Blog Tesla Sues Former Employee for Hacking Trade Secrets

Tesla has filed a lawsuit against a former employee alleging he “unlawfully hacked the company’s confidential and trade secret information and transferred that information to third parties.”

The company is seeking $1 million from the former employee, Martin Tripp, who worked as a process technician.

According to the petition, Tesla says Tripp admitted to writing software to hack the company’s manufacturing operating system and transferring “several gigabytes” of data, including photos and videos, to outside entities. Tesla says Tripp also made false claims to the media about the information he stole.

“Tripp claimed that punctured battery cells had been used in certain Model 3 vehicles even though no punctured cells were ever used in vehicles, batteries or otherwise,” the petition says. “Tripp also vastly exaggerated the true amount and value of ‘scrap’ material that Tesla generated during the manufacturing process, and falsely claimed that Tesla was delayed in bringing new manufacturing equipment online.”

Tesla says Tripp’s actions were retaliation for being assigned a different role at the company.

According to the lawsuit, Tesla has only begun to understand the full scope of Tripp’s illegal activity.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1009484066159144962

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeted Wednesday about the lawsuit. “There is more, but the actions of a few bad apples will not stop Tesla from reaching its goals,” he wrote.

The full petition is available here.

 

[dondy]

[QUOTE="darrelld, post: 2823838, member: 46605"

If I work at a bank and suspect my bank is doing things improperly I don't steal the suspected improper money and give it to the media.

No... But a bank employee in that situation might very well take records (such as emails, internal memos, or financial reports) from the bank and give it to a reporter.

There are very simple and clear definitions of whistle blower. Installing spy software and using account details of your colleagues are not in this list. Mass uploading confidential information Manning style neither.
If you want to report some illegal actions you do it to respective agency. There are actually very specific rules about it.
BTW removing manufacturing lines, and spoiling a shift worthy of equipment is not "illegal", and is neither public information. But it definitely can be counted as financially sensitive information for traders or concurrents.
All auto companies at one or another point of their activities do that. every auto company was killing robot lines a number of times (even Munroe mentioned one such case), Ford just killed a number of manufacturing lines. Bolt line has difficulties during first months of operations.
Idea of installing faulty batteries can come only to some completely clueless journo. It's amazing that this is still stated in their claims.

Why do it this way? Because a reporter will investigate what is going on and will also keep the leaker's identity secret. Plus, once a reporter publishes an article about some sort of corporate shenanigans, other employees see the article and may bring additional information to the reporter. That's how a lot of scandals get exposed.

There was no investigation, reporter reinterpreted data, adding his ideas as a fact, "consulted" "expert" and published yet another hit piece.
I remind that's these are the people who claim that Tesla had 46000k employees.

As far as we know, this guy didn't sabotage Tesla's products, or leak its secret sauce IP to competitors or steal Tesla's money. He seems to have given a reporter production reports, internal emails about waste and damaged batteries, and (perhaps) photos of some batteries and machinery. He seems to have believed this information documented and that Tesla was putting damaged cells into its cars and was making remarkably inefficient use of production inputs. Either of these are newsworthy if true.

Either of such claims have to be verified through third parties.
Installing software of any kind in embedded systems is sabotage, and can be considered as an intention to cause "damage ". That is actually is in the definition of embedded systems. You can thank MS.

Was he violating a valid NDA? Quite probably. Did he open himself up to the possibility of legitimate legal consequences? Yup. Would I have done this in this way? Almost certainly not.

But he looks a lot more like a Leaker than a spy or saboteur. And Musk's breathless attempts to smear him by speculatively mischaracterizing his motives (and implying that this gigafactory employee somehow had something to do with the vent fire in Fremont) doesn't thrill me and plays like a panicked attempt to chill others from ever exposing anything and/or like an attempt to blame imaginary saboteurs/wreckers for Tesla's admitted production problems.

You are required to present a direct quote in Musk letter where he "was implying that this gigafactory employee somehow had something to do with the vent fire in Fremont". If you won't be able to do it, and you won't because he never implied that I will ask moderators to ban you. The insistence with spreading FUD and plain lies is impressive. How much do they pay you?

 

[alcibiades]

How much do they pay you?

How much stock do you own?

 

[darrelld]

All the news media Tesla drama and seekingalpha articles I now treat like a VW EV announcement.

Either ignore of LOL.

 

[lklundin]

And... This....

Former Tesla employee blasted by Elon Musk takes battle to SEC, filing whistleblower complaint

Tripp's lawyer wrt SEC is asking for examples where Tesla has allowed SpaceX to benefit from sharing resources.

I decided to help with one:

Lars Kr. Lundin on Twitter

 

[mongo]

Tripp's lawyer wrt SEC is asking for examples where Tesla has allowed SpaceX to benefit from sharing resources.

I decided to help with one:

Lars Kr. Lundin on Twitter

So they have no case, but they have a premise and are now searching for data to support it?
Fail.
Time for engineer Ralph Wiggins, the rocket building suspension engineer, to drop a dime and add some chum to the water...

 

[mongo]

Oh come on now @adaptabl , if you are going to disagree with the 3 line post, at least put in the effort to refute it.

Tripp's position, more or less: "I was a whistleblower with proof of bad things"
Why then does his lawyer need people to provide evidence of bad things?
Are they claiming that Tesla cannot have helped SpaceX at all? What of the case where SpaceX provided MORE help to Tesla than Tesla did to SpaceX?

Does anyone else recall the use of SpaceX imaging tech when there was an internal (hidden) build issue with the Model 3?

 

[bkp_duke]

Oh come on now @adaptabl , if you are going to disagree with the 3 line post, at least put in the effort to refute it.

Tripp's position, more or less: "I was a whistleblower with proof of bad things"
Why then does his lawyer need people to provide evidence of bad things?
Are they claiming that Tesla cannot have helped SpaceX at all? What of the case where SpaceX provided MORE help to Tesla than Tesla did to SpaceX?

Does anyone else recall the use of SpaceX imaging tech when there was an internal (hidden) build issue with the Model 3?

Given his posts, I suspect adaptabl is a UAW-sponsored troll. Just ignore him, you will be happier and healthier for it.

 

[mongo]

Given his posts, I suspect adaptabl is a UAW-sponsored troll. Just ignore him, you will be happier and healthier for it.

(it was a good excuse to expand my post )

 

[KarenRei]

Tripp has this nasty habit of trying to delete things that are inconvenient to him. Unfortunately, he's forgotten that the internet doesn't really like "deletion". He previously tried to delete his accounts on other sites that showed that - contrary to his assertions - he knows how to code and uses hacking tools, and is a NRA / gun fan. He's since tried to sterilize his twitter account to present a wholesome image.

But...

Funded by shorts with a financial interest in him damaging Tesla, of course:

My favourite part is where he pretends that him answering coding questions from *other people* is just him learning to code (and that he's forgotten everything and no longer knows how to code), and that gun documents were just to trade for guitar tabs. Because you know, that's a totally normal internet trade commodity!

Now he tries to hide all of his previous exchanges. This guy is a joke.