Waymo vs. Uber: 8 Things I Learned From Anthony Levandowski Taking the 5th

In February, Google's self-driving car spin-out Waymo accused Anthony Levandowski of stealing 14,000 confidential files about the laser-ranging lidars developed while he was working there and taking them to Uber. On Friday 14 April, the engineer sat down in the San Francisco office of Waymo's lawyers to face six hours of hard questioning. When asked what his current responsibilities were at Uber, Levandowski took the 5th, citing his right under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment not to answer questions that might incriminate him. He plead it again to questions about whether he stole the files, and again when asked if he subsequently used the files to build lidars for Uber. In fact, he took the 5th over 400 times in the course of the day.