Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#511

Post by tkxxx7 » Fri, May 05, 2017, 8:38 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #477

e28eta wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had ethical qualms about Uber for a long time, but I've always gotten good service. Unfortunately, I had a Lyft experience that really turned me off. They matched me with a driver who was 5-10 minutes away (I believe he was at Millbrae BART). He messaged to ask where I was going, and then once I responded he moved his car slightly farther away from me, and then parked it. We waited ~10 mins. He was unable or unw…

Why didn't you just cancel?

I believe after 5-10 minutes, there is a fee.

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#512

Post by easilyBored » Fri, May 05, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #476

danaliv wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I was taught very clearly that civil disobedience includes accepting punishment, and that this is a very, very important facet of it. (Noted not to dispute your point about civics education, but to stress this to other people who may not have been taught this.)

I thought the same, and even had a post written... But then found a counter-example: What about people in Nazi Germany hiding others? They were of course very secretive about it -- not being secretive certainly meant you and your charges being sent to a camp, and possibly outright death. Similar things happened with the underground railroad in the US. I would still gladly classify those people as civil disobedients.…

Here are a few: neighbor has terminal cancer. Giving him pot to ease his pain might be illegal but nothing else works or he has no money for expensive drugs. Now if you charge him $400 an ounce get ready for no sympathy.

Or you smuggle a persecuted across the US border it might still be illegal for you but you're breaking the law for a humanitarian reason. However, if you charge $5000 a person, any person from MS-13 to Isis to day laborers bring your toothbrush

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#513

Post by j_bond » Fri, May 05, 2017, 8:42 PM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #428

j_bond wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand why people say this. 2008 was really the popping of an investment bubble due to business incompetence and exuberance among many actors. I don't really see that as a criminal act. If that were the case, then all VC employees should be arrested for causing the 2001 bubble. The only argument that really has any merit is the one that rating agencies misled investors, so I can see some action bei…

If you are still confused about the criminal acts that occurred, read more about REPO 105: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo_105

That is a pretty weak example since it even says in the article that the window dressing maneuver was probably within the GAAP principles and the regulatory bodies were aware of the practice.

It kind of goes to my point that it seem to be more of incentive and business failure than a criminal one. Being aggressive with your company and then failing isn't a crime.

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#514

Post by ausjke » Fri, May 05, 2017, 8:47 PM UTC

intopieces wrote: post #462

ausjke wrote: post #432

Austin where I live rejected Uber and it seems that's a right move.

Can you comment on the experience with the alternatives? This rejection happened right after I left, so I have been curious. Austin has a pretty bad DUI problem. Also, I think it's more accurate to say that Uber rejected Austin, since Austin merely voted in regulation it did not want to comply with. Is it true that UT-Austin has partnered with the rideshare company (Fasten?) to analyze the ride share data?

Don't really use it often enough, but it seems daily life is not impacted that much, there are few alternatives, smaller but probably enough for local needs.

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#515

Post by eridius » Fri, May 05, 2017, 8:49 PM UTC

tkxxx7 wrote: post #511

eridius wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't you just cancel?

I believe after 5-10 minutes, there is a fee.

If you're cancelling because the driver isn't showing up, there's no fee. I've definitely cancelled rides after waiting 10 minutes and I've never ever been hit with a fee. My vague understanding is if it's clear the driver isn't going to get to you within the ETA, then cancelling is ok, but since I've never been presented with a fee in the first place, I've never sought clarification on that.

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#516

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 05, 2017, 9:06 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #510

samrap wrote: post #18

At first, it seemed like legitimate software to assess spam until: > For example, it mined credit card information to see if the owner was affiliated with a credit union used by police and checked social media profiles to assess the likelihood that the person was in law enforcement. Yikes. I know people who have the mentality that this sort of thing is ok. Whether you're a startup that never makes it, or one worth bi…

> Yikes. I know people who have the mentality that this sort of thing is ok I do find it amusing the Government of the US does this to basically every person and company, all the time, but if one company tries to do it back.. well, then, that's really bad and shame on them!

