Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Sues Employee Alleged To Have Stolen Gigabytes of Data (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, Tesla sued a former employee who worked in its Gigafactory in Nevada, accusing him of stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit appears to be what CEO Elon Musk was referring to recently when he said that production of the Model 3 had been sabotaged. Musk said that there are "more" alleged saboteurs.
According to the civil complaint that was filed in federal court in Nevada, Tesla accused Martin Tripp, who began working in Sparks as a "process technician" in October 2017, of exporting company data: "Tesla has only begun to understand the full scope of Tripp's illegal activity, but he has thus far admitted to writing software that hacked Tesla's manufacturing operating system ("MOS") and to transferring several gigabytes of Tesla data to outside entities. This includes dozens of confidential photographs and a video of Tesla's manufacturing systems."
According to the civil complaint that was filed in federal court in Nevada, Tesla accused Martin Tripp, who began working in Sparks as a "process technician" in October 2017, of exporting company data: "Tesla has only begun to understand the full scope of Tripp's illegal activity, but he has thus far admitted to writing software that hacked Tesla's manufacturing operating system ("MOS") and to transferring several gigabytes of Tesla data to outside entities. This includes dozens of confidential photographs and a video of Tesla's manufacturing systems."
This will be common amongst the employees there. Of course, I would like to know who this data went to. Tesla's REAL IP has never been about the car, but how to get their manufacturing costs way down.
And considering that only Ford has grown this fast, they have been amazing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Then quit.
It never ceases to amaze me the gross sense of entitlement that certain types of people have. Tesla gave this dude a job, which he felt was beneath him. He performed that job poorly, and Tesla continued to employ him. The way he thanked Tesla was to commit corporate espionage, access systems which were not his property, make libelous statements, and steal. Now he will never be employed in his chosen field in any meaningful role, ever again. Destitute from civil financial judgement against him And that is after he gets out of prison for the criminal charges which will surely be forthcoming due to his unauthorized access of Tesla systems.
Putin ordered the sleeper cells to meddle with Tesla. I heard that on TV news.
https://www.rt.com/usa/429956-caged-boy-immigration-debunk/
why anybody would want to steal this kind of information. It's almost as if they don't want Tesla to succeed.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Come on, Slashdot... a gigabyte of data isn't an impressive amount anymore. That's like what... 45 minutes of compressed 4K video? A large CAD drawing? Maybe a few hundred large JPEG's?
Wake me up with someone steals a few Petabytes worth of data.
Note to self. Elon Musk is severely paranoid and never work for him.
Another butthurt snowflake that is too stupid to realize Trump has nothing to do with this story.
I've heard so many retarded comments about the president, I'll vote for him if he runs again.
Reverse thinking making a GOP supporter out of a lifelong DEM.
Good job dipshit!
Another case of TDS I see.
Strap him in a Tesla on a Falcon Heavy and launch his ass to Mars!
I wonder if Tesla insisted on the employee signing an arbitration agreement. If so, this case might not go the way Musk thinks.
Comes up every time media copyright infringement is in the news. This guy didn't deprive Tesla of anything, so he clearly didn't steal anything, right? Information wants to be free? Let's hear all the usual tropes.
There's just too fucking much motivation in having a company not do well. It's a perverse motivation on a massive scale. Even if 99.99% of shorters are ethical people, there is still going to be that 0.01% of shorts that aren't.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Why is everyone posting on here Tesla's side of the story?
The employee is speaking out now, claiming his actions were part of a whistle-blowing effort. If this was GM or Ford, the Slashdot community would trust the whiste-blower; why are people here trusting the corporation instead?
http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/20/technology/tesla-sues-employee/index.html
Hot diggetty dang, I'll vote for him the time after that!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We have now reached peak Tesla fanboi.
