though? No, not if there were any other candidates available.

I suspect his path back won't be to go work for someone else. Probably easier for him to get a modest investment to start a company. Investors are probably more willing to gamble than an employer...given the history.

I'd also be more willing to work for him, than have him work for me. Sounds weird, but it's easier to ensure I'm doing nothing illegal than checking that an employee of mine isn't.

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