> Uber has a team dedicated to collecting trade secrets from competing companies. Allegedly, the people involved use disappearing-message apps, anonymous servers, and secret computers and phones to communicate without leaving a trail.
When I hear stories like this I think of the developers who likely thought of and implemented the systems behind these criminal acts and I'm once more reminded that software developers, in aggregate, are on a similar level to '90s finance "tricksters" etc. We'll do whatever if the money is there.
One unfortunate side of progress and technological advancement is that it can be unethical, in the hands of people with less ethics.
Think of it this way: 1. Anybody in robotics/ai/ml is helping uav technology used for military purpose. 2. Anybody in financial lending could help fuel financial crisis. 3. Anybody in software could be enabling surveillance technology without even realizing.
Let's not ignore the group dynamic though either. People's moral convictions can be somewhat flexible when it comes to fitting in and blending in with a group, including a company.
Yes it's true that if your personal ethics are strong enough, you'll resist or exit a group whose ethics conflict with your own. It's also true that if the company has good ethics, you won't have to.
Meanwhile the weak-minded as Obi Wan might call them, will go with the flow and behave however the group behaves. If the group is impeccably ethical, they'll act accordingly. And if the group is predatory, they'll act accordingly.
In short, both individual and group ethics have to fail to get an Uber situation. And in business the group ethics and the tone are set from the top down - Travis. This is why people go on about the importance of company culture.
However, they don't have to fail at the same time or in a single step. This type of problem can creep in slowly over years as the "normalization of deviance"[1].
Richard Cook presented[2] a very useful model for how this type of problem creeps into complex system. The pressure from economic and workload concerns never goes away, so unless there is a proactive, explicit counter force, way to push back against that force, the system will inevitably be pushed toward failure. Therefor it's important to stop problems early when they are small. The magnitude of the counter force increases rapidly as behavior becomes increasingly deviant.
Comparing the severity of the crimes, sure, that's very unfair.
Comparing the defenses I don't think is too much. If that is what engineers who did any of this shady stuff are telling themselves, that is. For all I know, they're high-five:ing each other over a drink.
It’s seen as a cowardly defense in that you argue against any personal resonsibility for something you were ordered to do.
In the particular case of the Nuremberg tribunals, no the superior orders defense did not work because the Allies had jointly decided to not allow it. However, during the My Lai massacre of 1968 US soldiers successfully used the defense to reduce their sentences when they were court martialed.
Nurenberg is where they held the trials for Nazis after World War II. Many of them claimed that they were only following orders, which quickly became known as the “Nuremberg defense”.
I honestly don’t know to what degree it worked.
It’s obviously quite clear that it’s seen as a cowards way out; that people should have done the right thing in spite of orders.
It did not worked. And big names were not just following orders anyway. But it was not just covardly way out. The prewar German culture really thought that way. It was heavily militarized state and following orders was valued. In that culture, if you followed orders you should be fine and not following then was something very bad.
Yes, the reason the Allies had jointly agreed not to allow that defense was because they knew the Germans would use it like they did after WWI in Leipzig.
But, the Allies also had to reconcile this with the Yamashita standard; that commanders have to take responsibility for what their subordinates are doing even if they haven't explicitly ordered it to convict other war criminals, most famously Tomoyuki Yamashita for the crimes his soldiers committed in the Philippines.
Which leads to this back and forth tennis game at every ethical discussion of who's really responsible; the boss or the peon? IMHO, convict them both.
Both are really responsible. The idea that there must be single responsible party instead of multiple people responsible for their partial contributions is fallacy.
You can excuse peon when he trully has no other choice and does bare minimum to survive/protect familly/etc. These went above and beyond what was necessary to prove themselves, make their careers or out of conviction.
You can excuse boss when the soldiers disobeyed, he lost control and truly attempted to stop the situation. Not when it is smirk smirk we all know what is expected/tolerated what is going to happen. And these knew what will happen and wanted it happen.
Why do you say no NDAs were signed? Levandowski signed a NDA. Here's a quote from one of Waymo's filings.
