It took me about 8 paragraphs in to figure out what Greyball is, so to save you the time: Uber used various data sources to identify which people are likely government officials who are trying to collect incriminating data on them, and then blocks them from the service so they can't be caught in sting operations.
But there's a lot in the article that doesn't make sense:
>Other techniques included looking at the user’s credit card information and whether that card was tied directly to an institution like a police credit union.
I couldn't find a good source, but it doesn't seem like that's something a CC merchant would have access to. Do they really get to see that?[2]
Also, how were they able to do it so accurately without disrupting their service? Most city employees and police aren't going to be involved in sting operations against car services, so their customer support will have to deal with a torrent of very confused government employees [1] who keep getting mysterious rejections when they try to use they app, and which support can't give a truthful answer on.
Plus, this seemed to require significant on-the-ground intel and human intervention:
>If those clues were not enough to confirm a user’s identity, Uber employees would search social media profiles and other available information online. Once a user was identified as law enforcement, Uber Greyballed him or her, tagging the user with a small piece of code that read Greyball followed by a string of numbers.
So, I'm surprised it worked at all.
[1] identified by the fact of that person having more-than-usual activity inside something recognized as a government building
[2] EDIT: Okay, I get it -- you can look up banks from the CC number. Can we not have further comments just to point this out?
Maybe not a popular opinion but I find this entire thing pure genius.
>I couldn't find a good source, but it doesn't seem like that's something a CC merchant would have access to. Do they really get to see that?
The first 6 digits of a credit card can identify the issuing bank (BIN number - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_number). If you ask your merchant they can readily provide you and up to date list.
I agree. It's genius in a Lex Luthor kind of way. If I understood the full scope of the application, I like to think i'd decline to work on that. It's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement.
There's a big difference between keeping secrets for market advantage and to evade the law. In the first case, I want to tell people because i'm building cool stuff, but i can't, at least not until the product is ready. In the latter case, i'd be at least embarrassed, if not ashamed of the tools.
But I agree, it's slick. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback when it's not my career at stake. With millions or billions of dollars on the line, my ethics might erode much faster than i want to admit. In that case, I'd hope evil jfoutz (or ethically devoid jfoutz) would build such a sophisticated tool.
It's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement.
I would volunteer to work on that project because its whole point is to evade law enforcement. A lot of us (hackers/technologists) take a pretty dim view of arbitrary State regulations and "laws" and are quite happy to work to evade them. Most people who fit the techno-libertarian or cypherpunk mentality would probably feel the same way.
I would imagine there are people who don't view it as a breach of ethics. And those types are probably more inclined to be working at Uber on the first place.
I mean if you really believe the various transportations administrations are corrupt and that the way to solve it is to temporarily disregard the law, then Uber is probably the place to be
It's definitely highly intelligent but just as definitely something that implies a sort of double-or-nothing attitude.
IE, Anything is on the table here, it seems (an attitude that can foster creativity certainly). For example, in the end game would Uber's enemies fair badly if they caught a ride in Uber's automatic cars? Indeed, the cars might even be seeking out people for "accidents".
There's reason even the most innovative Mafiosos often don't make it to old age.
Note also:
"Perverting the course of justice is an offence committed when a person prevents justice from being served on him/herself or on another party. In England and Wales it is a common law offence, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment."
"Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both"
And we're talk systematically evading regulators world-wide. ianola but my legal-fantasy mind could compose for people facing a millennium in prison. I assume the reality would be a slap on wrist if they company's influence falls.
I agree. The article seems to point to Greyball as proof that Uber is being shady.
Greyball is just the tool they used to keep from getting caught.
The shady part is that they operate in cities were they aren't welcome (by city officials at least, customers and drivers seemed to welcome them with open arms). If Uber operating in Portland is a night burglar, Greyball is his dark clothes and mask.
Correct, First siz digits are the BIN. This is how you identify a CC and how carders can guess your limits. e.g. some cards are only allowed to customers with certain credit card profiles.
Anyone who has a California State and Federal Employees Credit Union debit card is probably a good indicator.
I saw an Illinois State Police Federal Credit Union branch recently and really thought to myself... that might be giving away a little more information than I'd be comfortable with if I were a cop. I mean, anyone going to that credit union is pretty likely to be, you know, a police officer. So if a criminal was trying to track down a police officer they had beef with, where would they look? Seems pretty obvious. Seems pretty dangerous.
You can see the "greyball" tag fields in Exhibit A in this lawsuit filing. It looks like they did some rudimentary device and payment method correlation as well as whitelisting at the database level:
"blocks them from the service" doesn't quite capture it right. It doesn't tell them they are blocked. It displays fake cars circling that never show up.
The first part of a credit card number is called the BIN, which stands for Bank Identification Number. With that, you can tell which bank issued the card (aka the issuer).
Interesting! But don't the CC agreements require them to only use CC numbers for the absolute minimum purposes necessary to process the transaction? (They can't store the numbers themselves except the last four digits IIRC.)
So (based on the site) they could presumably use that number as part of fraud prevention but not to "identify possible narcs" -- I imagine the CC companies will be livid at this usage.
> They can't store the numbers themselves except the last four digits IIRC
Companies can store the whole number. That's how on-file payments and automatic subscription renewal payments work.
What you are probably recalling is a PCI rule that requires keeping the credit card number protected, such as storing it encrypted and only letting things that are sending transactions to the credit card network have access to the plaintext. That rule has an exception for the last 4 digits and the first 6 digits.
For example, when your customer support people look up the history of a customer they are helping, if your account info viewing tool shows a list of prior transaction details, it could not show the credit card number used for each transaction, but it could show the first 6 and the last 4 digits.
CC processing agreements don't normally have any such restriction - the only information that absolutely can't be stored is the CVV/CVC number.
If you handle CC information, you are subject to security standards auditing (called PCI compliance - like encryption at rest, etc.), but the BIN number and last 4 digits are not considered privileged information.
I'm also not aware of any restrictions on how you want to use the BIN information - for example, merchants often use the BIN number to block prepaid card usage.
>> They can't store the numbers themselves except the last four digits IIRC.)
That's not actually true. Vendors usually have to store the entire number (but not the CVV/CVN).
Most of them show you the last 4 numbers to prevent shoulder surfing and accidentally disclosing the number to someone who's taken over your accounts.
They also record the last 4 digits. I guess they could use some sort of algorithm to determine the probability it is an official, especially if they combine it with other data.
>>Other techniques included looking at the user’s credit card information and whether that card was tied directly to an institution like a police credit union.
>I couldn't find a good source, but it doesn't seem like that's something a CC merchant would have access to. Do they really get to see that?
First 6 digits of any CC# is the Issuer/Bank Identification Number (BIN/IIN), and anyone can get access to that information.
I'd like to see them subpoenaed to explain what they were doing. They were deliberately violating the law, and trying to avoid detection just makes things much, much worse.
It doesn't seem that different from Cloudflare et al throwing up CAPTCHAs and blocks when I browse through Tor. Uber was trying to prevent abuse. Until someone identifies themselves as a city official or Uber is put on notice that it is under investigation, I think they are well within their rights to do this.
I don't get the analogy... Cloudflare is trying to protect websites from hacking attempts and similar, most of which is illegal. Their treatment of Tor also wasn't a deliberate decision but the result of empirical data they collected.
A government official (or anyone, actually) trying to check for compliance with the law isn't doing anything illegal.
Uber may be within their rights because companies usually have wide latitude to refuse doing business with someone, although that will ultimately depend on what kind of violations they were trying to hide, how invasive their stalking of customers was etc.
Morally, though, this is just more of the shady shit that's been coming out day after day. How any investor would be willing to trust them with their money is beyond me. Considering how intransparent their financials are, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends in an Enron-style meltdown.
> Cloudflare is trying to protect websites from hacking attempts and similar, most of which is illegal
I don't think we can say "most" Tor traffic "is illegal" [1]. At the very least, we agree that some of it is legal. That means Cloudflare, a private company, is treating users differently based on its interests and its interpretation of the law.
> A government official (or anyone, actually) trying to check for compliance with the law isn't doing anything illegal
They probably aren't. Neither is Uber. They're just treating their users differently based on their interests and interpretation of the law.
Law enforcement has tough-as-nails methods at its disposal. It could subpoena, audit, intercept, sue, et cetera. The downside is those methods come with oversight and transparency requirements.
