[jimmywanger]

Google does not allow source code on non-Google managed devices, or even laptops that are Google managed. You have to be constantly behind Google's firewall to access and develop code, which makes working from home rather difficult.

Waymo claims (and Uber has not refuted) that "he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints." [0]

That sort of shoots a hole in the "downloaded to work on at home argument", much like if you go into a bank with a gun, a stocking over your head, and a friend waiting outside in a running car would tend to make your story about just wanting to make a withdrawal pretty suspect.

[0] https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-...

[pfarnsworth]

EDIT: One thing I got wrong is that it was 6 weeks, not 6 months in my original post.

He connected an external drive to the laptop. That's all they know. They didn't say he copied the files onto the external drive. If he did copy them onto the external drive, they would have said this. So now we have to parse their statements.

Do they know he copied those files onto the external drive? No. Did he have a movie on there that he viewed? They don't know, apparently.

And he wiped and reformatted his laptop. When did he do this? Did he do this immediately? Or did he do it weeks later? They didn't specify this either. I would love more information about this, if he did this all in one night. If they explicitly say he downloaded a repo, he copied it to an external usb drive, and then wiped his laptop all in the course of an hour, that's certainly suspicious. But that's not what they said.

Based on what they said, he could have downloaded the repo, worked on it for many days or weeks, attached a usb drive at any point, and wiped the laptop clean before he handed the laptop back to them 6 weeks later. I would love for them to clarify this, because right now they are the purveyors of this information.

[jimmywanger]

There were two points, both addressing "working on files from home"

The general point, disregarding the way in which he downloaded the files and then wiped his computer, is that Google generally has a policy where you're just not allowed to have local copies of source files to work on a remote machine.

That's something that you'd have to go through quite a bit of effort to circumvent, as the only machines that are allowed to access repos are physically wired to the network.

If you're working remotely, you're accessing a desktop computer through SSH or RDP and working that way. The files (except as caches and network traffic) never really live on your remote machine.

Of course, this only applies to source code and other such files. If you're somebody working on a powerpoint or a design document, you're allowed to download that. And maybe there's a huge exception for Google X (although I doubt that).

But working on source files at home while disconnected to a Google server is not common, encouraged, and by itself, might be a fireable offense and is definitely a violation of IT policies.