> Waymo also requires all employees, contractors, consultants, vendors, and manufacturers to sign confidentiality agreements before any confidential or proprietary trade secret information is disclosed to them.
Edit: I screwed up the original quotation and had one that said he signed a NDA with Uber instead of Waymo. I've replaced it with a similar quote (also from a Waymo filing) saying he signed a NDA with Waymo...
Does that mean someone can't independently come up with the formula for Coke (Pepsi or any knock off) because it's their intellectual property? [Or KFC's 13 spices]
Or is Pepsi (and other knock offs) sufficiently different? Or something else working here.
I'm pretty sure the fundamental difference between trade secrets and a patent is that if someone else comes up with it independently, or if you tell someone what it is, a patent protects you and a trade secret doesn't.
They are probably assuming that you were given the information with the knowledge it was a trade secret even if you didn't sign anything specific about keeping it secret, not that you invented it separately.
No. Inventing the same thing independently does not violate trade secret. Reverse engineering is lawful methods to discover trade secret. Industrial espionage is unlawful.
Unlike registered intellectual property, trade secrets can be kept indefinitely.
IANAL, but for something to be a trade secret, it should be secret, economically useful and there should be some reasonable precautions preventing its disclosure.
* Confers some sort of economic benefit on its holder (where this benefit must derive specifically from its not being publicly known, not just from the value of the information itself);
* Is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.
"""
None of those criteria requires a contract or even an explicit label, but some sort of agreement is certainly easier to defend in court, if the need arises. Likewise, trademarks don't technically need to be registered or even claimed, but they do need to be enforced. If you open source your trade secrets or let stores sell generic "Cheerios", then you have a weak claim if you ever need to bring someone to court.
Gratuitous: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.
there's also of course the possibility that uber violated the CFAA if someone exfiltrated data from waymo, though the distinctions re: access without autorization and access that exceeds authorization are quite nuanced.
if "uber-spy" had authorized access to many secrets, intended all along to steal it and bring it to uber, dumped a ton of data, then left and carried out their plans to give the data to uber, case law says "uber-spy" didn't violate any clauses of the CFAA, whether they signed an NDA or not ("contract based restrictions" are rarely if ever considered unauthorized access per the CFAA). however, there are many gotchas that can hook that data into access in excess of authorization (exfiltrating it on company property, even printed pages for example).
once you have a nexus to get a CFAA violation in, you can start bringing in intent and monetary gain and such and potentially even get into easy to prove strict liability offenses.
given the description of their anonymous server, secret phone team, there's a pretty good chance that stuff alone will open them up to CFAA based prosecution, which could go very badly. who knows though.
if you're interested in this sort of stuff, which may be tangential to uber/waymo (i'm not sure / don't care) , orin kerr is the person to read.
Trade secrets are intellectual property which is ... property. So stealing trade secrets is stealing property which is theft.
You can develop what is the equivalent of a trade secret. That is the risk and you have to make efforts to keep the secret a secret. But if an employee copies your trade secret that’s theft.
No, copyright infringement isn't theft even if it has been characterized as "stealing intellectual property". Intellectual property is a broad term without any real meaning.
Copyrights don't have to be registered to have effect. Patents do. Trademarks can be either. If you don't defend a trademark, you lose it. If you don't defend against copyright or patent infringement, you can just wait. Patents last for 20 years. Copyright lasts for life of the author + 70 years, or 95 years (publication date)/120 years (creation date) for corporations. Registered trademarks are renewed every 10 years; potentially indefinitely (?)
You can't make any assumptions about trade secret law based on other "types" of "intellectual property" without actually reading and knowing the laws around trade secrets.
What do copyright, trademark and patents have to do with trade secrets?
You accuse the op about not knowing anything about trade secrets then you proceed to talk about things that aren't related to trade secrets.
Trade secrets aren't protected by copyright, as something needs to be published, therefore no longer a secret, to be copyrighted. Trademarks, well they just aren't a secret.
