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Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

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Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#161
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, here in the US at least, that very often leads to them losing their job. And I'm not just referring to rape--even more minor offenses... for example, teachers have been fired for their offensive facebook comments. That isn't ruining their lives. They are free to go work elsewhere where other people's lives aren't put in their hands. I'll be more specific. This man was accused of rape and worked as a cab driver,…

How is ruining a teacher's teaching career the same as this? Most teachers spend a not insignificant portion of their time working towards the goal of becoming a teacher. That is now the case for someone learning to be a cab driver.

Getting a London black cab license is about as difficult.

Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#162
Few points worth noting

- Taxi business is heavily regulated in India and anything like Uber is likely to be illegal.

- India does not have any consolidated crime database. Background verification generally means asking the person to get a certificate from local police station. (Which anyone can get by paying a bribe).

I am surprised that Uber was actually operating in India. Clearly they were staying under the radar and as usual the government officials were too incompetent to understand what Uber is.

I think in this case Uber is clearly liable for a civil suite and must compensate the victim for lack of due diligence and fraud.

Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#163
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would often usually with you, the nature of sexual assault is that even in "developed" countries, it is very hard to convict people for committing these offenses, and very often the accused walk. I can only imagine how much worse this is in countries that are less than friendly to women (I am not saying that India is better or worse, I don't know). I don't think it would have hurt them to err on the side of c…

> I don't think it would have hurt them to err on the side of caution on this one. Erring "on the side of caution" in this case basically means denying someone a job, a livelihood, based on mere allegations that anyone can make. If you strictly enforce this (or even harsher variants, e.g. "no men sitting next to children on planes"), you make it very simple to ruin someone's life.

> Erring "on the side of caution" in this case basically means denying someone a job, a livelihood, based on mere allegations that anyone can make

Congratulations! You've just repeated the argument that lead to the Catholic Church preotecting pedophiles and Jimmy Saville getting a free reign over children, mental health patients, and corpses!

Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#164
post #90
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/10/delhi-rape-one-conv... Of 706 reported rape cases, 1 lead to an actual conviction. So you have an under-reported category of crime which is irregularly prosecuted. There's obvious ethical issues with denying jobs to people based on accusation rather than conviction, but in a society with a broken justice system surrounding that, there's ethical dilemmas no matter how you slice…

> there's ethical dilemmas no matter how you slice it You're exactly right. So the question becomes, "Is it better to disqualify applicants based on accusation alone, knowing that you'll disqualify some number of innocent people, or is it better to screen on convictions alone, knowing that you could possibly not screen out some guilty folks you otherwise would?"

It might also be illegal to deny employment to people just because they are accused of something and not convicted. Indian law assumes the culprit is innocent till proven otherwise.

Indian law takes infinite years to resolve a case. 1 year to actually frame charges, 10 years in lower court and 10 years in upper courts.

Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#165
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of countries don't have guns in every purse without rampant rapists. I think there are different solutions to the problem, like promoting a culture where women are equal.

Which do you think will reduce rape right now ? A bunch of rapists showing up at hospitals with holes in them, or some sort of education campaign to change the culture? If things can get better in 10 years that's great. I'd also like the women I care about to be safe tomorrow. A few dead rapists is a small price to pay for that.

There is but a small problem, nothing prevents any soon-to-be rapists from getting guns themselves.

Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#167
post #164
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's ethical dilemmas no matter how you slice it You're exactly right. So the question becomes, "Is it better to disqualify applicants based on accusation alone, knowing that you'll disqualify some number of innocent people, or is it better to screen on convictions alone, knowing that you could possibly not screen out some guilty folks you otherwise would?"

It might also be illegal to deny employment to people just because they are accused of something and not convicted. Indian law assumes the culprit is innocent till proven otherwise. Indian law takes infinite years to resolve a case. 1 year to actually frame charges, 10 years in lower court and 10 years in upper courts.

Absolutely, the question presupposes it's even up to the hiring company to make the distinction and that it hasn't already been made for them by the law.

Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber hired drivers in India who does not even have a valid Delhi Transport commercial driver license required for all cab drivers in Delhi. Edit: > and the amount of rape happening in india is crazy, the government needs to do something about that, something more than blaming uber. Do you know that more women are raped every year in UK & US than in India? You hear a lot more about rapes in India because Indians are m…

> Do you know that more women are raped every year in UK & US than in India? No, but I do know you don't understand reporting and statistics. The UK has had massive reforms between the 1980s and now. Police are required, by law, to record every single accusation of rape irrespective of if it results in a prosecution or even an attempted prosecution. That has resulted in the UK's "rate of rape" going through the roof,…

> No, but I do know you don't understand reporting and statistics

No personal attacks on HN, please. This comment has a good argument. Abrasiveness tarnishes it.

Re: Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

#169

Uber is not being banned just because of this rape incident. Uber did not following Indian laws & Delhi transport regulations, and operated illegally under the radar. Before this incident, Delhi Government was not aware about how Uber operated. This incident prompted Indian authorities to investigate the operations of Uber. Uber's stance is that we are not a taxi company, we are an app company; so we do not need to f…

No sexual offenses From the article: "Uber, which had employed the driver even though he had been arrested on allegations of sexual assault three years ago" THe implication there is that he had not been convicted of any offense - which means no sexual offense was [in the eyes of the law...] committed. I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand yeah, he was arrested for it and convicted or not, that's probably a risk U…

I think it's worth looking at this as the intersections of two contexts. One is the one that's mostly discussed below, how do you assess the criminality of someone who was arrested but not convicted. We are all, I hope, familiar with the particular complexities of rape as it's both harder to prove and often carries unusually negative consequences for the accuser, compared to an accusation that someone robber you or whatever, as well as India's particular cultural situation.

The other one though, is the context of what job you're hiring someone for; in this case, to be a sort-of taxi driver. That means the person you hire is inevitably going to come in contact with some potentially vulnerable individuals as passengers (and I bet it wouldn't be too hard to make estimates on the probability of any given journey having a single female passenger). If there's a suspicion that the person might exploit that fact, then you shouldn't hire that person as a driver. That's a bit unfair to some potential drivers, but the flipside is that you have ethical obligations to both employees and customers.

For other contexts, the calculus is different. For example, if I was Uber I would not be too worried about a previous conviction for auto theft, since drivers supply their own cars, and if the applicant has not been in trouble for a reasonable length of time then Uber doesn't really have any assets at risk. Likewise, I could perhaps be more open-minded about an arrest without a conviction for assault if I were hiring someone to do server maintenance vs. hiring them as a driver, as the probability of an offense x the number of personal encounters an employee would have in the course of normal duties would be much lower.

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