Uber accused of espionage, hacking and bribery in bombshell letter

By Heather Kelly, CNN

Dec. 16, 2017

Uber spied on and bribed foreign officials, infiltrated private chat groups, stole trade secrets, and abused secret messaging apps and attorney-client privilege to obstruct government investigations, according to a former employee.

Those are just some of the allegations laid out in a 37-page letter written by a lawyer for the former Uber security analyst, Richard Jacobs, on May 5, 2017. A partially redacted version of the letter was made public in a court filing on Friday afternoon as part of an ongoing lawsuit.

Uber is being sued by Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car unit that was formerly part of Google, for allegedly stealing trade secrets.

Waymo claims in their suit that a former employee downloaded confidential files from servers, just before going to work for Uber as part of the unit developing its own autonomous vehicle.

The ride-hailing company on Friday said it was aware of the allegations made in the letter.

"While we haven't substantiated all the claims in this letter-and, importantly, any related to Waymo-our new leadership has made clear that going forward we will compete honestly and fairly, on the strength of our ideas and technology," an Uber spokesperson said in a statement.

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