Patents are the opposite of a trade secret. With a parent you publish your secret for the guarantee of a monopoly on it for a certain period of time. A trade secret can be kept forever if you keep it a secret.
Trade secrets do have protections, but you have to actively maintain the secret.
That's exactly my point. The term intellectual property groups all of these things together as if the laws surrounding them are in any way similar or related.
Yes, trade secrets are generally things which are patentable which the inventor chooses to keep secret for one reason or another - generally for some sort of competitive advantage.
Publication isn't needed for copyright protection in the modern era, essentially all countries including the United States signed Berne which says you have copyright in any work as soon as it's created, no need to publish, register, file, or whatever.
There is a distinction between wait indefinitely between an individual infringement occurring and suing for that incident versus picking and choosing which infringers to go after. The latter is not an option for trademarks.
Also, that appears to be an equitable defense. If successful, it would prevent an injunction to remedy the infringement but the holder of the rights in question could still pursue monetary damages. Again, I'm not a lawyer so I could be way off base here.
As that page makes clear, it's now a federal offense to misappropriate trade secrets because:
"As a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a party to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual-Property Rights (TRIPS), the United States is obligated to provide trade secret protection. Article 39 paragraph 2 requires member nations to provide a means for protecting information that is secret, commercially valuable because it is secret, and subject to reasonable steps to keep it secret. The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 created federal civil cause of action, strengthening U.S. trade secret protection, with a choice for the parties between localized disputes under state laws or disputes under federal law, heard in federal courts. While state laws differ, there is similarity among the laws because almost all states have adopted some form of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. "
If for some reason you need a deeper explanation (although I'm already getting a bit suspicious as to what legitimate reason you might or might not have), that page links to a helpful Youtube video:
While unfortunate that the USPTO has no way to distribute video information without relying on its industry partners to help get the message out[1], the video clarifies that "The failure to identify and protect trade secrets can result in a loss of competitive advantage, loss of core business technologies, and reduced profitability. In many countries the importance of trade secrets is reflected in laws and regulations that protect against trade secret theft because of the impact it can have on the economic vitality of businesses."
Egad, the specter of "reduced profitability" and the loss of "economic vitality"! Underlying this important message are a series of cartoons subconsciously illustrating the principle that without federal protection of trade secrets, the recipe for the "World's Best Cookie's" would quickly be stolen by foreigners with funny looking facial hair, and then we would no longer have cookies.
Any other questions?
</sarcasm>
B. (the non-sarcastic answer)
Because businesses with lots of money gave some of that money to politicians to create laws allowing them to use the muscle of the federal government to preserve the competitive advantages they already have. Trade secrets are to patents roughly as the DMCA is to copyright: they add a layer of federal felony to what would otherwise be a civil dispute.
[1] Even the interstitial makes me gag: "You are leaving USPTO.gov. We provide this link to an outside website because it has information that may be of interest to users. The USPTO does not necessarily endorse the views or facts presented on this site. The USPTO does not endorse any commercial products that may be advertised or available on this site." They make the video, post it on an external website, and then say that are linking to an external website because it might be of interest to users? And what compelled them to say "does not necessarily endorse"? You really should watch the video, though, as its "smarminess" is almost beyond words.
The wording "does not necessarily endorse" is common language for a generic link that could be going to something do endorse or could be going to something they don't endorse. This means that people who want to add a link to an external resource don't have to stop and get their internal lawyers to decide whether that is an endorsed reference or not.
File a motion asking Judge Alsup to recuse himself (withdraw from the case). A recusal motion may be based on evidence that a judge is biased or lacks impartiality.
Yeh.. the judge has busted us, so he is not impartial because he knows we are guilty...
> Once a judge catches a lawyer in a lie the judge will question everything the lawyer says.
Not a lawyer, but isn't is taken for granted that lawyers (along with everybody else) are lying in courts and that it's the jurors and judge's job to find out who is lying?
No. Lawyers are officers of the court. Especially in civil cases which are just about the balance of evidence, their role is to put their side of the truth in the best light. Not to just make up whatever bullshit they think might win.