>At least 50 to 60 people inside Uber knew about Greyball, and some had qualms about whether it was ethical or legal. Greyball was approved by Uber’s legal team, headed by Salle Yoo, the general counsel.
I (though not a lawyer) assume their reasoning was: "It's legal to use public sources to identify possible law enforcement agents, it's legal to deny services to them. Seems legit."
Well, that's a bold legal strategy if true -- I wonder why Microsoft simply didn't put it in the Windows license agreement that government users couldn't sue them for antitrust violations!
(Uber's real argument seems to be "it violates our terms of service for a government official to try to figure out if we're following the law")
a) exempting themselves from specific laws by EULA generally doesn't work,
b) you can block specific people from a service and even police have to leave when told (barring further e.g. probable cause), but police are under no obligation to honor a general "no police" policy.
It's legal, though, to kick someone off a service because you think they're a cop. (e.g. biker bars that kick people out on that basis)
In a world where privacy has been traded away for convenience, it's poetic justice where a startup uses data mining techniques to subvert the government. This is the same government that would have no issues to use the same techniques to spy on its own people for its own motives.
I'm neither on Uber nor the government's side in this case, just simply making an observation. The lack of data privacy seems to be a double-edged sword for users and government/law enforcement alike.
My perspective is the opposite. In a world where large multinationals have the power to evade the law in a deliberate and systematic way like this, it's easy for governments to claim they need the same kind of power. Things like this are exactly what bureaucrats point to when they make their arguments for a surveillance state.
I don't like the US government much, but I like it a lot better than the average multinational. When it comes down to it, we don't have more than our choice of devils.
I don't like the US government much, but I like it a lot better than the average multinational. When it comes down to it, we don't have more than our choice of devils.
If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying? No, my only option is to flee - which the state will often try and prevent you doing anyway.
The state is a huge corporation, that will use force to change you for its services, whether they are good or not, or whether you use them or not. Your only option to avoid this involuntary charge s to flee - and the state reserves the right to employ violence to stop you doing even that.
It seems pretty clear to me which is more immoral.
You can vote, run for office, petition, volunteer, protest,etc to the local, state, and federal government to have policies that reflect your values. The only thing you can do with Uber is use it or not. Maybe you could write Uber a letter.
You have a say in government - that is its stated goal and purpose. Of the people for the people.
The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please. I can not choose not to be pulled over for speeding, or opt out of murder laws temporarily.
The fact that you don't have a say in Uber's corporate decisions is irrelevant, because you can simply stop using it. You don't need a say. The fact that you can't opt out of government is why you're given a say, and what makes it infinitely more dangerous.
You can choose not to use Uber and effectively ignore them but that does not stop them from having an influence on you, your community, and your country.
It is true that being part of a government system is not a choice but without that community you would be dead or at least not an educated human with internet access.
You cannot reap the rewards of government, community, and progress and then turn around and want to abolish the systems that made those things possible just because you cannot speed and murder people.
> You cannot reap the rewards of government, community, and progress and then turn around and want to abolish the systems that made those things possible just because you cannot speed and murder people.
What systems are those, exactly? Protectionist laws for taxi drivers?
Sure, if we stick with Uber and transportation topic. Labor laws, minimum wage, vehicle inspections, registration. systems and rules that were put in place as a response to what citizens felt were "wrongs" that needed to be addressed.
When a organization ignores those laws then they are going against the will of the people.
> The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please. I can not choose not to be pulled over for speeding, or opt out of murder laws temporarily.
Sure you can. Just leave their jurisdiction. I've heard Somalia is nice.
That's quite different. ISPs are regulated in a special way because they are monopolies. Monopolies occupy a middle ground between government and company. A business monopoly is like a mild/weak form of government.
I think I understand your point. Trying to compare a persons influence in government, a system designed to encourage citizen participation, to that of a corporation, a system designed to make as much money as possible and answer to share holders, is not great.
"In order to form a more perfect union" VS "the pursuit of shareholder wealth."
Even if the system is not working exactly the way we want - it never will - we are still endowed with the rights to participate. The same cannot be said for corporations.
I would've thought that the difference between "vote" and "vote as a shareholder" would have been obvious enough, but just to make it clear: I don't consider it a good thing if the only people with a say in things are the ones who have money. This is the difference between a democracy and a corporation.
I find it really unsettling how many people on HN seem to need this distinction explained.
If 49% of people stop using Uber, Uber loses almost half its revenue and will probably be forced to change its practices or go out of business. What happens if 49% of people don't vote for a US presidential candidate?
Why would you need write Uber a letter? Don't like it, don't use it.
You don't have a say in government like you do with a private company. If I don't like the government, I have to hope that millions of other people agree with me. If I don't like a company, I alone can choose not to associate with it. My relationship with or without Uber is entirely up to me. I'm forced to endure the government whether I like it or not -- I could petition and protest until I'm blue and it won't make a difference to my life unless millions agree. With Uber, etc. I can simply stop buying their product and poof! They're out of my life.
Sorry, services like Uber have externalities and do not only impact their consumers.
Your only option to avoid this involuntary charge s to flee
Bollocks. People organize for and achieve their political goals by modifying government on a regular basis. Governmental institutions suffer from numerous flaws, but your argument is that government is fundamentally totalitarian which is nonsense.
Like other drugs many people experiment with in high school, a little won't hurt you but prolonged exposure to Rand can lead to cognitive deficits and antisocial behavior.
OP was arguing that because they don't like the law it's immoral to enforce. Whether or not OP likes the law really has nothing to do with whether the law is immoral.
Not sure I read it that way, but okay. But that reading requires you to ask "why", and sometimes it feels very much like the government lost the consent of the governed a looooong time ago..
If the government had lost the consent of the governed it wouldn't have been elected / it won't be elected again. That's basically what all this is about. Sure, democracy, elections, all this things may not be the best system, but it is very effective at damage control. You don't govern well? You're out after four or five years. All other system known have far worse damage control.
Alternative view: The government has lost the consent of the governed, but people are so engrossed in other stuff that they don't do anything about it due to how painful the upheaval would be.
In other words, it's tolerated rather than accepted.
Every revolution in history is proof that this doesn't really work. If the government really looses the approval of the governed and not just of a small minority revolution will follow.
Even ignoring the fact that Uber might become a monopoly, this ignores extrenalities caused by corporations.
You don't have to purchase chemicals from a chemical factory to be impacted by them dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply because it is cheaper.
Can you describe the steps that would lead to Uber becoming a monopoly? I can't imagine that happening without government help, can you? And if it requires that kind of help, is the problem with Uber or government?
You can't really stop unlicensed autonomous vehicles from running red lights in your home town though. Just because you don't pay them, doesn't mean they don't affect you.
I'm not going to change your mind on statism, and don't really want to, but a key component of statism is the massive power advantage they have over you. A multinational does not have a state level power advantage, but they're still much more powerful than you. If they choose to act in an immoral way, there's not much you can do about it.
For what it's worth, the US government requires income tax to be paid on foreign earnings, even while living and working overseas. To avoid that, you'd have to also renounce citizenships, which is expensive and at the government's discretion.
To sum up, there was a $450 renunciation fee as well as a $450 fee for relinquishment, but both were jacked up from $450 to $2,350. This does not include exit taxes and the like, but while $4700 might seem trivial to the well-heeled, it's a far cry from free (and unilateral).
You're right, I was wrong. I forgot to check because the fees are set by federal rule but then billed in local currencies at different consular offices around the world, and the fee schedule is (oddly) not centralized at state.gov.
> [the US] requires income tax to be paid on foreign earnings
Which is a common reason to wish to renounce US citizenship. But there is a trap which prevents renunciation because you don't like to be unfairly taxed:
"If the Department of Homeland Security determines that the renunciation is motivated by tax avoidance purposes, the individual will be found inadmissible to the United States under Section 212(a)(10)(E) of the Immigration and Nationality Act"
The state is an entity designed to benefit all at the cost of the few, but thanks to the corruption of uneven power, the state ends up benefitting those in power at the cost of those not in power.
Um. A state is a place that happens to constitute the jurisdiction of its government. A corporation, huge or not, is a legal entity chartered (in the U.S.) by the government of a state (q.v. supra).
> If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying? No, my only option is to flee - which the state will often try and prevent you doing anyway.
