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

And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL

[Mr D from 63]

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.

Re:And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL

[GrimSavant]

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.

Re:And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL

[Comrade Ogilvy]

The alleged perp claims he is a whistleblower, and that is a plausible though not necessarily to be trusted story. Even if that is sincere, Musk cannot assume there is truth in such assertions. It is likely at this point the Musk has sufficient evidence that lots of data have been sent...somewhere.

Is the intended or actual destination something "innocent" like some investigative journalists? Is the alleged perp getting paid for that? Are there other third parties willing pay? Are there any deals in the works to get a little sugar from shortsellers with timely trades when the news is about to hit the street?

Musk does not know and should not be satisfied by assertions of the alleged perp. The reasonable answer is, in fact, to use the full force of the employee NDA and legal system to get a look at all the personal electronic devices of this person.

I am not going to jump to any to conclusions. But Musk should not either. Lawyering up is a reasonable way to find out the truth here. What should even a non-evil CEO do?

Re:And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL

[fozzy1015]

Tesla's REAL IP has never been about the car, but how to get their manufacturing costs way down. "

Haha! Oh, wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder. Tesla has more employees per car produced then every other manufacturer, even when taking into consideration they own their own service centers and don't depend on a dealer network. Musk wasted billions thinking he was smarter than everyone else by trying to over automate final assembly. Almost a year after the Model 3 went into production, billions have been wasted and the total number of cars built is barely over 30K. Tesla is a farce when it comes to efficient manufacturing.

Re:And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL

[110010001000]

Give it up. Rei and Windborne have a lot invested in Tesla. They will never see any flaws. $10 billion in debt with no way out? No problem! Just add another "production line".

Re: And ppl want Tesla to go to CHina? LOL

[DontBeAMoran]

I'll wait. Make sure to include environmental data and pollution data from the process.

And will you also include the environmental and pollution data about ICE vehicles? You know, offshore platforms, fuel transport and transformation, spills, smog, etc?

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.

Re:If you don't like your job

[Ogive17]

I'm not taking sides however I just ran across this article with a story from the ex-employee. He claims to be a whistle blower and that Tesla has been lying to look better.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/20/technology/tesla-sues-employee/index.html

I'll just wait for the daily Tesla updates here on /.

Re:If you don't like your job

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

The long term gains tax is only on the increase in value from when they were received. He would still be taxed on their value at the time they were granted.

Bye!!

[Ozy311]

Strap him in a Tesla on a Falcon Heavy and launch his ass to Mars!

Re:Tesla

[Rei]

Actually, Musk's only comment about the lawsuit on Twitter was:

There is more, but the actions of a few bad apples will not stop Tesla from reaching its goals. With 40,000 people, the worst 1 in 1000 will have issues. That’s still ~40 people.

Why does Tesla get a pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Why does Tesla get a pass?

[aaarrrgggh]

Fair enough, and Musk has a darn good publicist.

But, from the information available, I am much more likely to believe Tesla than this guy. The one thing that does jump out though is if he was capable of doing what Tesla claims, he was grossly under appreciated, and if he did it in 6-9 months they do not have adequate controls in place.

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?

Re:Why does Tesla get a pass?

[bloodhawk]

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.

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:Can't steal digital data, right Slashdot?

[sverdlichenko]

A bit of difference: Tesla never intended to publish this information, and now is deprived of exclusivity.

wonka

[bugs2squash]

he should throw out all the employees and close the factory until he can re-staff it with oompa-lumpas.

Re:wonka

[elrous0]

Oompa Loompas are hard to find these days. Turns out that LoompaLand species never evolved a natural immunity to polio or most STD's. And those little fuckers are all anti-vaxxers and just WILL NOT wear condoms. So they've taken a pretty hard hit on their numbers. Wonka even had to start begging for H1B's.

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?