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A man who instructed police he feared surveillance through Google has been arrested and charged with arson after one of the enterprise‘s self-driving motors changed into destroyed in an assault in June.

Raul Murillo Diaz of Oakland turned into stopped with the aid of police after Google safety noticed him usingacross the business enterprise‘s headquarters campus in Mountain View, California, simply after nighttimeon June 30. They became suspicious because his automobile matched that spotted on the scene ofnumerous assaults on the organization over the preceding six weeks.

The primary, on May additionally 19, saw numerous Molotov cocktails thrown at a Google Street View carthat turned into parked in a business enterprise lot in Mountain View. The ensuing hearth failed to damagethe car because the bottles bounced off it, however the ground close by became burnt.

A 2d incident on June four passed off overdue at night when someone fired photographs at a Googlebuilding in Mountain View. Police observed five holes in home windows and harm to window frames.

Surveillance video captured each incidents.

The 1/3 passed off on June 10 within the midnight while a male in a similar car used a squirt gun to set alight a Google self-using car. the car changed into destroyed in the fireplace. Similarly linking the threecrimes, the driving force parked within the identical spot as in the authentic incident and was in acomparable automobile.

After he turned into stopped on June 30, officers discovered a pipe bomb in the driving force‘s car at the side of firearms. Bomb squad detectives stated the bomb turned into in a nonworking nation howeverrequired only flash powder or a flammable substance to be useful.

In a submitting with the U.S. District Courtroom for the Northern District of California, prosecutors say Diaz admitted to sporting out the three attacks and became influenced by a belief that “Google was watchinghim.”

The price of arson comes with a maximum jail sentence of twenty years and a maximum quality of us$250,000.