Flee? So states are a prison? Last time I checked it was pretty easy to leave a state which equals 'stop using Uber'. Fleeing implies you aren't allowed to go, that's wrong. The only problem is no other state (or country or whatever) is forced to accept you as a new customer.
And who would want a customer that doesn't want to pay for the products ..
> If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying? No, my only option is to flee - which the state will often try and prevent you doing anyway.
You can't evade a service like Uber either which does have an impact on the commons just like a Government does. You can avoid giving Uber your money but that isn't quite the same thing.
Actually even if you "flee," the US has FATCA and taxation on world wide income. If you want to renounce, there's a $2300 fee, plus you have to show 5 years of tax compliance. If you have enough money, there's even an exit tax.
This is a super naive view of how markets work (and I'm very surprised to see this out of someone who calls the state a "corporation").
I don't really mind Uber as a service; they get me where I need to go. I hate Uber as a market participant. They change the economics of taxis, of existing black car services, of public transit, etc., i.e., of every single thing I'm using because I'm not using Uber.
I haven't used Uber in years, but I want it out of the markets that I try to buy transit service in, because it affects those markets.
Because that's the primary way that governments aren't just corporations: if the rulers (the majority, in a democracy) believe that Uber needs to go out, or at least needs to stop participating in the market in certain ways, the government can enforce that via its monopoly on violence.
This has historically worked pretty well for human society; for instance, if someone gets the clever idea to participate in a market by impersonating an existing, trusted market participant, or offering counterfeit goods, or using slave labor to plant cotton, or whatever other bad idea that is short-term profitable, the government can step in and say that this isn't long-term good for society.
Whether Portland is correct to stop Uber is a legitimate matter of debate, but that Portland legitimately has the ability to choose to stop Uber is, I'd hope, uncontroversial.
In a world where multinationals have the power to evade the law in a deliberate and systematic way, AND the government uses the same techniques to spy on its own people for its own motives, it's easy for individuals to claim that neither group of entities need this kind of coercive power over others.
I agree with your statements at large, but considering Uber was not aware of any active investigations, they're under no obligation to assist police in enacting a sting.
I'm not suggesting that it is, as there are semantically many problems with it, but an argument could be made that this is more of an extension of one's fifth amendment rights to remain silent than it is evading the law. Starting a company to drive people around is (depending on one's interpretation) either presumptively legal or presumptively illegal. Let's assume that many people view it as the former. Is it silly to assume that Uber might have anticipated the Portland government's assumption that it was the latter?
What if it were considered legal in every municipality worldwide except for Portland? That doesn't make Portland wrong or right, but at the same time, it doesn't make Uber wrong for the assumption that someone might find it to be presumptively unlawful.
I think that there are plenty of valid reasons to hate Uber, but anticipating a law enforcement response to something Uber deemed presumptively lawful seems like a pretty rational set of actions.
The difference between the government and the corporation is the government can confiscate your property, take your liberty, and end your life. A corporation can do none of those things.
A bad government is far, far, far more dangerous than a bad corporation.
The next step is the tech becomes available to everyone; unfortunately that won't happen anytime soon when it's so lucrative to create tools that can only be used large teams and megacorps/multinationals.
i agree with your point about multinationals but this case is more interesting than that. Uber isn't Coca Cola. They essentially used tactics like this to go from plucky underdog to multinational.
I totally agree with this. One thing that should be noted is that in this case the government was acting in the corrupt interest of the incumbent taxi industry. Once the system has been corrupted, tactics like Grayball become the only way for any company to disrupt the industry.
My guess is that Grayball was used most in jurisdictions with the most corruption and regulatory capture inflicted by the taxi/livery industry.
I personally couldn't imagine ever doing something like this...but on the other hand Uber has clearly demonstrated demand for their service that's been fought at every corner with entrenched interests that have government connections, alluded to in the article.
I'm not endorsing it...but I can understand what would drive them to do it. Uber's playing dirty ball that's all about winning at all costs. The problem is that their opposition, for the most part...is ALSO playing dirty ball.
Yeah, while I'm outraged that Uber would go to such lengths to deceive the government, and by extension the people, there's certainly a bit of schadenfreude here.
Deceiving the government does not necessarily extend to deceiving the people. It depends on whether the government represents people's interest in the case. In the Portland's case in particularly, it's absolutely certain the the government was not siding with the interest of the majority of the people.
Similarly, if someone is protesting drone strike, it does not mean he is protesting against the US people.
The article describes deliberate behavior by Uber to circumvent the law of the land. You might not like the law, but if you believe in the principle of rule of law, then, you should not be OK with this. Otherwise, there's no reason for other companies to, say, pollute the water supply, dump smog into the air, deliver dangerously unsafe foodstuffs or products to consumers, i.e., break the law.
This is a dichotomy I reject. Laws should be evaluated on an individual basis, not as a body, otherwise you're logically obligated to be as bothered at people going 51 in a 50 as rape and murder.
On top of that, many laws are bogus, pointless, useless, more are actively harmful. Hell, Uber got a start by flaunting a law that had little actual use in the real world save for protecting monopolists with very flimsy pretenses. You probably flaunt the speed limit on a daily basis commuting to work because the alternative is less safe and less efficient for all concerned.
Let's not pretend that ignoring useless laws is a slight against some broader philosophical concept.
"Uber got a start by flaunting a law"
"You probably flaunt the speed limit"
Probably not what you intended to say.
More substantially, I think the licensing regulations for taxis (that's what you have in mind, no?) are far from obviously of "little actual use". This would vary greatly by region; I understand that London and Tokyo, for example, require taxi drivers to prove familiarity with their city's layout before being allowed to take passengers. Maybe this is to enforce a monopoly, or maybe it's for the benefit of the public. It's at least debatable.
This is an absurd false equivalency. The NSA isn't tracking down drivers, this is local law enforcement. They could be investigating a crime related to an Uber driver, but not specifically about the legality of the service.
What if you were just robbed or assaulted by a driver and Uber sends fake data about nearby cars when a cop is trying to use the app to track them down?
>What if you were just robbed or assaulted by a driver and Uber sends fake data about nearby cars when a cop is trying to use the app to track them down?
Then I'd say "wow, why is this cop using an inaccurate and highly-likely-to-be-thrown-out-in-court method when the LEA has a stingray that allows them to track the driver directly and accurately?"
>this is local law enforcement
Yes, the poor, good, moral, ethical local law enforcement with their cheap and useless cellphone MiTM.
The point being made is that a cop is not ever going to need to use Uber, that they shouldn't use Uber, and that (if for some reason they get all the way to court having used Uber as the basis for their evidence) they should have known that they shouldn't use Uber. Further, if they did need Uber, it would be by way of tracking the app's use from the suspect's phone directly.
Enough with the derailment tactics already, this doesn't make for a civil discussion. Bringing in new arguments like referring to stingrays (as itf they were owned or used universally) is BS and just a way to avoid responding to the legitimate question that was presented by the gp.
Any place using such a novel technique as tracking someone on Uber is almost universally likely to have access to a stingray. A stingray is arguably a more accurate and legally enforceable device.
And to add (edit): It's not a derailment, it's the logical conclusion that any area that has enough economic activity to be target by Uber definitely has enough resources to supply LEA with a stingray.
> What if you were just robbed or assaulted by a driver and Uber sends fake data about nearby cars when a cop is trying to use the app to track them down?
You can't use the app to track anyone down. Driver reviews of passengers and passenger reviews of drivers are annoynomous for this reason. If a cop is trying to track an uber driver they would be much better off getting the license plate from the passenger and running that through their system. Trying to randomly hail rides through the app in hopes that the abusive driver would happens to respond sounds like a waste of time when there are better alternatives.
Yeah, but you could also use it to see where cars are in the area and track them down from there? Except if you're a cop they flagged and they send you bullshit noise on purpose. I guess that's fine, right?
Yes, it is fine. Uber is a private company and its data is private. It's an interesting thought experiment but I just can't get behind the idea that a private company has a moral or ethical responsibility to ensure that data they're providing to the public via their own app doesn't mislead law enforcement. If there was a court order for the data and it was inaccurate or false that's one thing but this is completely different.
Of course not. If we got rid of all these laws the corporations would simply enforce terms of service on us, containing whatever they want. And then would argue that we freely entered into those terms of our own free will by being born where we were and when we were!
