U.S. prosecutors seek 27 months imprisonment for former Uber self-driving head
reuters.com
reuters.com
I find this ridiculous for his attorneys to use as a defense against his potential incarceration. While likely true (and certainly deplorable on its own), this applies to anyone going through the criminal justice system and Levandowski is no special case. Conditions in prison should hardly be an excuse for house arrest vs incarceration.
Instead, it's about some IP stuff.
My question is, how is he paying his (presumably very expensive) lawyers?
In this case, any (share in) LLCs he may own would be part of the assets, together with shares/cars/cash/etc., subject to be auctioned off with the proceeds being divided among his creditors.
If you do shady business, you have to have plan B.
> Levandowski filed for bankruptcy protection in March, shortly after a court confirmed that he must pay $179 million to Google to end a legal battle over his split from the Alphabet Inc unit.
I see is guilty of a few things, but the size of the fines seems astronomical. Does the scope of his crime justify this punishment?
He was a high level exec at Waymo, who stole the IP which represented the core competency just before he jumped ship to Uber.
I don't know about "consider," he plead guilty to theft of trade secrets and was charged with crimes defined by the Economic Espionage Act.
But I think most engineers don't know that stealing IP from your former employer is a federal crime punishable up to 10 years.
It's kind of like what happened with Aaron Schwartz (where the ethics of what he did might be more debatable than Levandowski). I don't think either of these smart people realized what they were doing could put them in prison.
But for Google and Goldman Sachs which never suffer any real damage in these cases, the feds are their private army capable of raiding and imprisoning anyone who copies some files illegally, even if they suffer no actual harm whatsoever.
There is no question Google should be able to use the law to stop someone from using their IP illegally and be compensated for any damages. But this attempt to make an example out of someone just because they’re powerful is despicable.
The combination of powerful corporations with vendettas and prosecutors out to make their bones is a huge flaw in our system.
Sounds worse than what we have now.
There is some potential long term improvement of forcing legislators to write their laws better at the cost of far greater court load, travesties of justice, and similiar in exchange for lessened corruption. The improvemrnt part rests upon assumptions of outrage over the proper thing. Not the best of track records given dumb knee-jerk laws.
So yeah, almost certainly worse short term but it may be better long term. Not exactly an inspiring cause.
This guy was a grade A jerk too - if he doesn't do time then white collar crime is going to be even more unfairly under-enforced.
With a lot of smaller companies, it's very likely that it would be a nightmare to try and prosecute and the evidence would be a lot thinner. So you are looking at an unequal outcome because the security practices of Google are probably orders of magnitude higher than any small company.
I mean, these kind of white collar crimes are hardly prosecuted at all, I can't even think of a criminal prosecution like this. I have heard of some civil cases similar to this, but very few that result in actual criminal charges. The only criminal cases I can remember, are from state actors getting caught trying to steal from corporations and then leave the country.
- 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board - 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. - supplier lists, manufacturing details and statements of work with highly technical information
> Levandowski admitted to taking a single spreadsheet called “Chauffeur TL Weekly Updates — Q4 2015.” According to court documents, the file contained quarterly goals and weekly metrics and the objectives and key results for Levandowski’s team. It also included a summary of technical challenges the team faced and some that had been overcome.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/19/levando...
TL;DR he stole lidar and plead down to a lesser charge.
Second-top comment: unfairly strict
I see that as a misread of the truth behind the second comment. The comment is in relation to "A startup that has its IP copied illegally would be lucky to not be ignored by the feds."
The first comment references unfair leniency in relation to the person doing the crime.
The second references unjust application only in favor of the powerful.
Those are not the same dimensions and are not comparable.
1. It's inequitable that white collar criminals face lower sentences than blue collar criminals despite the nominal values involved being way higher
2. It's inequitable that people are being threatened with years in prison for non-violent property crimes against mega corporations.
1. There's are large elements of randomness and bias in our legal system which make it incredibly uncertain if someone will go to jail for a crime they commit, and sentences are given at times months to years after a crime is committed. This means long sentences provide only marginally more disincentive than a shorter sentence.
