A report that has long been fought over by lawyers at Waymo and Uber has been made public. Levandowski's lawyers fought to keep the Stroz Friedberg "due diligence" report on Uber acquiring his startup secret, but it was ultimately acquired by Waymo attorneys, who filed it as an exhibit late yesterday.

Acquiring the report could be a turning point in the Waymo v. Uber lawsuit, which was filed in February. Waymo accused the head of Uber's self-driving car project, an ex-Googler named Anthony Levandowski, of stealing 14,000 files just before he left Google. Levandowski, who is not a defendant in the lawsuit, has pleaded the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the allegations. Uber doesn't deny that the downloads took place but says none of the alleged trade secrets ever made it to its servers.

A jury trial is scheduled to begin on October 10, although Waymo has asked for a delay, due to the overwhelming amount of information it has acquired in recent discovery.

Things kept

Levandowski "seemed surprised at the amount of Google-related information on his laptop," Stroz reported. He had downloaded 50,000 Google work e-mails in 2014 and then accessed them as late as January 2016.

"It is difficult to believe that Levandowski was not, prior to his interview, fully aware of the extent of the data that he had retained," the report notes.

The report contains a list of data pulled off Levandowski's devices and Web-based repositories, including a patent application for LIDAR and technical drawings and diagrams, such as "a figure depicting radar technology... a LIDAR-related diagram, and Google Confidential PBR 0.7 optical cavity drawing." He also had source code "snippets" and e-mails from his Google account discussing Chauffeur-related issues.

Levandowski's devices had "pictures and videos related to the assembly of the Google self-driving car, the components of the car, and whiteboard snapshots of notes and diagrams." That included GoPro video of a self-driving car test, figures depicting radar technology, and a flowchart of software architecture at Google's Chauffeur division.

In March 2016, while gathering his devices together for Stroz Friedberg, Levandowski "discovered that he possessed Google proprietary information on five disks in his Drobo 5D [storage device]... includ[ing] source code, design files, laser files, engineering documents, and software related to Google self-driving cars."

Levandowski said he destroyed the disks at Shred Works, a commercial shredding facility. His Drobo 5D was clean of files when it was given to Stroz Friedberg.

Things destroyed

The Stroz report also carefully notes what files and devices Levandowski deleted. By March 2016, Levandowski was aware that Stroz would be taking steps to preserve and identify any Google material on his devices. "At that point, the better course would have been to let that process control," Stroz writes.

Yet at that same time, Levandowski was deleting files. "I'm gonna go get your stuff destroyed this afternoon btw," Rhian Morgan, head of HR for Ottomotto, told Levandowski on February 26, 2016. "ill [sic] send you a bill and a pic/video." A few days later she said, "i've [sic] been paying for shredding on my card, since it's not technically a business expense for OM [Ottomotto]. LMK if I should expense you or send you a bill instead :)"

At a March 11 meeting, Levandowski told Uber that he had the Google disks. As Levandowski relayed it to Stroz, Uber CEO Kalanick "wanted nothing to do with the disks and told Levandowski to 'do what he needed to do.'" At that point, he took the disks to Shred Works in Oakland, where he said he watched the disks get shredded. He said he paid cash and got no receipt.

Levandowski was deleting other things, too. On March 1 he texted an unknown recipient, "Ok good reminder to delete the iMessages every night." On March 13, 2016, he texted an unknown recipient, saying, "We're ready for junk King," the name of another local disposal company.

Stroz Friedberg visited Shred Works to confirm Levandowski's visit. No one there recognized a picture of Levandowski. A manager couldn't find any receipt from March 2016 with Levandowski's name on it, including any receipt from March 11, the day he said he went to Shred Works. The manager did find a receipt from March 14, 2016 that indicated five disks were destroyed and paid for in cash. The signature on that receipt was illegible.

Building the team

The report details how Levandowski began to have meetings with Uber executives, including ex-CEO Travis Kalanick, in June 2015—several months before he quit working at Google. Levandowski straight up asked another Uber exec, Brian McClendon, how much Uber would be willing to pay for the Google self-driving car team, which was nicknamed Chauffeur. Between September and December of 2015, the conversations became explicit about Uber buying Levandowski's startup.

As his time at Google neared an end, Levandowski met with more than 20 Google employees about joining his startup, talking with them on the Google campus or at coffee shops, restaurants, and homes. Two larger meetings took place at Levandowski's home in December 2015 and January 2016. At the second meeting, just prior to Levandowski's resignation on January 26, 2016, about 10 attendees were Google employees. The group "discussed an exit strategy from Google and actively encouraged the employees to leave Google."

Recruitment continued after Levandowski left. "Its going amazing, just onboarded another 5 peeps today, 4 from former team," he wrote to ex-Uber CEO Kalanick on February 22, 2016. "Looks like we're signing in a couple hours."

"Just reading text now... Pumped," responded Kalanick.

The report also performed "due diligence" on four other Uber employees. For one of those employees, Lior Ron, Stroz found multiple Internet searches from early 2016 regarding data destruction, including searches on "how to secretly delete mac files," "secure delete of trash on mac," and "how to permanently delete google drive files from my computer."

Ron left Google on January 13, 2016, shortly before Levandowski. In March, Levandowski advised Ron via chat message, "Make sure you delete all the messages tonight on both your PC and iPhone." Ron's interview with Stroz Friedberg took place later that month.

Timing is everything

Both Waymo and Uber have put out statements regarding the newest filings. A Waymo spokesperson said via e-mail:

The Stroz Report unequivocally shows that, before it acquired his company, Uber knew Anthony Levandowski had a massive trove of confidential Waymo source code, design files, technical plans and other materials after leaving Google; that he stole information deliberately, and repeatedly accessed it after leaving Waymo; and that he tried to destroy the evidence of what he had done. In addition, Mr. Levandowski used his smartphone to take thousands of covert photographs of computer screens displaying Google confidential files. Knowing all of this, Uber paid $680 million for Mr. Levandowski’s company, protected him from legal action, and installed him as the head of their self-driving vehicle program. This report raises significant questions and justifies careful review.

An Uber spokesperson told Ars:

Before Uber acquired Otto, we hired an independent forensics firm to conduct due diligence because we wanted to prevent any Google IP from coming to Uber. Their report, which we are pleased is finally public, helps explain why—even after 60 hours of inspection of our facilities, source code, documents and computers—no Google material has been found at Uber. Waymo is now attempting to distract from that hard fact, even attempting to hide its core trade secrets case from the public and the press by closing the courtroom. In the end, the jury will see that Google's trade secrets are not and never were at Uber.

Waymo has asked to delay the trial, and yesterday the company said that not only does it think an October date won't work, but a December trial will be too soon, as well. Uber just located another 15,000 Levandowski e-mails in discovery on September 28. In court documents, the company's lawyers and its technology vendors say that e-mail didn't properly migrate from Levandowski's "a@ot.to" and "a@ottomotto.com" addresses to his new Uber address.

"The volume of these materials produced at the last minute by Defendants require time to review, particularly given new information that has only come to light in the Stroz Report," a Waymo spokesperson told Ars via e-mail.

US District Judge Alsup will hear Waymo's motion to delay the trial today. He'll also consider a brief (PDF) filed by several media organizations, asking to keep the court as open as possible.

"No closure is proper unless and until Waymo demonstrates a substantial probability of harm to a compelling interest," states the brief, on behalf of 11 media organizations. At present, Waymo's "recitation of speculative and largely generic harms falls woefully short of satisfying its burden."