This is incredibly awful, but not particularly surprising.
One of Paul Graham's most read essays is about the qualities that YC looks for in founders (http://paulgraham.com/founders.html). In that essay, he specifically discusses 'Naughtiness' as a positive quality, and how it's one of the most important features of potential founders.
The problem is that being clever and hacking around a system for curiosity is governed by a very different set of incentives than being clever and hacking for profit. Feynmann's safecracking at Los Alomos was done to complain about an absurd system and to play pranks on his colleagues, not to enrich himself.
Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out.
> Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out.
Depends on whether you view this particular detail as part of providing a service people want (and thus want to pay for), or whether you view it as exclusively in the service of profit (whether it benefits people or not). Ignoring regulations so you can make money by hurting people would be evil. Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. (It's still a dangerous road to go down, but not universally wrong.)
I've seen what the attempts at "local", "authorized" alternatives look like; they're almost all terrible, and even the ones that work half as well as Lyft or Uber suffer from being non-universal (you need a different service for each location). Look at the various places actually fixing their broken taxi regulations; would they have even considered doing so if the far better alternatives had asked nicely before developing a huge base of interested customers who see how much better the alternative works?
As you said, "break dumb rules to show how pointless they are" can serve as the first step in fixing them.
(For the sake of clarity: Uber has done some truly and unambiguously awful things. This particular story just doesn't seem like one of them.)
"Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. "thats what Pablo Escobar probably thought at some point too -:)
This is one of the very important ways in which dumb rules get fixed. Like, the prohibition on cannabis wouldn't have the support it does if we were really good at enforcing it - people need the experience with not-X to decide on supporting that policy.
Uber's disregard for local laws and regulations is well known, so I find it hard to be shocked by this.
But the chutzpah to implement something so blatantly designed to aide in breaking the law is still surprising. It reminds me of Zenefits in a way.
It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device". The future of technology will probably include ever more shady uses of programming to mislead regulators and the like.
That struck me too. A normal company might do this, but they'd at least pretend it was meant to deter criminals or catch abusers or whatever. Instead their statement says:
"This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers."
It's rather blatant. I assume they think that last part makes them look good and "officials" look bad, but to me it just says "we built this to avoid getting caught breaking the law."
> It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device". The future of technology will probably include ever more shady uses of programming to mislead regulators and the like.
As a FOSS enthusiast, I hope this becomes a good push to require those types of software to become FOSS.
So I ask this mostly out of horrified curiosity -- is there any negative press or revelation that could actually sink Uber at this point? What would it take for the company to fail?
We've seen:
* Systematic flouting of laws in public
* Even further hidden avoiding of laws
* Sexism complaints across the board
* What appears to be a pervasive toxic culture, inspired (if not explicitly encouraged) straight from the CEO's behavior
They're trying to become too big to fail, but aren't quite there yet.
Essentially they're undercutting all competitors by artificially keeping fares very low and subsidizing drivers. Subsidies were the primary source of their enormous financial losses in 2016.
Once the competition is completely gone (local cabs, and Lyft in some areas), then they can stop subsidizing themselves and basically hold a monopoly. It's their entire strategy.
More or less Redbox' strategy too, from what I can tell. Prices have been creeping up ever since the major competition (Blockbuster et al) dropped out of the market. And I suspect it's not because the costs to run machines has been increasing...
I think this probably counts as an iceberg-scale problem. It's like taxes; avoiding them by gaming the system in every way you can find is unethical but not illegal. Actively deceiving people (with fake updates to the app) and collecting and acting upon PII to screen out public officials is getting into criminal conspiracy territory.
I'm extremely surprised their lawyers signed off on it. Maybe they're libertarians though, I've heard some really odd arguments that turned out to be predicated on various 'natural law' theories.
What I have noticed is that even people that have concerns about their culture and unethical acts, will often use the service because it's convenient and (for now) cheaper than other alternatives.
As long as Uber is fighting cities (instead of state/federal governments) and continues to have deep pockets... They will be around.
Seems like they haven't considered the fact that they would then be in the same situation their current competitors find themselves in, ripe for "disruption."
They will succeed or fail based upon their ability to attract customers and sell a product at a profit. I suspect most customers don't care about any of your bullet points. They care if Uber can get them where they want to go faster and/or cheaper than other options.
Not even close. If Uber disappeared tomorrow it would have literally zero impact. You'd get the same driver in the same car via another app and one ride later you'd have forgotten Uber ever existed.
I'm not excusing Uber at all because what they've done is extremely bad in multiple cases but find it strange all these hit pieces are coming out of the wood works. There is a large section of society that hates Uber and will spring at any chance to bring it down. Which is partially what I think happened with the whole #boycottUber thing and the new video of kalanick yelling at the driver.
However, the sexism and dysfunction in the company is extremely disturbing. It almost starts to undermine the case against them when there are all these hit jobs coming out and it starts to seem that the media is biased or relishing their fall.
I think it's a mistake to interpret the wave of stories about Uber's misbehavior as indicative of a "hit job" or "media bias" against Uber. Courage is contagious, and as people have started to speak out publicly against Uber's abuses, it appears current and former employees are becoming emboldened to share their experiences as well. I hope that this wave of public backlash will demonstrate to Uber, and the tech industry as a whole, that the market is not blind to unethical behavior, and cutthroat competition at the expense of your employees and the law is not necessarily a winning strategy.
There's definitely some piling on by former employees and reporters. It seems to be a bit of a human trait, and I remember some of this happening to Amazon in the wake of the NY Times piece a couple years ago (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...).
That said, the dirt coming from Uber seems to be a lot worse and a lot more widespread for a company that is 1/30th the size of what Amazon was 2 years ago.
> That said, the dirt coming from Uber seems to be a lot worse and a lot more widespread for a company that is 1/30th the size of what Amazon was 2 years ago.
I assume this is ignoring drivers? Surely if you include the contractors the size difference isn't so stark. I would actually expect Uber to be larger, but I don't know.
> It almost starts to undermine the case against them when there are all these hit jobs coming out and it starts to seem that the media is biased or relishing their fall.
Think of what this means: The more a business (or anyone) does wrong, then the more news stories there are about them doing wrong ... then more likely it is that the news stories are 'hit jobs'. You can see how that doesn't work.
Everyone subject to criticism by the news media calls it a 'hit job', reporter bias, or something similar. I see nothing in this story that suggests such a thing; this seems like a serious problem and the allegations are seem well-supported.
Most of the Uber employees I've interacted with have taken a quite cynical "who gives a fuck - IPO" stance or will rationalize away their behavior to an absurd degree. With this series of leaks from current and former Uber employees, I'm glad to see that there are more ethical people at Uber than I had previously thought.
I don't think NYTimes need empowerment or to wait for someone to call out Uber to publish this story. I can only guess of a negative PR campaign from an apparent competitor, it's very obvious if you see anonymous medium posts(minus the susan flower's) and the hyperbole created about Travis's video and now this.
Like everyone, I want them to pay for the culture they created at their company which resulted in employee abuse, but this is not fair to feed the hate campaign against a company which basically revolutionized the transport system.
> I don't think NYTimes need empowerment or to wait for someone to call out Uber to publish this story.
The "people" in question being empowered are not the NYT reporters, they're the other employees that feel free to come forward, respond to requests from proactive reporters, or contact reporters themselves. The idea presented is that after there starts to be negative press, more people come forward, thus more news.
There are many reasons this might be true. A very simple one is that most people may think their concerns are isolated, and not mention it to others enough to learn how endemic they really are. In this case, the employees that have info about this program might not have been happy about it, but might have thought the company was just doing what it had to and were willing to overlook it. Other negative news may change their opinion of the company just enough to put them over the threshold of thinking it should be brought to light. Then again, some employees may have been perfectly fine with this program, but know the public will react negatively, and are using it to punish the company for other misdeeds (such as the reported sexism).
There are many explanations for why people with knowledge of misdeeds may come forward once it's reported. This happens with victims as well (e.g. Bill Cosby). It's easy to think you're the only one when there's no evidence to the contrary.
It's quite common for revolutionaries to get carried away and end up on the guillotine themselves. I was extremely supportive of Uber when it was getting off the ground because I loathed the taxi monopoly, but since Uber has a) shown little regard for anything beyond its own profitability and b) is hellbent on becoming a monopoly of its own, I feel no sympathy for their current woes.
