How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide

Post by ThrustVectoring » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:26 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #106

Fede_V wrote: post #39

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 go…

> 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 peo…

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:27 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #149

SilasX wrote: post #111

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’…

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. This has got to be illegal.

Post by robryk » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:27 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #108

DannyBee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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 t…

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:28 PM UTC

LyndsySimon wrote: post #89

Wizek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flee? Sure, if you are already wanted for arrest. Otherwise you can also move/emigrate. Which sounds a lot less dramatic than 'flee'.

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.

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:29 PM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #118

HorizonXP wrote: post #6

How diabolical! 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 see…

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.