2. It is incredibly expensive to imprison people, so we should aim to keep people jailed for the smallest amount of time necessary to protect society and/or deter crime.
3. It is simply inhumane to put any non-violent person in jail for a quarter century.
4. Corporatism incentivizes this kind of crime and society should address the root of the problem rather than focus on people who respond to the perverse incentives of systems we live in.
White collar crime steal $179MM of assets and get 27 months of home arrest.
Blue collar crime rob a bank to steal $10,000 and spend 10 years in prison.
Most states consider “no priors” in sentencing guidelines.
[1] https://www.wklaw.com/theft-sentencing-punishment/
Theft (i.e. stealing without violence, as opposed to robbery) can still carry penalties of several years of prison.
https://blog.federaldefendersny.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/...
Lol. Those that do actually succeed in robbing a bank get away with far less than $10,000. There will be a dye pack if you grab anything more than what the cashier has in front of them. It is most often less than $1000.
For example, possession of 12 grams of LSD carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years under federal sentencing guidelines.
Reader's note: that's between 50k and 100k doses.
Not that I disagree with your point.
it seems the war on drugs has caused more brain damage than any recreational drug. This is similar to stunts like draining the drizzle from beer cans into one empty can and declaring an open alcoholic beverage was concealed in a vehicle. LEOs can have thier respect back when they stop this sort of nonsense.
You are probably underestimating the magnitude of the effect, though. A single square of blotter paper weighs on the order of 10 mg; it holds a dose on the order of 50-100 micrograms, about 1% of the paper mass.
[edit] To clarify, I mean that the law does not say specifically to weigh only the active ingredients. In fact it's the opposite.
Calling it blue collar is somewhat of a stretch.
Whether I agree with the spirit of the law in that context is somewhat orthogonal.
Full disclosure: many years ago I moved about 33,000 tabs of LSD on to the streets, took me about three years though.
SCOTUS says the medium weight counts. So I'm guessing 12 grams is a lot fewer doses according to the courts?
Uh, that's only if you think they are worth $179M. I might be your competitor, think your software is crap, and worth $0 to me. This is a heavily subjective number.
$10000 in hard cash though is $10000 no matter how you look at it.
I do agree that white vs blue collar crime is an issue but I don't think that's the issue here.
On the other hand though I am dismayed at the fact that this guy is getting more jail time than rapists often get (e.g. Brock Turner). Although it's still a crime, I don't consider intellectual property crime to be that serious in the grand scheme of things. Intellectual property is not even real property to me, and real property is a far cry from human bodies.
If he had stolen the IP, and the acquiring company decided to pay $0 for it and not take it, then your assessment would be correct.
But a company decided that those assets were worth north of $100MM and paid for it.
Bernie Madoff was a white collar criminal that stole real money from clients and is serving life in prison.
Google may have been damaged, but they can still use their software that was stolen.
B: I steal the blueprints to your house. You still have a house, but you paid for an architect and I didn't.
B still sucks, but almost everyone agrees A is much worse. And that's why if you steal $20m from a bank, the sentence is much worse than if you copy software that a bank spent $20m to develop.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2019...
Caught spray-painting a federal building in political protest? (Which costs less than a hundred dollars to clean up.) Prosecutors were seeking ten years for that adventure.
Actual sentencing was probably a bit less than a year, but I likewise doubt Lewandowski will serve all 27 months.
Edit: To those downvoting, do you honestly believe robbing a bank is a victimless crime? Someone has to be on the receiving end of that robbery and it is harmful to that person regardless of your feelings towards banks in general.
The only mention of home confinement in the OP is what the defense is asking for. The prosecution is asking for 27 months of imprisonment.
No exaggeration ? °-°
Maybe the DOJ should be requesting funds from congress to help improve prison safety or even look at upscaling work-release programs - or maybe the executive branch could pardon all those low level drug offenders and the DOJ could finally remove mandatory sentencing rules around possession charges. Maybe in this virus world centralized prisons aren't morally acceptable and we need to look at smaller more integrated facilities for all but the max-security folks.