I don't think it is that strange, you often see this type of snowball effect of leaks and insider info after an organization or person hits a certain tipping point of negative press. See also the many reports of sexual abuse that came out around Trump pre-election when things like the access hollywood video came out.
Well, yes. Dan O'Sullivan (who spawned #DeleteUber) is a socialist and not shy about it. Of course he hates Uber for many reasons, all of which are entirely legitimate if you share his values.
Always more enlightening to talk earnestly about differing values than suspecting some kind of hidden agenda or irrational bias.
Values can be nuanced. Yes to free market but guess what, it occasionally needs checks and balances because while it works for a particular company it might bring society as a whole down.
Infrastructure like roads and electricity should not be controlled by a company because it's supposed to benefit everyone.
Let's talk about Uber. Say they survive this situation and thrive as a business, taking over the global cab market. Imagine they also perfect self-driving cars and next month they fire all the drivers.
Suddenly you have a company of ~10,000 people getting all the money from all rides around the world. And most of the money goes to the executives and a few thousand shareholders.
You now have a group of millions of people unable to make a living, and support their families. Apply this to all jobs that require mostly drivers (trucking, busses etc) and we just destroyed ~10 million jobs (including supporting infrastructure) in the US alone.
These people need to make a living - if Uber ends up paying super low tax (compared to what it displaces) we have a huge number of people making no money and a few getting all of it.
Civil unrest follows naturally (in one form or another) and you end up with either
1. Segmented civilization with a few people defending their wealth with hired guns
2. Social reform - guaranteed basic income for a while, but long term?
3. Revolution where the mob takes over and the outcome is anyone's guess - an extreme form of socialism?
It's not just about values, a lot of it is about long-term thinking.
Which of the three outcomes is better may be a question of values - is it better that a few people do super well and everyone else suffers, or most do pretty well?
Without some social stability and wellness companies cannot function - people need money to pay with, and without jobs there's not much money to go around.
My running hypothesis is that many journalists have found "dirt" on various companies or individuals, and have written it up as ready-to-release hit pieces... and then let it sit, because it currently goes against the sociopolitical zeitgeist. The moment anyone or anything becomes disliked, all these pre-written stories get published.
I'm fairly certain that the Google lawsuit, the video of them running the red light, and the yelling video were timed. How long did they have them? They just happened to get them the week Uber was plastered all over?
While I don't like the company either, I wouldn't be surprised if competing companies had some PR peeps trying to stoke the flames. Why would they pass it up?
Comments like this confuse me. Are you accusing the author of fabricating facts? Do you contest the facts or testimonies in the article? What is the justification for calling this a "hit piece"? Did you actually read it?
Why is it surprising that a company under the spotlight... winds up with more journalistic investigations?
When I was in high school, a teacher I had for a video journalism course emphatically hammered home the point that there was no such thing as unbiased media: the stories you choose to cover or not cover, the use of pretty much any adjective, the phrasing of the headline, placement, abundance of quotes, frequency of consulting expert opinions, use of statistics of varying quality, etc. create an inescapable subjectivity.
For quite some time I scoffed at this as social marxist nonsense useful to launch any kind of conspiracy theory, but there might be a point to it in smaller scales, especially if the editors are beholden to the almighty gods of clicks and page views from an audience hungry for a narrative.
Bias always exists to some extent but not all media are equally biased or biased in the same way. Citing this as a reason to dismiss any media content that makes you uncomfortable is itself an example of subjective bias. You can aim for a kind of objectivity by attempting to maximize the predictive power of the information that you convey to as wide an audience as possible.
Do you not think the boycottUber thing was a little overblown? What about releasing the video of Kalanick being illegally recorded and framing it as him "exploding" when he was relatively calm? All I'm saying is that focuses on silly stuff like that undermines the larger disturbing cases of law breaking and sexism.
Why not assume people are being genuine? Uber has done tons of things to piss people off. I think people in the HN bubble forget that the majority of the country has never been in a ride share. Talk to some blue collar people. Talk to some taxi drivers. Talk to drivers who left Uber. You might find that they aren't as sympathetic to Kalanick as people on HN are. HN in general has more sympathy for corporations and billionaires than I've seen anywhere else on the internet.
That story is legitimate and was released in July. My only gripe was that it seems some were holding onto stories like that, or sometimes even trivial stories and are now releasing them to essentialy dogpile.
Don't you think that maybe there's just so much shady crap at Uber that it's flying all over? When Theranos got picked apart, I don't think anybody was sitting on stories, I think they were gleefully publishing them as soon as they got a tip. Perhaps seeing Susan Fowler come forward with her name attached has emboldened other Uber employees who felt like what they were doing was wrong.
Not only am I done with Uber, I'm starting to wonder about associates and partners (investors, advisors, marketing partners, etc.)
If you're still doing business with Uber in 2017, it's because you don't want to know or you don't care who you're dealing with. Neither reflects well on you. It tells me you have your own very low bar -- your own version of "well we're not as awful as taxis shrug" -- above which anything goes ethically and professionally.
Which is your choice. It is also my choice to be concerned about doing business with you and steer clear.
"But unknown to Mr. England and other authorities, some of the digital cars they saw in the app did not represent actual vehicles. And the Uber drivers they were able to hail also quickly canceled. That was because Uber had tagged Mr. England and his colleagues — essentially Greyballing them as city officials — based on data collected from the app and in other ways. The company then served up a fake version of the app populated with ghost cars, to evade capture."
Holy shit that's actually impressive in how deceitful it is.
It's actually pretty common if you cast this as an abuse detection tool, which it sounds like this may have started out as. Think of it like shadowbanning - when you catch someone, your measures are more effective if the person doesn't realize you've done it. You want to hide the mechanism by which they got caught, and then you want to delay their ability to take countermeasures. This basically checks those boxes.
What if local law enforcement officer was posing undercover as an Uber customer as part of a sexual assault investigation or trying to track down all drivers in relation to a recent crime?
This is framed as getting around restrictions on taxi services, but any time you proactively thwart law enforcement, you're inviting a lot of dangerous unintended consequences. None of which I'm sure Uber is concerned about.
> any time you proactively thwart law enforcement, you're inviting a lot of dangerous unintended consequences.
I'm curious, what do you think about Google's "State-sponsored attackers are trying to compromise your account" warning? [1] Maybe it's police officers trying to break into the Gmail account of a pedophile or a terrorist, and Google is thwarting these efforts by warning the suspect.
That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that set of circumstances. It would take me more time/length than a message board comment to work through the ethics of that, but point well taken.
> What if local law enforcement officer was posing undercover as an Uber customer as part of a sexual assault investigation or trying to track down all drivers in relation to a recent crime?
If they were, then I suspect that Uber would go out of their way to cooperate, using the detailed information they have on ride histories. Get a warrant, serve it to Uber, and get the data needed for the investigation.
This ignores the question of whether Uber should gather and keep that much information, but given that they do, using it seems far more useful than anything this mechanism would have thwarted.
They're pre-emptively choosing to obstruct enforcement of whatever laws they deem unacceptable. So that's quite a rosy expectation about their willingness to cooperate.
I don't think you could consider this obstruction. It's their service, it's private, they can serve data to users the way they wish. There is a method and a system in place if law enforcement can prove they need unfettered access – a warrant issued by a judge.
Facebook is already better, with number of mutual friends. It does require having a social circle that's relatively immune from law enforcement coercion.
Of all the things Uber is accused of this week, I'm pretty sure this one is the least concerning. It seems to involve the ethical dilemma of a radar detector.
Speed limits are about public safety, too, but speed traps are usually about money. Ride-sharing regulations might be about safety, but Uber 'stings' seem to be about hurting drivers (not Uber) and preserving the value of taxi medallions.
If the police want information, subpoena Uber; don't play spy vs spy with folks trying to eke out a few bucks.
> Uber then served up a fake version of its app that was populated with ghost cars, to evade capture.
> To date, Greyballing has been effective. In Portland that day in late 2014, Mr. England, the enforcement officer, did not catch an Uber, according to local reports.
> To circumvent that tactic, Uber employees went to that city’s local electronics stores to look up device numbers of the cheapest mobile phones on sale, which were often the ones bought by city officials, whose budgets were not sizable.
Holy moley. That is so slimy and sneaky.
