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."

Comments

If you don't like your job

[Jahoda]

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.

Re:If you don't like your job

[Rei]

while Musk cleans up drawing millions as CEO.

FYI: Musk has no salary. His only compensation is his stock. And he only gets more stock if the company meets some extremely aggressive benchmarks. Otherwise, he's working for free.

That's not to pity him; he's plenty wealthy as it is. I just wanted to correct your comment. He earns no salary from Tesla.

...and security controls if this guy was able to do this and nobody can figure it out unless he admits to it

Please read the lawsuit. They found evidence that he was doing this and confronted him about it, only getting the confession after showing him the evidence they had of him doing it.

Can't steal digital data, right Slashdot?

[AcidPenguin9873]

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.

Re:Can't steal digital data, right Slashdot?

[Knightman]

I cannot fathom why anyone would mod you up as insightful.

There is a huge difference between copyright infringement and industrial espionage.

Theft of information can deprive someone of something - exclusivity. Theft of a song may deprive a record company or artist of a sale, but not exclusivity.

Re:Why does Tesla get a pass?

[Gravis Zero]

The real fact is that Musk is a flim flam artist

So despite reaching a massive milestone in rocketry with SpaceX, you still call him a flimflam artist? Damn dude, what does someone have to do to convince you that they're legit?

His timelines are overly optimistic but he's always managed to accomplish what he claimed. But hey, facts are annoying when they get in the way of illogical hatred, right?

Not so much when patents are involved

[Uberbah]

There's also a huge similarity, it's been copied not taken. So if you object to the word stolen when it comes to copyright infringement you should also object to the word stolen when it comes to espionage. At least unless any documents, prototypes, backup disks or similar was actually removed from Tesla's possession.

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?