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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

#391

Post by songzme »

This reminded me of a quote by Snowden, "Right and wrong has a very different standard from what is legal and illegal.... Every act of progression in nation's history has involved tensions with law..."

I'm glad Uber did the things they did to circumvent the law. There are countless number of times where my friends and I had the option to 'uber' to a party or bar instead of driving ourselves. Ive met many Uber drivers who loves the opportunity to work and provide a valuable service.

Despite the many flaws, Uber was able to bring social value and it has improved the quality of my life significantly. Had I waited for the law to 'do things properly'... I can't even imagine.

This is one of the things Uber did right and it made me realize the efforts Uber went through to provide me a viable alternative to public transportation and gave me the freedom to travel around the city reliably 24 hours a day. I'm now reinstalling Uber.

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

#392

Post by SilasX »

tyingq wrote: post #274
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’…

"blocks them from the service" doesn't quite capture it right. It doesn't tell them they are blocked. It displays fake cars circling that never show up.

Good point. They would be on firmer ground if they just said "you're banned from our service because [vague reason]", even if the real (unstated) reason was "we don't want cops on this".

But presenting deliberately fake information to hinder law enforcement sounds like it's going to be illegal somehow.

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

#393

Post by DaUR »

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

Exactly.

1. They have no obligation to law enforcement to make it easy to catch them. They're making it so that it's harder for LE to use their own service against them. Good investigators wouldn't investigate under their real name, or with their police-union-linked credit card, so it only seems fair.

2. Taxi and municipal transport are easy pandering-demographics for local government, creating monopolies. This isn't Uber vs. competitors, or vs. average citizens, this is Uber vs. the cartels. Everyone, in the long-run, benefits.

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

#394

Post by modeless »

mavrc wrote: post #167
darawk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please. I can not choose not to be pulled over for speeding, or opt out of murder laws temporarily. The fact that you don't have a say in Uber's corporate decisions is irrelevant, because you can simply stop using it. You don't need a say. The fact that you can't opt out of government is why…

> The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please. True. I have effectively no choice in ISP, and no choice in power company. At what point do I get to vote on seats on my ISP's board, or my power company's?

Guess why you have no choice in ISP or power company? Because the government deliberately regulates those markets to reduce competition, often to the monopoly level. But they don't give you any compensation for that, such as a say in how the companies are run.

This is the root cause of many problems in other markets too. High pharmaceutical prices? The government granted monopolies (patents) to those companies. Forced to use Windows? Microsoft has a government-granted monopoly (copyright) on Windows. Strange that limiting or revoking these state-granted monopoly rights is never considered as an option for remedying these problems.

More relevant to this article, the government has historically put drastic limits on the number of taxis that can operate in a city, to the point where the permits required to operate one were once worth over a million dollars apiece. The need to disrupt that system is why Uber developed a culture of law-breaking to begin with.

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

#395

Post by kybernetyk »

zymhan wrote: post #3

Uber's disregard for local laws and regulations is well known, so I find it hard to be shocked by this. But the chutzpah to implement something so blatantly designed to aide in breaking the law is still surprising. It reminds me of Zenefits in a way. It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device". The future of technology will probably include ever more shady uses of programming to mislead regulators and…

>It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device".

I see this as the market routing around the defect that is regulation.

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

#396

Post by bluetidepro »

greghendershott wrote: post #127

Not only am I done with Uber, I'm starting to wonder about associates and partners (investors, advisors, marketing partners, etc.) If you're still doing business with Uber in 2017, it's because you don't want to know or you don't care who you're dealing with. Neither reflects well on you. It tells me you have your own very low bar -- your own version of "well we're not as awful as taxis shrug " -- above which anythin…

So, do you feel this same way with every product/investor/advisor/partner/etc. that works with evil companies such as Wal-Mart? Or most banks. Or most internet providers. Etc.

It seems like you're very quick to jump on the "hate" bandwagon with Uber, but unless you are applying this logic to every company that's (more than likely) worse than Uber, it's pretty hypocritical. And I highly doubt that is the actual case that you do apply this same logic to many other evil corporations.

Just like shitty companies like Comcast, some people choose Uber because while it's not the best option you WANT to use, it's more than likely still the best option in a very tiny pool you have to choose from.

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

#397

Post by karzeem »

nemacol wrote: post #323
darawk wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot reap the rewards of government, community, and progress and then turn around and want to abolish the systems that made those things possible just because you cannot speed and murder people. What systems are those, exactly? Protectionist laws for taxi drivers?

Sure, if we stick with Uber and transportation topic. Labor laws, minimum wage, vehicle inspections, registration. systems and rules that were put in place as a response to what citizens felt were "wrongs" that needed to be addressed. When a organization ignores those laws then they are going against the will of the people.

When given a choice, drivers stampeded from yellow cabs to Uber. Riders stampeded from yellow cabs to Uber. It's clear which one most parties prefer. And that suggests that all those government "services" around the provision of taxi service are valued at or below 0 by most people.

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

#398

Post by tantalor »

duskwuff wrote: post #286
tantalor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculating: possibly they may be safe if their TOS prohibits using the service to ticket drivers, which is not the intended purpose of the service. Courts have generally been kind to private company's TOS.

Certainly not. You can't protect yourself from a lawful investigation by writing "NO COPS ALLOWED" on your front door, either.

Agreed but you could refuse access to cops unless they have a warrant, right?

The article did not mention whether they had a warrant, I assume not.

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

#399

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pokemon-trainer wrote: post #381
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…

You are in Libertarian La-La Land to call what Uber did "treating users differently based on its interests and its interpretation of the law". As Volkswagen discovered, in the United States this is called "criminal conspiracy" and "obstruction of justice."

> As Volkswagen discovered

Night and day. Volkswagen was falsifying data provided to the government at an identified testing facility. Uber is fuzzing data and refusing to provide services to certain customers who have not identified themselves as police, though may be*.

A city official cannot demand entry to private property without a warrant. Furthermore, one can eject someone from your place of business--again, provided they don't have a warrant. To get a warrant, investigators need probable cause. There are good reasons we limit the power of those seeking probable cause.

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

#400

Post by magila »

mavrc wrote: post #167
darawk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please. I can not choose not to be pulled over for speeding, or opt out of murder laws temporarily. The fact that you don't have a say in Uber's corporate decisions is irrelevant, because you can simply stop using it. You don't need a say. The fact that you can't opt out of government is why…

> The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please. True. I have effectively no choice in ISP, and no choice in power company. At what point do I get to vote on seats on my ISP's board, or my power company's?

You chose indirectly when you voted for the city counselors who granted franchise agreements to your ISP and power company.
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