> the defense lawyer may not lie to the judge or jury by specifically stating that the defendant did not do something the lawyer knows the defendant did do.
I just don’t get why engineers want to work for Uber.
They have treated their drivers poorly (eg. under paying them and fighting benefits other cab companies have to pay), their riders poorly (eg. not telling them their personal data was stolen), their engineers poorly (eg. giving zero fucks about sexual harassment without the press getting involved), local governments poorly (eg. dodging law enforcement and regulators by making them wait for rides that never come), rival companies poorly (eg. ordering and cancelling rides from Lyft) and their investors poorly for not disclosing any of this shit.
Really, why do you work for them? Are you laughing your asses off when you hear another engineer leaving a company that does bad things because you’re going to make more money and that’s what matters? Or is the problems you’re solving really that interesting you couldn’t care less if someone is using what ypu built to mess with people’s lives in likely illegal ways? Our profession is about solving problems that makes people’s lives better, how can you just be ok with what they’re using what you built for? Don’t you feel any responsibility making the tools they need to do these things? And, if they haven’t done anything illegal and unethical with your system yet, how can you be sure they won’t given their track record?
Where’s your professional integrity is what I’m asking. If think our profession needs a license like stock brokers, realtors, accountants, physicians, attorneys or cab drivers have. Implementinh any of the systems that enabled any those shenanigans Uber has pulled off should be grounds for revoking it because I fear that’s what we need to do to make engineers stop and think ”yeah, they’re giving me boat loads of money and I get a good resume if I would want to work for Google or Facebook but what if I get caught?” because apparently otherwise they would gladly give Uber the tools to screw people over and sleep well at night.
"It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a `DestroyBaghdad` procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a
`DestroyCity' procedure, to which `Baghdad' could be given as a parameter."
Integrity is a rare coin these days, but to be fair, it won't buy you much.
I still think it's worthwhile because...you know, be nice to people. But I'm fortunate to be in a position where I can be a sucker like that without serious consequences. I know that having integrity in the current market hurts me a bit, but I can afford it.
Maybe not everyone has that sort of option - maybe Uber's extra $20k keeps their mortgage above water or something. But I dunno, maybe that's also just being charitable. I'm getting pretty disillusioned these days.
OJ Simpson's prosecutor posted a similar idea on Reddit:(1)
>Most of the prosecutors I know are good people who are committed to protecting us from those who would prey on us. But these days, I sometimes run into prosecutors who just don't seem to have the character we used to have 20-30 years ago. People need to understand that prosecutors are lawyers, and like my grandmama once told me, a law degree is a license to lie.
Personally I am sad to think we're currently in a slide away from constitutional rights and individual liberty, and how this relates to our cultural ideas about integrity.
Unfortunately, it's nobody's actual job to worry about this.
Integrity is always an option, but it's definitely not always an easy option. I'm glad you're in a place where you don't have to test it and hope that I also won't find myself in a difficult place where it will have to be tested, but I do know that it's the only coin that is really worth anything.
Yeah, exactly. It's also much easier when you have a hierarchy that communicates and responds reasonably to criticism or questions.
Not everyone does, though. I feel like insurance companies should really start demanding independent 'inspector general' sort of offices to be retained by companies above a certain value. At some point, there just gets to be too much money at stake to trust people to act properly.
Some companies actually are starting to invest in that sort of thing, mostly because of all of the sexual harassment news flying around. I think it's a promising idea, to give employees a point of contact outside the company's usual chain of command, and it could help with all sorts of toxic power imbalances. I can also see how it could maybe cause issues, but I'm all for trying new things to see how they work.
> Integrity is always an option, but it's definitely not always an easy option.
Here's some anecdata:
I've been that shitbag without integrity, it's not actually any easier. (I actually think it's much harder.) Whatever energy you think you're saving by just going along with it, whatever profit you think you're getting out of it -- you're spending way more than that on maintaining the status quo.