But it doesn't matter for this dude's case, it's completely irrelevant. He can take on the same risks that society deems appropriate for black kids who had a joint behind their ear.
(edit: As I noted in a response actually yea, it is a huge exaggeration so I don't disagree with the parent's point. I still personally prefer to tear down the BS from the angle I noted above but yea the lawyer's numbers are also totally BS)
If it's not a huge exaggeration, please run me through the numbers. Because p(him dying of covid as a healthy 40 year old) < 0.015
I would love to pay those attorney's fee with few lottery tickets if that's how this guy plays with statistics.
The numbers in that formulary are mostly unknown so I'd be more comfortable attacking the statement from the angle I outlined above but I agree the numbers clearly don't match what the lawyer is implying.
I spent 10 years incarcerated in TDCJ, and I don't appreciate you spreading falsehoods like this. There are a lot of reasons that people go to prison, and a very small number claim to be innocent (and some are, I just don't know which ones). But I never met anyone who was down for just a joint. Maybe if the joint constituted a violation of probation for aggravated robbery or statutory rape or something like that, but never for just a joint.
Most of you who talk like this don't even know the people that you think are so oppressed. It's no surprise that you complain about imaginary problems while being completely ignorant of the real issues.
Considering he's not a physical threat to society, only an intellectual one, I'd much rather he be slapped with a financial punishment large enough to be meaningful.
That's a great point, he should be sent to work in the uranium mines of Kamchatka to earn his keep for those 27 months.
The non-snarky answer is 'because sentencing in this country is a mixture of rehabilitation, punishment, and public safety', with a very heavy emphasis on punishment. (And quite frankly, I could think of more sympathetic persons and sentences to raise your question in defense of.)
Q: Why do we (or should be) putting rapists, thieves, murderers behind bars?
A: Because I'm happy to chip in and pay for their locked-up housing and food to make sure that they're not on the streets hurting people.
But this guy? I don't give a damn about him. He's not a threat to me, my company, or anything I'm involved with, and I shouldn't be paying for his punishment or rehabilitation costs.
If this guy walked past my home at night I wouldn't give a damn. If Brock Turner came anywhere near my home or friends' homes I'd be scared. Which of the two really should be behind bars? Why is this harmless-to-me guy being locked for 27 months at MY expense but Brock Turner getting 6 months?
In which case we've just set up a punishment system where poor people go to jail and rich people don't.
OK, so require community service. That doesn't cost me as a taxpayer, and even benefits me indirectly. Community service is also a far better rehabilitation strategy than locking people up when they aren't a physical threat.
Or delayed financial punishments that are proportional to your earnings in the future.
One could make a good case that this is already the state of the justice system in the United States. The simple act of being able to afford a better attorney alters the outcome of a trial.
If a criminal is violent and needs to isolated from society or needs rehabilitation programs skills training etc to live a moral /legal life then perhaps prison can offer those .
Even with traditional non white collar crimes , like say prostitution or small drug dealers offender are often victims as well , putting them in prison is counter productive.
The punishment philosophy is based on the premise that punishment is an deterrent and severe punishment will make people not break the law. This is outdated view.
Decision making when committing a crime is not driven by fear of imprisonment. People do not always make rational decisions , especially under the influence of a substance . our risk perception and tolerance is not statistically optimal plenty of games and tv shows revolve around this .
Logical reasoning arguments aside , on pure numbers rate of incarceration and convictions, recidivism per capita in the U.S. is by far the highest in developed economies and the difference is very stark compared to say Norway where rehabilitation is the focus, famously prisons are so empty they rent it out to other countries, a mass shooter complains about not having access to latest play station.
I am not even touching on the problems with the slavery , for profit incentives , the dis proportionate racial representation , racial /economic sentencing biases for similar crimes in the U.S.