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Tesla Sues Employee Alleged To Have Stolen Gigabytes of Data (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the bad-apples dept.

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."

4 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This sounds like spying/hacking not sabotage. Did the guy actually disrupt any manufacturing or not?

      Musk better get used to this stuff, every other industry has to deal with it.

    2. Re:And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL by GrimSavant · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Tesla's complaint says that he wrote software that hacked Tesla's manufacturing operating system in addition to the data exfiltration. So, maybe that was sabotage? Maybe not?

      We'll have to wait until they provide more evidence as to what happened, though they might not do that immediately if they are still trying to figure out what happened, especially if law enforcement is involved. Tesla will have to put up or shut up in the discovery process of the law suit if they are going to press that, though.

  2. Re:Why does Tesla get a pass? by bloodhawk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    if true it is actually a massive deal and if proven will result in very serious fines or imprisonment for execs for securities fraud, The SEC takes intentionally providing false information to the market very seriously.