I think a lot of the materialism and obsession with things like nice houses stems from the fact that when we step out of the shower and look in the mirror -- when we make eye contact with ourselves for that moment -- we're forced to admit that we just don't like the person we see. So we make the decorations around that moment nicer, obsessively, as if that will somehow change the encounter. This feeds into a cycle of needing every bigger fixes at ever greater expense to yourself, digging you deeper and deeper into dependence on it.
Whatever amount I'm "losing" in pay is worth it to change that reaction when I see myself -- to make the only required relationship in my life healthy and vibrant instead of toxic.
That said, I actually make more by being a trustworthy human that cares about the consequences of what he does, because it turns out that there's a) a need for that, since selfish behavior rapidly turns destructive in an organization and b) apparently a shortage of people willing to take the "easy" path.
So they tell themselves they have a right to a well paying job and that their right to a good livelihood is more important than the rights of the people Uber screws over?
If I were to present to you individual cases of people being knowingly screwed over by Uber, is your argument then that if millions of other people benefit it's all worth it?
Lets say many people are angry that Uber kept it hidden that their personal information was hacked and feel knowingly screwed over, to start with. Are you going to let Uber off the hook because a nice ride at a nice price is more than enough compensation?
There are tons of 'individuals' who have been screwed over by most large organizations. Does that make them all evil.
Many organizations have kept hacks secret. We also don't know about hacks which have not yet been made public or won't be. We don't know what was compromised - moreover - this is something that probably a very, very small team in Uber will contend with - it's not necessarily systematic.
Google steals my personal information all day long and sells it to the highest bidder - I'd much rather privacy from Google than anything from Uber.
I can ride another cab any time, Google is not easy to change away from.
Your defense basically boils down to "what about other companies?" or comparing the bad things Uber does to all the value it delivers. Maybe I'm missing something?
I can tolerate a company doing something bad, taking responsibility and paying its dues. I cannot tolerate a company where illegal and unethical activities are going on all the time yet management covers their own asses (Kalanick left, the board didn't formally fire him). If Kalanick had resigned when that self driving car, driving around without proper permits, ran that red light for example it would be easier to not get the feeling this is systemic.
This position is based on perception, hype, PR and spurious press reports.
Uber is generally not any worse than most other organizations - and so, yes, we all have to live with this ambiguity.
+ Hacks happen all the time. The vast majority are not reported.
+ All companies engage in aggressive capture of others IP. Google and FB are both notorious for working with companies long enough to find out their 'secret sauce' and then copying them. Uber's mistake - in your eyes - was naming the group dedicated to it, whilst at other companies, it's common operating procedure.
The fundamental difference between Google, FB and Uber mostly boils down to PR - that - and the fact that Uber has to actually employ large quantities of people in irregular situations.
I don't like Uber - but I feel safer with them than Google - who knows everything about me and will do as they please with that information.
"and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion. "
Duke's enemies, Uber competitors - at least in the latter case no people got killed nor were intended to be killed, looks like we're making progress. The technology has, primarily, always served the interests of the "Dukes", i.e. of the ones who pay. It probably has all the chances for the second oldest profession title.
I personally do not think weapons make people’s lives better, but if you would have the opinion that an armed defense force is a public good that’s a separate discussion.
What you have to ask yourself is ”Is this illegal? Could I tell my grandchildren 30 years later what I did as an engineer and feel proud?”
Don’t think I’m completely excluding the people who pay from all responsibility, however.
do you mean the force managed by Department of Peace which buys only defensive bullets, bombs, missiles, etc. built by engineers possessing true integrity who would never build offensive bullets, bombs, missiles? Or do you think Leonardo was going to build only "defensive" cannons and bombs for the "saint" Duke?
And weapons not necessarily should explode. Trade, political and economic actions can do a lot of damage and cause death and suffering. And now days one can do a lot of damage by actions in cyberspace.
Working for an arms contractor is something I would never do because I don't want to make things that kill people, however if someone else thinks that the military is a necessary institution for public safety those engineers can also proudly tell their grandchildren 30 years from now what they did and why it was ethically justified to do so without resorting to "I had a mortgage".
