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

nytimes.com

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

#371

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thinkmassive wrote: post #355
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 compl…

I think you misinterpreted what matt4077 said. Most "hacking attempts and similar" are illegal. Tor is often (nobody said always) used in attacks, so the IPs of most exit nodes show up during attacks, which requires future users coming from those same exit nodes to solve the captcha. Cloudflare makes these decisions based on data, not on interpreting the law.

> Cloudflare makes these decisions based on data, not on interpreting the law

As they are entitled to do. Uber saw damaging activity coming from burner phones. They blocked and/or modified the related services.

If the investigators had identified themselves to Uber and then Uber did this, that might be different (though law enforcement is not, for good reasons, a protected class). The investigators chose a quieter path and Uber reacted accordingly.

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

#372

Post by mintplant »

splonk wrote: post #290
nunez wrote: post #175

"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 ap…

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.

The name suggests this as well. "Ban" is to "shadowban" as "blackball" is to "Greyball".

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

#374

Post by ForHackernews »

austenallred wrote: post #293
jfoutz wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

> temporarily

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

#375

Post by Trombone12 »

harryh wrote: post #191
DannyBee wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 f…

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.

Eh, seems fine to me that you can add on extra punishment for not simply owning up to the crime, it's not like avoiding to be caught is a desired behaviour.

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

#376

Post by prewett »

mindcrime wrote: post #311
jfoutz wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 t…

Are you also going to take the same generous view towards people evading State regulations and laws that you don't like? Because if you are only okay with people evading laws that you don't like, but they should obey the ones you do like, then you are setting yourself above the law. That way lies authoritarianism.

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

#377

Post by [deleted] »

maldusiecle wrote: post #24
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…

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 multinatio…

[deleted]

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

#378

Post by ForHackernews »

avn2109 wrote: post #309
austenallred wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I seem to be the minority here, but I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Anyone who uses e.g. the Waze app to evade speedtraps is similarly guilty of "systematically avoiding the law." Lastly, let me just disclaim that I think Uber is run by assholes and so is the police.

> I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them.

Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.

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

#379

Post by dragonwriter »

lacampbell wrote: post #68
maldusiecle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 multinatio…

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…

> If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber.

You can, but if that decision is not sufficiently common in your area, and you don't have sufficient resources to relocate before the problem becomes acute, you may find your practical choices constrained in such a way that you are left with no realistic choice for necessary functions but to use Uber.

> What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying?

You can (and history has lots of examples of people doing just that), but if that decision is not sufficiently popular in your area... well, the same as for Uber, above. The particular manner in which the lack of options, may, depending on the particular state and the particular service involved, be more dramatic than the case with most corporate goods or services. OTOH, depending on the particular state and service, you may have a lot more direct input into the decision making behind providing the service and how the state reacts to opting out, in the first place.

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

#380

Post by [deleted] »

ForHackernews wrote: post #378
avn2109 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to be the minority here, but I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Anyone who uses e.g. the Waze app to evade speedtraps is similarly guilty of "systematically avoiding the law." Lastly, let me just disclaim that I think Uber is run by assholes and so is the police.

> I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.

[deleted]
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