GBs of data?! Someone stole one raw image file? News articles always like to use the data quantities to suggest a large number of discrete items. Someone stole 10^892457 atoms of matter from the store!!!!11!1
So when is it that "employee alleged to have stolen" is changed to "employee who has admitted stealing." The Cambridge English dictionary defines allege as: - to say that someone has done something illegal or wrong without giving proof: To Allege is to imply doubt. There is no doubt. Mr. Tripp has admitted to "writing software that hacked Tesla’s manufacturing operating system ("MOS") and to transferring several gigabytes of Tesla data to outside entities. This includes dozens of confidential photographs and a video of Tesla’s manufacturing systems." It is alleged that: - beyond the misconduct to which Tripp admitted - he also wrote computer code to periodically export Tesla’s data off its network and into the hands of third parties. His hacking software was operating on three separate computer systems of other individuals at Tesla so that the data would be exported even after he left the company and so that those individuals would be falsely implicated as guilty parties. It is my opinion, BeauHd, after reading many, but not all of your posts on this site pertaining to Tesal/Elon Musk, is that you never miss an opportunity to cast aspersions on Mr. Musk, Tesla, or SpaceX. - So what is it. Is using "alleged", which is factually incorrect, just an oversight on your part, in the face of the admissions by Mr. Tripp, or do you think there are real reasons to doubt that Mr. Tripp has admitted anything . if so, what are your doubts based on. Do you believe Mr. Musk is hatching a plot to divert attention from the model 3 production problems widely reported and speculated on by "the usual list" of what passes for journalists these days. And how bout those shadowy others, who received the data that Mr. Tripp has admitted he stole from Tesla.. No reason to speculate on that, when every day there's a new story of a Tesla car catching fire or crashing while on auto-whatever, or a fire on the production line or quality control problems. I'm not saying none of these things have happened. However, after years of producing some 300,000 electric cars, why now, when Tesla is on the verge of success in the - Best Made in America Tradition - are these things all over the news. Oh yeah. That's right. Anyone who knows anything about markets and finance (and who received 16 Trillion dollars from the American people in 2008, because of their great market wisdom) - knows. You can't make anything in America any more. Electric cars. File that away with airplanes and cold fusion and other wild speculation by impractical dreamers. Why if there were anything like mass produced electric cars, what would happen to all those internal combustion engine factories at those places where they know how to make things that are really important, like - spreadsheets and 10k reports. Could there be some connection to the production problems at Tesla and those who have received - who knows what - from - who knows how many people inside Tesla - who were paid to work at Tesla, but not for the work, such as it may have been, they did while employed there. That's the real story. A story worth speculating on, for what it would reveal about those who are paid to sprinkle radioactive free market pixie dust on any signs of real competition developing.
This is the submitter you may remember as "I don't believe in imaginary property" from a time when Slashdot let you fill in any name you wished and before there was a concerted effort to blacklist certain submitters by voting them into binspam shortly after their posts show in the firehose.
I agree that the IP laws are bogus. And that "stealing" is the wrong word in general. That said, Tesla has alleged that this guy committed sabotage and that he may be working with others who are manipulating the stock price--stealing actual money from shareholders.
There's a bit more than "imaginary property is bad" going on here. It is bad, but that's only half the story. I can give a pass to people merely using the system--even the GPL does this to effect its ends--more so than those abusing it. Continuing to own property you sold to others is the real problem, because they end up owning us and attacking our freedom to compute. Breaking into someone else's computer to steal their files is more like why we hate DRM than why we had imaginary property, though, especially when the complaint alleges that he tried to pin the blame for that on others.
Since even I have more nuance than this, I think the real problem is that you don't understand why people object to imaginary property.
he should throw out all the employees and close the factory until he can re-staff it with oompa-lumpas.
Nullius in verba
There's also the difference between those two and a trade secret as well.
Scenario A: Joe Blow makes a high-quality rip of Black Panther a week before it was released on blue ray and torrents it. Out of the ten thousand people that download it, 800 would have otherwise bought the disk. 800 x $25 = Disney is out $20,000 on a movie approaching $1.4 billion at the box office.
Scenario B: Joe Blow is a research assistant at Merck, and realizes his team is on the verge of a breakthrough on a cancer drug. Rather than get a pat on the back from his boss, he takes his findings to try and sell to his buddy who's an executive at Pfizer. If the corporate espionage is successful and Pfizer gets the patent first, Merck is out a hundred million in profits.
Still think corporate espionage is "hugely similar" to copyright infringement?
anyone with differing political views is a traitor and should go to prison....... but TRUMP is the nazi.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Colluding with Russia isn't a political view