When you just shrug and say "tragedy of the commons, I suppose" knowingly screwing people over in ways you wouldn't want to be treated yourself, then laugh all the way to the bank you're a part of the problem and the reason why some people feel the need of a defense force in the first place.
How many layers of indirection do need the money to pass through before you would feel ethical? That is, and using your example of "arms contractors" as an example an unethical business, would you feel comfortable working for a company who has arms contractors as customers? Or a company who has customers who have arms contractors for customers?
I ask this seriously. I personally often feel that there is no way to be a part of the modern economy without being complicit in an awful lot of evil. An issue that frequently bothers me is whether it's moral to make money by catering to the desires of those who made their money doing things that I would personally consider immoral. Then what about those who made their money doing business with those you find immoral?
Is there any solution other than abandoning morality or avoiding gainful employment? Are there useful references to read about these issues?
I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that question. I feel like two layers of inderiction is too little personally (i.e I don’t want to make things murderers use even though I’m technically not selling stuff to murderers or pull the trigger myself) but other people have other answers.
But I, and the law, is of the opinion that organizations are responsible entities by themselves. When you join an organization and knowingly help facilitate its illegal activities it’s 0 indirections.
The solution is to avoid organizations doing this shit by acting like any rational actor is expected to do in the economy; researching the alternatives. If you don’t like what you find, I could point you to the nearest office to apply for a business permit.
I care about the 0.1& too. I don't believe in knowingly messing with people for the benefit of everyone else.
And if the last part of your argument is "why care about anything less than the worst things in the world?" I don't agree with that thinking, plain and simple. A company that big and influential being that completely disrespectful towards regulators, tax payers, riders, female engineers, drivers, competitors and investors is something we need to seriously mind.
"A company that big and influential being that completely disrespectful towards regulators, tax payers, riders, female engineers, drivers, competitors and investors is something we need to seriously mind."
This is both wrong and naive.
The only game that Uber has not played well lately is one of PR.
Uber - for all it's issues - treats female staffers basically the same as most other companies. The average person working at Uber, Google, Exxon or Maytag for that matter is not going to see some radical difference.
Uber aggressively pursues the IP of other companies the same way as any other company. Google will interview individuals, and make 'fake BD deals' with companies expressly for the purpose of gleaning (i.e. stealing) IP - this is common. It doesn't make it right - but it would be naive to indicate that this is something Uber is doing.
+ Uber is screwing over riders? How exactly? The reality is that millions of happy, recurring users flail this argument as emotional hyperbole. Uber is extremely well liked by it's users. "Oh this evil company screws over it's customers" - just as every day considerably more people opt to use it over alternatives ... I mean really.
+ Drivers - for the most part, they've been as good as any company. They change policies, which is normal, it's just that their policy disputes are public, whereas you don't see it with other groups.
Uber is mostly similar to any other high tech organization but they have access to considerably less information that entities such as Google and Facebook.
If true, then this is absolutely unreal.
Add it to the growing list of dodgy Uber tactics:
Ride-hailing company (Uber) hit by revelations it used custom-built tool to deceive law enforcement, while latest departure of senior staffer deepens troubles https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secr...
Uber employees have ordered and canceled more than 5,000 rides from rival Lyft since last October, according to new data provided by Lyft. http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-re...
CNNMoney spoke to three Uber drivers who said they received a text message that said they were "forbidden" from driving with another company. http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/04/technology/uber-lyft/?iid=EL
Uber admitted on Tuesday that it underpaid its New York City-based drivers by millions of dollars over the past two and a half years https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/23/15681422/uber-underpaid-n...
Uber will stop its controversial practice of tracking users for up to five minutes after a trip has ended, as it attempts to turn around its mired public image. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/29/uber-u-tu...
Uber’s Hell program used fake passenger accounts to track the location and status of Lyft drivers. http://www.newsweek.com/uber-used-hell-program-track-lyft-dr...