Well heck this opens a new startup opportunity -- build a device or service to create phone and accounts to evade Greyball and sell its usage to local law enforcement. The price would be low enough if it is sold or provided per hour for example. They could afford that.
That's actually pretty impressive. I mean, it morally questionable maybe. Is there a law that says Uber is required to send a cab to city officials? The official gave Uber access to his personal details. If Uber doesn't want to fulfill the request it seems reasonable that ultimately it's Uber's decision. I'm not sure what to think about this one.
You've got to admit Uber has brought the BigCorp stereotype of the 80s to life. I am amazed at the (US?)-culture that makes people enact so poisonous policies. In my corporation, literally the first line of our risk appetite says that we uphold the law and common norms and morality. Seems trivial, but still gives guidance to everyday actions. Could you explain it to your mom? Whole layers of management and lawyers flaunting common norms... I couldn't work there. How's VC-ing this different from bankrolling Al Capone?
If anything, I find this very clever. While there are many valid reasons that justify anger against Uber (workplace harassment and predatory pricing), I don't think this is one. Instead of outlawing Uber, cities and governments should take a step back and reflect on these laws which Uber has proven servers no one.
It says uber legal approved this, but uber legal is mostly corporate and ip counsel.
I strongly doubt they had anyone with significant criminal experience look at this, because i have trouble seeing someone not immediately saying "you're joking,right? Are you stupid?"
Maybe Greyball was approved by Uber legal when it was envisioned as a system for excluding bad users (rival companies etc) and then without additional legal review they started using it to exclude suspected law enforcement?
My guess is that the approved tool the company allows to merely build a profile of the additional details necessary to provide additional 'white glove' style service to VIPs to ensure positive word of mouth occurs. Then they realized that they were seeing data that indicated that they were being watched a little closer by the .gov, and 'adjusted' the software to reject or process those people's Uber experiences differently.
At first, I considered it more clever than anything. Using data to reduce ticketable-offenses for their drivers (in an undeniably unethical way). However, my view quickly soured when I read:
> If those clues were not enough to confirm a user’s identity, Uber employees would search social media profiles and other available information online.
For some reason, I make a mental distinction between some automated system blocking access and having employees research potential customers online for a ride-share app. The bad PR week for Uber continues.
I thought of the same thing when I read this. I have to admit, this was really smart and "naughty" on their part.
I'm not happy to hear what kind of company Uber is, internally. However, they seem to operate how VCs want companies to act and "disrupt" markets. (Minus the harassment stuff.)
I'm confused by what laws were broken by Greyball. It's certainly deceptive, but is that illegal?
In these cases I'm sympathetic to Uber -
Let's call it "don't delay the pie to get your slice". One of the types of circumstances described is where a municipality doesn't know how to handle ride-shares, so Uber does questionable things to get ride-shares going while the legal situation is figured out. This seems reasonable (within bounds) - because: should the municipality be able to delay the pie while they figure out how to get their slice? Not exactly incentivized to do it in a timely manner; while, if the pie is out there happening, they're incentivized to get their slice in a timely fashion.
"I'm confused by what laws were broken by Greyball. It's certainly deceptive, but is that illegal?
"
Depending on circumstances/jurisdiction, and done for the explicit purpose of preventing law enforcement or other officials from being able to catch criminals (again, the uber drivers breaking the law by driving when it's banned), yes, it's absolutely illegal.
(whether it should be is a different question, but it definitely is)
Obstruction of justice comes to mind. There's a concept of "misleading conduct" typically in obstruction laws.
Not sure, though, if it applies to tort type infractions...which is usually where Uber plays, or only in cases where the obstruction is hindering investigation of criminal activity.
I am trying to come up with an analogy to comprehend this.
Imagine a city government has a rule against palm oil and no restaurants are supposed to use palm oil. A restaurant think that rule is nuts and decides to protest it publicly by using it. At the same time, they rip off the label from the palm oil. The city was having trouble finding the palm oil in the restaurant.
You can claim that the restaurant has broken the city rule - which is not a secret. But I don't think ripping off the label or making the regulators life more challenging is a crime by itself.
In my town, they were picking up drivers, then immediately fining them $1200 for being a taxi, without the taxi insurance and a special license/permit. I could see uber wanting to avoid that.
Imagine murder is illegal. But some guy thinks it isn't and does it anyway.
He puts bodies in acid, hides them in concrete, and so on.
Now this kind of behaviour is likely to mean the authorities will take a lot longer to find murderers. Murderers will get away with it from time to time. And a lot of resource needs to be spent just to find the criminals.
We do tend to be more forgiving with crimes where the criminal confesses, and rightly so.
"we need to permanently track your location on the app to better serve you. unless you are a possible government official, in which case we will track your location to block you from the service"
yes definitely not scary at all that they're tracking open/close of the app by location...
Where users open the app is just as legitimate a marketing tool as traffic counts or parking lot counts in retail, or musicians knowing where Spotify users are streaming their songs to inform concert tour plans, etc.
If you give me location access permission, it seems reasonable to expect that I'm going to use that location access.
That is pretty interesting, although 'greyballing' as a analog for 'blackballing' as an analog of creating a list of people you won't serve is taking it a bit deep. I wonder if a counter hack would be to make it illegal to discriminate against people based on whether or not they were a public employee.
I think it is completely reasonable to have a 'reputation' system where drivers can rate passengers as well as passengers rating drivers, and then sharing that rating so that drivers wouldn't pick up people known to be combative drunks. Having your app display a bunch of 'ghost cars' always out of reach has a certain poetic justice.
But parts of this are really mind blowing, going into shops and recording the IMEI's of burner phones for later correlation? I think that's a service right there.
It sounds like Greyball started out as a fairly legitimate tool to protect their drivers and customers from violence and abuse. And, then, of course it's use started broadening to the current status...
I think Uber needed such tool because they tried to barge their way in a hostile market. I think people blaming Uber for being unethical should ask question what led them to do such behavior (because of ancient government laws)
I'm not defending Uber but I think if they didn't enter market people would have never know what is it.
I second this feeling. Uber may be a terrible company led by terrible people, but they opened the floodgates for a better framework of cab transportation. I hope that sticks (the model, idc about the company)
Uber leadership provides yet another reason to be happy with deleting their app. A weak apology that didn't even mention their most egregious behaviors??! Travis, you should do the right thing and step down as CEO. You will never be thought of as trustable or honorable again (if you ever were...)
Even if the law says that Uber must admit taxi inspectors, it's hard to say Uber's breaking the law if the inspectors don't "show their badge" or otherwise identify themselves as officials.
Of course if they do show their badge, there's a great incentive for Uber to say "Sorry, no drivers are available in your area" even if this is not really true.
So you have this curious cat-and-mouse game where the taxi inspector pretends to be somebody else, and Uber tries to penetrate the facade.
As mentioned above, there are plenty of jurisdictions where, if uber was illegal, this would be textbook obstruction of justice on the part of uber (because uber is deliberately obstructing the investigation of the drivers, who are committing a crime)
Some of the tactics could fall afoul of anti-discrimination laws - particularly, grabbing device numbers of cheap pre-paid phones could have an adverse impact on minorities.
Thinking about it a bit more, the next-level approach is to make sting activity look like african-american activity, then grab members of the african american community who now cannot hail an uber and sue under anti-discrimination measures.
Not providing information to officials is one thing. Actively deceiving them with a map full of fake cars is a few steps further. I imagine quite a few countries' definitions of obstruction of justice could be met here
Speculating: possibly they may be safe if their TOS prohibits using the service to ticket drivers, which is not the intended purpose of the service. Courts have generally been kind to private company's TOS.
I'm a bit torn by this. On the one hand Uber is a terrible company exploiting people desperate enough to sell themselves in the "gig economy" and breaking all manner of laws in the process.
On the other hand I remember my friends and neighbors being abused by police and our "justice" system on a near daily basis as I grew up so it's hard for me to muster much sympathy when their efforts are thwarted.
To me this looks like two powerful entities engaged in a game of slap-fight that ultimately disregards folks of lesser social and economic means.
How things like this remain secrets for so long is astounding to me. By definition of what the day to day of driving strangers around Uber has hundreds of drivers who hate their job yet it took this long for these stories to start finding their way into the press.
With Volkswagon cheating the system it was a small group of engineers and covert approval from the top that explained how they could get away with it for so long.
