New: Tesla said it didn't have critical data in a fatal crash. Then a hacker found it. "For any reasonable person, it was obvious the data was there."
The story of white hat hacker @greentheonly's role in the case the led to a $243 million verdict against Tesla.
After a Tesla driver using Autopilot plowed into a young Florida couple in 2019, killing a 22-year-old woman, crucial data detailing how the wreck unfolded was missing. A hacker found it and Tesla said in court it had been on its own servers all along.
wapo.st/46dCoQI
The hacker's findings proved crucial. The dispute over accessibility to the data likely had a "significant impact" on the $243M verdict, a person close to Tesla said. wapo.st/46dCoQI
The plaintiffs had been preparing to go to trial without the data. “if they were able to drag this on a little longer, or the plaintiff couldn’t ... get the Autopilot [computer] cloned in time," @FredericLambert told me, it could've played out otherwise wapo.st/46dCoQI
@FredericLambert In a last-ditch effort to locate the data, the plaintiffs obtained the Autopilot computer from the Florida Highway Patrol. They turned to @greentheonly, known for his work recovering data from damaged Teslas. They won a $243 million verdict this month. wapo.st/46dCoQI
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