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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

#581

Post by r00fus »

dqv wrote: post #130
alphonsegaston wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

So your argument is that the police should be using the evil tools they already (supposedly) have?

Way to paint with a broad brush. It's not legal in many jurisdictions.

Also Stingrays are passive not active devices - if the theoretical Uber driver is out of range, it won't see the Stingray as a tower.

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

#582

Post by azernik »

aantix wrote: post #570
TeMPOraL wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I thought that's just teenagers "who fit the techno-libertarian or cypherpunk mentality", and only until they finally grow up. The mindset you're describing is pretty self-centered and ignorant of how societies work. The law is there to reconcile conflicting interest so that people don't start using violence to pursue their goals. Techno-libertarian teenagers should imagine what would happen if some people t…

How dare Rosa Parks defiantly take a seat at the front of the bus.. How could she be so self-centered and... adolescent?

She was not, as far as I understand, opposed to laws just because they are laws. She had very specific moral objections to very specific laws.

Anti-racism != anarchism.

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

#583

Post by dpatru »

It's sad that Uber has to go to such lengths to avoid busybody government officials from interfering in peaceful commercial transactions. The people of Portland should fire these officials. Not only are they wasting taxpayer money, but they are also imposing costs on Uber and their customers.

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

#584

Post by PhantomGremlin »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #555
poyu wrote: post #351

Well, the final call for Uber in Taiwan is this, the government let anyone to report the driver and can receive reward in money if successfully doing so. Soon enough, Uber stopped operating.

Obvious-to-me countermeasure: spam the government with fabricated false positives. If most Taiwanese citizens opposed the government on this, it'd work.

spam the government with fabricated false positives

Right. So you say people should lie to their government???!

Martha Stewart thought that she was so smart that she could lie to the FBI when they came to talk to her. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that making false statements to government investigators is a federal crime. Martha wound up doing time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Sentence

I have to believe that the USA is not the only country where it is a crime to lie to investigators. You have a right to remain silent, not a right to lie.

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

#585

Post by azernik »

garrettr_ wrote: post #69
oculusthrift wrote: post #8

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 dys…

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 indus…

There's a similar phenomenon with sexual assault allegations - often they cluster in time, because a single accuser is more likely to be taken seriously when there are others making similar accusations.

This is, BTW, the motivation behind an app I've heard of where you can file a sealed sexual assault report against someone, with verified date of filing, to be unsealed only if some number of people make an accusation against the same person.

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

#586

Post by themaninthedark »

DaUR wrote: post #417
prewett wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure how civil disobedience leads to authoritarianism rather than the opposite. Also, by your reasoning, civil disobedience is never justified. And does Trump being President change your reasoning at all?

So then is the country clerk that refused to sign marriage certificates for gays a hero too? She was just practicing civil disobedience.

Or perhaps she should just move very slowly when it comes to same sex couples, just never can get the work done. She isn't refusing it just never gets done.

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

#587

Post by doctorcroc »

aantix wrote: post #570
TeMPOraL wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I thought that's just teenagers "who fit the techno-libertarian or cypherpunk mentality", and only until they finally grow up. The mindset you're describing is pretty self-centered and ignorant of how societies work. The law is there to reconcile conflicting interest so that people don't start using violence to pursue their goals. Techno-libertarian teenagers should imagine what would happen if some people t…

How dare Rosa Parks defiantly take a seat at the front of the bus.. How could she be so self-centered and... adolescent?

While subjective, there is a difference between breaking laws / fighting authority for moral reasons, and breaking laws for financial gain. Yeah, maybe you as an engineer would feel morally righteous for "fighting the man", but Uber doesn't care about that -- it just wants $$$.

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

#588

Post by azernik »

ad_hominem wrote: post #455
wjnc wrote: post #21

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 fl…

> we uphold the law and common norms and morality Well then I guess if your government lawfully asked you for a list of all your Muslim/Jewish/etc. customers or employees you would comply?

Hence "common norms and morality".

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

#589

Post by JulianMorrison »

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’…

Additional to what you don't need further comments about: you can ask for billing address at payment time and then validate it with a fraud checking company like ReD to prevent them just making it up, so that a card registered to an organization will have to out itself. Or if it's registered to a "front" that's designed to look residential, flag that address as dirty after having been caught in a sting and then propagate the dirty flag to other cards that also point there.
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