The company I work for builds software platforms for cities, tldr: we have a pretty basic sub/pub idea for city data, and give them a little abstraction tool that allows folks who work in cities but don't know what an API is a way to create and publish one so they can then hold the vendor to account (From IoT to the Ubers and Lyfts of the world) -
I spent a lot of time in cities talking to them and the way uber has lobbied and created special interests is absolutely mind blowing. Sometimes a CIO in city using our tool will go to the Mayor and show them how uber, lyft, airbnb etc could integrate to give the city more insight, and without fail the Mayor is scared to push the companies.
Off topic, I just checked out your site. Cool stuff. I work for a labor market data company of whom EDO/WIBs are a large portion of our client base. I'm curious to what kind of data you have at the zip level.
Setting aside the rather questionable ethics for a moment, this program is quite badass when looking at it from a purely logistical point of view.
In fact, it's so machiavellian that it feels like I'm reading an article disclosing an NSA program and not a private transportation company's activities.
If only they had the same fervor for say, combating sexual harassment in the workplace.
I don't see why this is so bad. They're a private business, and they're allowed to do business with whom they will. It doesn't really change anything w.r.t the fact that they're skirting regulation, especially if the given origin story is true. Pretty tame compared to the other stuff we've been seeing from Uber, lately.
"Q: What sorts of acts may constitute obstruction of justice?
A: Obstruction may consist of any attempt to hinder the discovery, apprehension, conviction or punishment of anyone who has committed a crime.
Q: Does obstruction of justice always involve bribery or physical force?
A: No. One particularly murky category of obstruction is the use of "misleading conduct" toward another person for the purpose of obstructing justice. "Misleading conduct" may consist of deliberate lies or "material omissions" (leaving out facts which are crucial to a case). It may also include knowingly submitting or inviting a judge or jury to rely on false or misleading physical evidence, such as documents, maps, photographs or other objects. Any other "trick, scheme, or device with intent to mislead" may constitute a "misleading conduct" form of obstruction.
"
If the city has made it actually illegal to drive uber vehicles, this is pretty much textbook obstruction on the part of uber, ....
Isn't obstruction of justice something that happens after a crime has been committed? If I'm a thief and I do my thieving in the middle of the night when no one is around that's an attempt to hinder discovery but it's not obstruction of justice (I don't think?).
Similarly if Uber is operating illegally in a city and they use software to avoid picking up a city official in a sting operation that doesn't sound like obstruction.
IAAL (but i've only done small amount of criminal work).
A crime has been committed, even if they don't pick up the officials.
If uber is operating illegally, the drivers that have picked anyone up have committed a crime.
Keeping the cars away from the officials trying to ticket and prosecute those drivers is the obstruction.
That is, it's not the "avoiding sting" that causes it to be obstruction, because the crime was committed the second a driver picked someone up. Instead, the obstruction is "helping drivers who have committed crimes not be noticed, ticketed, or prosecuted"
That's definitely obstruction in jurisdictions that have this form of obstruction.
But the city's goal with these sting operations wasn't to catch and prosecute drivers/uber for previous trips. It was to catch them in the act for a single trip and prosecute them for that.
To use another analogy, if I'm a drug dealer and the cops try to buy drugs from me in a sting operation and I somehow figure out that they're cops and walk away before doing a deal is that obstruction of justice? Because I think that's basically what is (was?) happening here.
It might be relevant if the person allegedly committing a crime and the person making the supposed crime harder to discover are the same person. In your case they are, in Uber's case they aren't (AFAIK).
"But the city's goal with these sting operations wasn't to catch and prosecute drivers/uber for previous trips."
Errr, sure it is. Their investigatory mechanism happen to be to try catch them on a trip they could prove originated in the city, giving them probable cause to stop them and ticket them.
This just happens to be easier to do as a sting.
"It was to catch them in the act for a single trip and prosecute them for that."
That is just the method, not the purpose of the investigation.
Your argument is what would be called "a distinction without a difference"
If the FBI is looking for illegal uranium sellers, and they try to buy/bust a low level guy as part of the investigation, it does not make the investigation about the buy/bust, it's still to catch and prosecute illegal uranium sellers.
Here, the investigation's goal was to catch and prosecute uber
drivers driving illegally.
In any case, it doesn't matter.
Remember "Obstruction may consist of any attempt to hinder the discovery, apprehension, conviction or punishment of anyone who has committed a crime. "
Not "the crime you are currently investigating", but any crime.
For example, oneo the the federal statute says:
"(a) Whoever willfully endeavors by means of bribery to obstruct, delay, or prevent the communication of information relating to a violation of any criminal statute of the United States by any person to a criminal investigator shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."
(emph mine)
(Ignore the bribery part, there's a ton of these statutes,i'm just pulling out one)
"To use another analogy, if I'm a drug dealer and the cops try to buy drugs from me in a sting operation and I somehow figure out that they're cops and walk away before doing a deal is that obstruction of justice? Because I think that's basically what is (was?) happening here.
"
This isn't obstruction, but it's not what is happening here.
Imagine if the cops were investigating you for dealing drugs. They already had evidence you deal drugs. They ask your friend where you are, even just to talk to you, to try to get cleaner evidence, and he deliberately lies about where you are to protect you. Congrats, that's obstruction in a lot of jurisdictions. No sting reuired.
Here, the cops are asking the uber app where the drivers are. They know or have probable cause to believe the drivers have committed crimes (again, the sting part is just about having a very clean prosecution, it's not required or necessary here).
Uber deliberately lies about where the drivers are, with the purpose of protecting them from this investigation.
You can ignore the sting they were doing completely. The crime was complete the second a law enforcement officer, trying to investigate the crimes of an uber driver, opened the app in an attempt to find a driver (even just to talk to!) and got fake results.
> Here, the cops are asking the uber app where the drivers are. They know or have probable cause to believe the drivers have committed crimes (again, the sting part is just about having a very clean prosecution, it's not required or necessary here). Uber deliberately lies about where the drivers are, with the purpose of protecting them from this investigation.
You have a point here. Though I don't think they were lying about the locations of actual drivers when inserting ghost cars.
But before you were saying that merely refusing to send drivers to cops is obstruction. Why is that obstruction, but refusing to sell drugs to the cops is not obstruction? Picture an alternate version of the app that wouldn't schedule pickups on those phones, but never lied.
As the lawyer in this conversation I'm gonna assume that you're right. Seems like a pretty broad law though. Seems like it could be an add on to almost any other criminal act as criminals almost always try to avoid getting caught one way or another.
you don't have to say anything (except you should definitely affirmatively invoke your right)
Others often can say "i'm not getting involved" or something not misleading or deliberately intended to help you avoid prosecution[1]
But note: Outside of privileges, others often do not have that right to say nothing, it's just not forced in a lot of cases because it's pointless.
[1] they can also often be forced to get involved as a material witness, blah blah blah, in a lot of cases. You just wouldn't put them on the stand anyway because they're not going to be helpful.
Maybe I'm just blasé about the whole thing. I'm just saying that when you take into account the fact that they were already breaking the law, using this tool to help isn't a big jump. People in this thread are acting shocked, and I don't get it.
I kind of doubt it. It's not like you enter into a contract with Uber just by downloading the app, and I don't think you have a legal right to use their services. Maybe you could drum up some sort of civil rights violation? But I don't think law enforcement is actually a protected class...
> It's not like you enter into a contract with Uber just by downloading the app
Ahh, but Uber themselves say you ARE!
"By accessing or using the Services, you confirm your agreement to be bound by these Terms..."
It'd be incredibly amusing to watch their lawyers try to argue it both ways though. They'd have to either admit that they did have a contract, or they'd have to completely tear up their terms-of-service.
IANAL or even very knowledgeable so I could be way off here. Looking up the legal definition of fraud, I found that it requires:
(1) a false statement of a material fact, (2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result.
1-4 seem obvious enough, but I'm not sure about #5. Would wasting their time or interfering with their enforcement job be enough to qualify as "injury"? Or, since they're acting on behalf of the local government, would it count as injury against that government due to not being able to prosecute crimes and apply fines that they would have been able to if Uber hadn't lied?
This seems like one of the first major illicit uses of data science. There should be more regulation and oversight over the data owned by corporations.
Where I'm from a taxi driver gets a fine if they refuse service to someone. Seems that Uber has that built in. Seems like it could easily abused for discrimination.
