How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

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.

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.

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

#412

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

This is just as bad as the Volkswagen emission testing scandal and I hope just as disastrous for the offending company.

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

#413

Post by danielweber » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

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."

There's a legal requirement to comply to emissions laws.

Is there a legal requirement to make it easy for cops to use your service? Are they a protected class?

If I didn't want to sell donuts to the cops, I sure wouldn't tell them it's because they are cops. I would just be mysteriously out of donuts every time they come in.

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

#414

Post by EnFinlay » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

ycmbntrthrwaway wrote: post #386

EnFinlay wrote: post #105

Where I'm from a taxi driver gets a fine if they refuse service to someone. Seems that Uber has that built in. Seems like it could easily abused for discrimination.

> Where I'm from a taxi driver gets a fine if they refuse service to someone. Discrimination problem is solved by competition, not regulation. You can't regulate against discrimination. See how it works with jobs. When employer doesn't want to employ someone for whatever reason, he will simply state that candidate didn't pass the interview or whatever, and you can't prove it otherwise.

In this case, I think regulation serves as competition - either you get the money from the fare, or take a double financial hit from missing the fare and owing a fine.

Edit: Also I disagree that discrimination can be solved by competition. Competition can result in mutually exclusive sets of discrimination eg. extreme nationalism.

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

#415

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

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.

> your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law

It may be...it may also be to avoid the area, for illegitimate (I'm a criminal police are looking for) or legitimate (the local PD is notoriously racist against people of my race, and I want to avoid being hassled) reasons.

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

#416

Post by danielweber » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 10:00 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #379

lacampbell wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Uber isn't a monopoly. For all the scummy things that Uber has done, they have avoided the most scummy thing they could do to become a monopoly: driver lock-in, making their drivers commit to only drive for them and not for Lyft.

Susan Fowler's post has me pretty fed up with Uber, but for some reason greyballing doesn't bother me at all.

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

#417

Post by DaUR » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

prewett wrote: post #376

mindcrime wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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

#418

Post by xg15 » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #382

wavefunction wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, if -for example- a police officer tries to pull me over for a traffic infraction, my speeding off and attempts to make it more difficult to ticket me is only a natural and decent personal impulse!

You have a legal obligation not to flee an officer. However, even if you sell drugs or sex, you have no obligation to approach a known police officer and offer to sell them drugs/sex.

You make a distinction between staying passive and not helping an investigation (the drugs example) - and actively deterring the investigation (the flight example).

That's a valid distinction to make, however given how much development effort companies like Uber and VW invested in their tools, I think those are clear cases of active deferring.

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

#419

Post by ycmbntrthrwaway » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #294

snappyTertle wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an even better question: Would we need to ask ourselves these questions if these nonsense laws didn't exist?

Of course not. If we got rid of all these laws the corporations would simply enforce terms of service on us, containing whatever they want. And then would argue that we freely entered into those terms of our own free will by being born where we were and when we were!

> And then would argue that we freely entered into those terms of our own free will by being born where we were and when we were!

You just described what the government does.

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

#420

Post by darawk » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

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.

What is the will of the people? How is it expressed? Through representative elections? What about Arrow's impossibility theorem?

The 'will of the people' on the issue of Uber is abundantly clear. Everyone wants it, except taxi drivers and the companies and structures that benefit from them. This gets blocked sometimes due to the fact that taxi drivers represent a concentrated interest against a diffuse benefit. We all benefit a little from Uber, but taxi drivers benefit a lot from killing Uber. So they raise their voices against it, and nobody speaks up for the rest of us. It is the classic problem of representative democracy. The representatives are beholden to the concentrated interests of the few against the collective interests of the many.