Uber had special team to obstruct legal cases and spy on rivals, court told

Uber had a team of employees dedicated to spying on rival companies and "impeding" legal investigations into the company, a former employee testified in federal court Tuesday. The dramatic public testimony, on the eve of jury selection for the hotly anticipated civil trial over allegations that Uber stole trade secrets from Google's self-driving car spinoff Waymo, came after it was revealed that Uber had withheld evidence, leading Judge William Alsup to delay the the trial indefinitely. Earlier this year, the attorney for Richard Jacobs, a former Uber employee, had sent a letter to Uber's in-house counsel with his allegations about the special group. But Uber had not provided the letter to Waymo as part of legal discovery before the start of the trial. On November 22, federal prosecutors, who are conducting a separate investigation, alerted the judge to the existence of the letter.