New letter: Top Uber officials engaged in illegal wiretapping, shady spycraft

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The highly-anticipated demand letter written on behalf of a former Uber employee, which has become central to the unfolding drama that is the Waymo v. Uber trade secrets lawsuit, was publicly released on Friday afternoon.

As previewed in earlier court hearings, the “Jacobs Letter” outlines in detailed terms the questionable and possibly illegal behavior that former Uber security official Richard Jacobs and his former colleagues engaged in during his 11-month tenure at the company.

This letter, which was only recently shared with lawyers involved in the lawsuit and the judge overseeing the case, ultimately led to federal prosecutors opening a criminal investigation into Uber, which is still ongoing.

Waymo v. Uber began back in February, when Waymo sued Uber and accused one of its own former employees of stealing 14,000 files shortly before he left Waymo. The former employee, Anthony Levandowski, went on to found a company that was quickly acquired by Uber. Levandowski refused to comply with his employer’s demands during the course of this case and has since been fired. Uber has denied that it benefited in any way from Levandowski’s actions.

The outcome of the case will likely determine which company will end up ahead in the cutthroat and rapidly-growing autonomous vehicle sector.

Among other explosive claims, the Jacobs Letter specifically says that two named high-level Uber employees, including Craig Clark, a since-fired Uber lawyer and Mat Henley, who still works at Uber and recently testified in court, orchestrated this scheme.

The men “led Uber’s efforts to evade current and future discovery requests, court orders, and government investigations in violation of state and federal law as well as ethical rules governing the legal profession. Clark devised training and provided advice intended to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation of several ongoing lawsuits against Uber and in relation to or contemplation of further matters within the jurisdiction of the United States.”

The letter also contains detailed allegations of abuse of the attorney-client privilege. At one point Clark allegedly ordered that “double secret A/C priv” (short for “double-secret attorney-client privilege”) be written on a document as a way to shield it from being disclosed in ongoing or future lawsuits.

This, as many lawyers on Twitter noted, is not a real legal term.

In addition, the Jacobs letter describes what it calls “illegal wiretapping” of a phone call discussing an internal report of sexual harassment. Earlier this year, Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer, came forward with her experience of such abuse, which ultimately lead to the ouster of then-CEO Travis Kalanick.

Another section of the letter describes the use of a “new technical capability” by “CIA-trained case officers” that Uber contracted with. In 2016, these people allegedly “collected mobile-phone metadata either directly through signal-intercept equipment, hacked mobile devices, or through the mobile network itself. The information eventually shared with Jacobs and others included call logs, with time and date of communications, communicants’ phone numbers, call durations, and the identification of the mobile phone subscribers. The subsequent link-analysis of this metadata occurred on U.S. soil.”

The 37-page demand letter, which was filed by a Minnesota attorney on Jacobs’ behalf, was essentially a warning that Jacobs may sue the company.

Rather than go to court over his claims, Uber ended up paying Jacobs $4.5 million, and his lawyer, Clayton Halunen, $3 million.

In a recent court hearing, Angela Padilla, Uber’s deputy general counsel, testified that this letter was “extortionate,” but noted that going to court would have cost the company far more. (Halunen has not responded to Ars’ request for comment.)

In another court filing submitted on Friday, outside court-appointed advisor Special Master John Cooper determined that this Jacobs Letter should have been made available to Waymo much earlier as part of the civil discovery process.

The revelation of the letter’s existence, which only became known late last month, resulted in the trial being postponed a second time.

The trial is now scheduled for early February 2018 in San Francisco, just blocks from Uber headquarters at 1455 Market St.

UPDATE 11:27pm ET: Late Friday evening Ars received an unsolicited e-mail from David Satterfield, a media strategist, which read: “Saw your story. Let me know if you have questions.” He provided a number of statements pertaining to six current and former Uber employees referenced by name in the Jacobs Letter.

“Ric Jacobs’ letter is nothing more than character assassination for cash,” Matthew Umhofer, an attorney who represents four current Uber employees mentioned specifically in the letter, wrote in a statement. Those men are Mat Henley, head of global threat operations at Uber ; Nick Gicinto, head of strategic services group at Uber; Jake Nocon, solutions team manager at Uber; and Ed Russo, senior risk and threat analyst at Uber.

 “And Jacobs is nothing more than a failed Uber employee who underperformed and got demoted, and then retaliated against his supervisors and colleagues with a letter filled with distortions designed to line his own pockets,” Umhofer continued. “Jacobs took the good work my clients did and twisted it into something it wasn’t.”

There was also a statement from Joe Sullivan, the former chief security officer at Uber, who was recently fired in the wake of the recently-disclosed data breach that affected 57 million people.

“From where I sat, my team acted ethically, with integrity, and in the best interests of our drivers and riders,” Sullivan said in the statement.

Satterfield also sent a statement from Mark Howitson, a lawyer for Craig Clark, which said that Clark “acted appropriately at all times.” Howitson formerly served as deputy general counsel at Facebook.

Finally, Satterfield also told Ars that none of the six men that he provided statements for would be answering questions at this time. He also clarified that he is not a spokesman for them, however, and was simply “assisting Joe Sullivan and his legal team. They asked me to coordinate with these other folks.”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1233769