Current and former Uber security staffers cast doubt on spying claims

The former security chief of Uber Technologies Inc. swore in a closed legal proceeding that he knew of no attempts to steal trade secrets from anyone, including Alphabet Inc’s self-driving unit Waymo, and would be “shocked” if that had occurred.
In a deposition taken in mid-December near San Francisco, Joe Sullivan, Uber’s security chief from 2015 to 2017, said that the most explosive claims made by another former Uber employee of unethical and illegal behavior by members of his security team were false.

The testimony, described to Reuters by people familiar with it, came in connection with a lawsuit brought by Waymo which accuses arch rival Uber of stealing trade secrets.
Sullivan’s testimony has not been made public. He has not spoken in open court or spoken publicly since leaving Uber in November, when he was fired following an investigation.

The previously unreported testimony from the onetime senior Uber official, as well as interviews conducted by Reuters with five current and former Uber employees, rebuts statements made in an explosive 37-page letter last year that triggered the internal probe and drew the attention of federal prosecutors, who are still investigating.
The letter was written by an attorney for Richard Jacobs, a security analyst who worked at Uber from 2016 to 2017 and was about to be fired, Jacobs has acknowledged.
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