Kind of weird IMO to think of a company as deserving or not deserving something. It's a group of people with a with array of opinions and behavior, many of whom probably like having a place to work
It's much more constructive to want the organization to get better than to cheer on some kind of punishment we think it's owed
> Kind of weird IMO to think of a company as deserving or not deserving something.
Companies have patterns of behavior just like any other entity. As much as the idea of 'deserving' applies at all, it can apply to companies.
> It's much more constructive to want the organization to get better than to cheer on some kind of punishment we think it's owed
It's a strange implication that this is different from how we should treat individuals. We should be more focused on rehabilitation when it's an individual.
I'm not supportive of Uber anymore because of the apparently toxic culture, however, I DO side on the free market, especially when it comes to things like taxis, etc. The fact that a grown adult with a car can't engage in a transaction with another consenting grown adult to exchange money for a ride somewhere (or pick your product of choice..) to me, that's anti-liberty.
The argument has always been "we have to protect the public." However, if that's the case, then why wouldn't the government "protect" people from hitchhiking? Apparently hitchhiking is legal. (https://expertvagabond.com/hitchhiking-america/) Getting into cars with strange guys someone meets at a bar is also legal. Going to eat food at someone's unlicensed kitchen in their home is legal -- as long as you don't pay for it. All "dangerous" activities.
In terms of "protecting" the public, why does the public always need protecting? For example, arguments against marijuana, yet alcohol is legal. Drinking 1000 Coca Colas is perfectly legal, but the Szechuan peppercorn was was banned in the US from 1968 until 2005 to "protect" people. Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal. Swimming pools kill over 3,500 people per year in the US -- far more than die (or are even injured) in Ubers. Yet we need to restrict Uber/Lyft/etc. because "protecting the public?"
Regarding "protecting" us from "unsafe" drivers -- that really ought to be up to the individual to decide. If Uber, Lyft, et al were getting into daily fatal accidents, then the public would likely chose another means to get a ride -- meaning, the market (when it's allowed to work,) does achieve an equilibrium. If one service is "dangerous" or "rude" or whatever, a competitor can win business by promoting "safety" or "politeness." Yet, when the taxi mafia controls a town, the market can't respond because there are artificial barriers to entry.
"Don't like Yellow Cab? -- ok, you could try calling Yellow Cab if you want an alternative."
I strongly condemn Uber's apparently toxic culture -- but in terms of the need for "regulation" or other such nonsense, I feel like grown adults ought not need to be continually "protected." There are some notable exceptions; pharmaceuticals for example because there are long-term ill effects from faulty medicines and the general public isn't knowledgable about molecular biology. However there aren't any long-term ill effects from riding in an Uber -- not any more so than riding in any other paid conveyance. Regulating hair stylists? Even exotic dangers have to have a license in many places: a girl actually has to have permission from some city agency to take off her clothes and dance. That's just nonsensical.
Freedom ought to matter, but nowadays it seems as if it's freedom, as long as you fill out a bunch of forms and pay a fee or have political influence (as does the taxi mafia.) Who cares if some dude wants to take people in his car for money. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to ride. Cities are pissed at Uber not because citizens are dying in Uber wrecks but because they're missing out on extortionate fees and/or campaign donations from the taxi lobby. Funny how "liberal" Portland and Austin had banned Uber. Not very liberal at all if you ask me -- just old fashioned money-grubbing cronyism. Portland had legal marijuana but illegal Uber. Ridiculous. True liberalism is about freedom -- not the nanny state.
Good for Uber in doing what they can to thwart these "officials" that seem to think their mission in life is to control, subdue and "protect" the population.
bash them for the sexism agreed, but not everything. When riding a taxi was ridiculously expensive. Uber made it affordable and bought it to the middle class. Haters will remain haters.
In the US, riding in a taxi has never been ridiculously expensive, and it has not gotten any cheaper on account of Uber.
Moreover, Uber did not create a business to offer affordable rides to the middle class. They created a business to offer the sort of luxury that titans of industry who have private drivers experience, to people willing to pay for that service.
What Uber did do is make the 'car on demand' idea functional and ubiquitous. But A) they didn't do it legally and B) it turns on the 'on demand' part matters more to customers than the 'luxury' part.
So today, because rides are subsidized, you can summon a car and be driven around for what seems like quite a bargain. But subsidies are pretty much the opposite of 'product market fit'.
This news appears to be a clear-cut example of Uber not only breaking the law, but of obstructing justice to protect their illegal operations from enforcement of the law. I think that ought to be looked upon contemptuously.
Let's be clear here. The laws Uber violated here were bad laws. They were the result of a semi-corrupt relationship between city governments and taxi cab companies. Uber has been the prime mover in killing these laws. That's a good thing.
This is certainly a hardball approach, but I see nothing especially wrong with it. When you install Uber, you authorize it to send location data. If you happen to work at a transportation enforcement office, that is going to be immediately apparent to them unless you take countermeasures, such as using a GPS spoofing app.
If I declare myself to be an enemy of a given entity, I fully expect them to use every resource at their disposal to attempt to defeat me - especially when that entity has billions of dollars at stake. That they are using tactics like this shouldn't be surprising. It should be expected.
I kind of have a newfound respect for Uber's ingenuity after reading this. It's probably one of hundreds of examples of the reasons that they have risen so fast.
> If I declare myself to be an enemy of a given entity, I fully expect them to use every resource at their disposal to attempt to defeat me
For dealing with individuals, I don't agree that it's ok to use every resource at their disposal. For example, getting the person fired or slandering them is not acceptable.
But this is dealing with government. Avoiding the law and law enforcement is wrong and often illegal.
This program was cleared by what I assume to be a highly paid, competent legal department. So I'm going to guess that you are wrong about the "illegal" part. They are a private business that can refuse service to anyone. Even businesses that aren't even close to breaking the law may have perfectly legitimate reasons to avoid serving people in law enforcement, whose job it often is to cause problems and increased expenses for the businesses they visit.
It would be illegal to refuse to allow them to do their job if they properly identified themselves as officers, and those officers had some kind of court order authorizing them to seize a car for example. But these are undercover agents posing as legitimate customers - a completely different scenario.
It isn't necessarily about breaking laws. There are many legitimate reasons to deny service to undercover law enforcement personnel who are often simply looking for ways to boost their agency's revenue through specious allegations. Uber has no legal obligation to do anything for people that do not declare themselves to be law enforcement personnel with special rights.
Not that it will ever stop them, but I often build a clause into the TOS of my websites that law enforcement personnel may not use the site without prior authorization. I have no idea if this will ever stand up in court, but perhaps this clause will, for example, be useful in defeating a search warrant for user information since the suspicion upon which the warrant is based would necessarily have been obtained without authorization unless the government asked for permission to access the site in advance. A healthy disdain for government agents makes for a healthy, free society.
I like this. Some call it hustle, others call it evading LE because cashflow is king, and nothing shall stop the flow.
I commend this but also frown at it for being so brazen. If such a tool was used for the opposite reasons (spotting crime and reporting it to police), then perhaps the tool might stand a chance, but showcasing it in full view of LEOs is outright brazen and guaranteed to embarrass.
People are campaigning on Twitter to #DeleteUber[0] but fail to recognize the naive nature of the story. I consider Uber nothing more than an ongoing experiment, and any tool they release to increase their revenue should be both commended and also be treated with suspicion.
But there's a lot in the article that doesn't make sense:
>Other techniques included looking at the user’s credit card information and whether that card was tied directly to an institution like a police credit union.
I couldn't find a good source, but it doesn't seem like that's something a CC merchant would have access to. Do they really get to see that?[2]
Also, how were they able to do it so accurately without disrupting their service? Most city employees and police aren't going to be involved in sting operations against car services, so their customer support will have to deal with a torrent of very confused government employees [1] who keep getting mysterious rejections when they try to use they app, and which support can't give a truthful answer on.
Plus, this seemed to require significant on-the-ground intel and human intervention:
>If those clues were not enough to confirm a user’s identity, Uber employees would search social media profiles and other available information online. Once a user was identified as law enforcement, Uber Greyballed him or her, tagging the user with a small piece of code that read Greyball followed by a string of numbers.
So, I'm surprised it worked at all.
[1] identified by the fact of that person having more-than-usual activity inside something recognized as a government building
[2] EDIT: Okay, I get it -- you can look up banks from the CC number. Can we not have further comments just to point this out?
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