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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

#571

Post by Florin_Andrei »

lacampbell wrote: post #551
ska wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I experimented with socialism in High School. I was actually reading authors much more banal than Ayn Rand could ever hope to be - like Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. Really glad I grew out of that stage. Gave up half way through Atlas shrugged I'm afraid. I did enjoy how accurately it depicted socialists and social democrats though - as I was reading it I could help but laugh as I've come across people talking like tha…

The extremes are always wrong.

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

#572

Post by Godel_unicode »

mkolodny wrote: post #563
booleandilemma wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greyball makes it easier for Uber to continue breaking the law. It's like drug dealers using police scanners to determine if the police are nearby.

Or like non-Jews hiding Jews from the Nazi police. Obviously that's a dramatic example, but so is the drug dealer example. If Uber believes that the taxi industry is wrongfully colluding with the government to try to stop Uber from operating, then it's not necessarily wrong for Uber to do whatever it can to continue operating.

A less extreme example would be saying that you bought that weed for your glaucoma.

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

#573

Post by adamsea »

mkolodny wrote: post #563
booleandilemma wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greyball makes it easier for Uber to continue breaking the law. It's like drug dealers using police scanners to determine if the police are nearby.

Or like non-Jews hiding Jews from the Nazi police. Obviously that's a dramatic example, but so is the drug dealer example. If Uber believes that the taxi industry is wrongfully colluding with the government to try to stop Uber from operating, then it's not necessarily wrong for Uber to do whatever it can to continue operating.

If Uber believes the taxi industry and the government are wrongfully colluding, it has the means to legally make that case as well as in the court of public opinion.

That is obviously not true for the extreme example you cited of genocide under fascism, so, I don't think it makes sense to compare the two.

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

#575

Post by Godel_unicode »

ceejayoz wrote: post #411
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.

Obstruction of justice and interfering with police duties are crimes in plenty of jurisdictions. I'm not sure Waze is a good comparison - your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law, so it'd be hard to argue it's obstruction of justice.

I think that Waze is a great comparison. There's an app which is explicitly used to find and avoid police in order to flaut the law.

The main difference in my view is that Waze is individual people doing this, which we approve of, conversely Uber is a corporation many dislike. In situations like this it's important to acknowledge bias and try to abstract to the general case and reason about that.

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

#576

Post by adamsea »

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…

What are your thoughts on food safety law? The 40-hour work week? Net neutrality (such as it is)?

Also it's disingenuous to call laws "arbitray". Like them or not, many, if not most laws, are the opposite of arbitrary.

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

#577

Post by getpost »

getpost wrote: post #569
spitfire wrote: post #107

Lets not forget that YC has endorsed Uber multiple times in public statements. When YC says "be naughty" this is what they mean. They'll try to distance themselves from this now, but their statements were "be naughty" while holding up AirBnB and Uber as examples to be proud of. Take what you will from that.

In jurisdictions where Uber is illegal, Uber's graywall activities are organized crime; there's no other way to put it. How is it any different than, say, an app that advises drug couriers where there are (possibly undercover) enforcement agents. This is serious stuff, and in no way does the desire to provide better taxi service justify it. In 20 seconds of googling I didn't find pg urging entrepreneurs to be naughty…

I read What We Look for in Founders[1], and I think the section on Naughtiness conveys the wrong message, unless pg actually intends to suggest that, for example, the graywall tactics that Uber has used are desireable. Is Portland's law against services like Uber's a law "that matters?"

pg makes a more specific case for disobedience in The Word "Hacker"[2], and maybe he really does look for people who will flout the law when they see fit.

I don't see an easy way to rephrase what pg is saying in a way I'd prefer to see it, except to say that the there is a distinction between civil disobedience for the purpose of insisting on human rights and mere criminal behavior. Surely YCombinator does not want to invest in criminal enterprises, no matter how clever or hackish.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/founders.html [2] http://paulgraham.com/gba.html

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

#578

Post by timecube »

mkolodny wrote: post #563
booleandilemma wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greyball makes it easier for Uber to continue breaking the law. It's like drug dealers using police scanners to determine if the police are nearby.

Or like non-Jews hiding Jews from the Nazi police. Obviously that's a dramatic example, but so is the drug dealer example. If Uber believes that the taxi industry is wrongfully colluding with the government to try to stop Uber from operating, then it's not necessarily wrong for Uber to do whatever it can to continue operating.

https://youtu.be/t5zQpN28xa4

Life imitates art.

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

#579

Post by getpost »

getpost wrote: post #577
getpost wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In jurisdictions where Uber is illegal, Uber's graywall activities are organized crime; there's no other way to put it. How is it any different than, say, an app that advises drug couriers where there are (possibly undercover) enforcement agents. This is serious stuff, and in no way does the desire to provide better taxi service justify it. In 20 seconds of googling I didn't find pg urging entrepreneurs to be naughty…

I read What We Look for in Founders[1], and I think the section on Naughtiness conveys the wrong message, unless pg actually intends to suggest that, for example, the graywall tactics that Uber has used are desireable. Is Portland's law against services like Uber's a law "that matters?" pg makes a more specific case for disobedience in The Word "Hacker"[2], and maybe he really does look for people who will flout the…

OK, one more thing. This "I can flout the law in my new business" attitude is a great example of white privilege, and this is why this attitude really grates on my nerves.

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

#580

Post by azernik »

bri3d wrote: post #538
SilasX wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. It reminds me of the VW emissions cheating case: "Hey, have it detect whether the test cycle is running and emit a signal if true." 'Um... why would the system need to…

The system has extremely obvious use cases in abuse mitigation - it's basically HN shadow banning for car service. Only a few needed to know about the spot-the-officials aspect, and the rest is legitimate. And support don't need to know anything - if someone is reporting fake cars, they're an undesirable customer anyway so from Uber's standpoint, it's fine if support get confused and do a bad job.

From my read of the article, abuse mitigation seems to have been an early motivation for some components of this feature - in markets where, for example, competitors would threaten Uber drivers with damage against person or vehicle. And then someone got the bright idea of who else they could shadowban...
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