The US has charged a former Apple employee with stealing ‘the entire source code’ of Apple’s self-driving car technology. He would then have passed that information on to a Chinese start-up.
The engineer would have accepted a job in 2017 at a Chinese start-up that was working on the development of self-driving cars, while he was also still working at Apple worked. He would have ‘broad access’ to ‘the entire automation source code’. When he started working at the startup, he collected and passed on “large amounts of sensitive technology and source code” from Apple, the US Department of Justice said, according to CNBC.
In 2018, a search warrant was already carried out at the man’s house, which found a lot of ‘stolen, confidential and proprietary’ data. The ex-employee promised not to flee the country, but then did. He left for China, which delayed prosecution.
CNBC writes that he faces six separate felony charges, including “the theft or attempted theft of Apple’s entire automation source code, tracking systems, behavior planning for autonomous systems, and descriptions of the underlying hardware’. He could face up to 10 years in prison for each charge, provided he is extradited and convicted.
Apple also currently has two other cases pending against former employees who shared secrets of Project Titan, the company’s self-driving car division, around the same time. company, allegedly stole, writes Apple Insider. Both also tried to flee the country, but were arrested early. Another ex-employee in 2018 trade secrets stolen and passed on to the media. With him last year was a settlement reached.