[deleted]

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#517

Post by jdmichal » Fri, May 05, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

lione wrote: post #486

jdmichal wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same, and even had a post written... But then found a counter-example: What about people in Nazi Germany hiding others? They were of course very secretive about it -- not being secretive certainly meant you and your charges being sent to a camp, and possibly outright death. Similar things happened with the underground railroad in the US. I would still gladly classify those people as civil disobedients.…

Nothing says that the civil disobeyer needs to go out of their way to turn themselves in to the authorities if the act of civil disobedience isn't known by the police. If I plan an act of civil disobedience like say sitting in the road to protest something, and it turns out no one drives on that road and the cops never come, I was still breaking the law. You have to accept the consequences of your civil disobedience,…

I guess there's multiple approaches that depend on your goals.

The martyr approach works well if your goal is to get society to recognize an issue and fix it. It's like an extreme form of demonstrations; the entire point is to be seen and generate discontent. This discontent becomes the energy that changes the status quo.

But if you're not capable of (or uninterested in) changing the status quo, but just want to "do the right thing", then evading detection is a much better approach.

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#518

Post by gotothedoctor » Fri, May 05, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #498

gotothedoctor wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually just that straightforward. In the jurisdictions where Uber has already admitted to using Greyball to avoid local authorities (eg Portland), they did so to evade laws that were directed specifically at their operation. It is true that Uber consistently claims that laws that apply to commercial livery do not apply to them--whether it was ever true is debatable. Courts have not been sympathetic to this cl…

Looking at the legal definitions of evasion and obstruction, I don't see anything that applies, especially considering the typical use cases. Obstruction charges usually stem from providing false testimony or evidence, tampering with evidence, or witness tampering. Evasion - for Portland, they haven't been formally approved from what I read. Doesn't necessarily mean that because they aren't formally approved that the…

I don't know what you mean by legal definitions of evasion and obstruction. Legal definitions literally vary by jurisdiction, so how one jurisdiction defines a crime is legally different from others...because they pass different laws.

Re Portland: this is factually inaccurate. Uber admitted they used Greyball when they were operating illegally in Portland. Yes, Portland & Uber have since come to an agreement, but not even Uber claims they were operating legally when they used Greyball to evade law enforcement..

Kindly, the challenge with explaining this to non-lawyers is that you do not know what you do not know, but think you do, & use words differently than an officer of a court does.

The example of a process-server is simply not a relevant comparison. Proccess-serving has a lot of TV-created urban legendry around it. Yes, you can try to avoid being served & but, no, you can't ignore a court order or a subpoena by avoiding a process server. If you try to hide, they'll eventually just mail the summons to you.

Regardless, process-serving has nothing to do with what Uber already admitted to doing: building & using software in CA to evade law enforcement in, eg Portland, which is a jurisdictions where they knew they were operating illegally. This is obstruction of justice.

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#519

Post by mschuster91 » Fri, May 05, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

asr wrote: post #474

mschuster91 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drivers are forced to purchase a medallion In Germany: while taxis are required to have licenses, we don't have such things as taxi drivers renting their medallions for a day. > and abide by other silly regulations Regulations usually exist for good reasons. Let's just take the common complaints about the German ones: - cab drivers have rigorous tests on their knowledge of the city's streets: you don't want to have…

Some regulations are fine. Like requiring that your drivers have insurance. Or even requiring that your drivers pass some sort of test which demonstrates that they are actually skilled drivers, if you want. But I actually don't like any of the regulations you mentioned. The most egregious is this one: cab drivers from city A may drive passengers to city B, but not pick up passengers in city B. Once again, this is not…

> This is almost always a rule to protect cab drivers in city B. And it's horribly inefficient as it means the cab spends 50% of its time empty. If driving between cities is common, fares have to be much, much higher to compensate drivers for this.

Most of the time, that rule doesn't hit at all - the major exceptions are the Berlin and Munich airports, which are located outside of the city borders. The remainder that gets hit by this policy are fares crossing regional boundaries on the countryside where it doesn't really matter anyway if a cab goes 5km empty.

All the major cities are in one regulation zone exactly to avoid this - which has the downside that in the mega-urbs Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin the amount of knowledge required for taxi drivers is immense, and it doesn't really help that there are often enough more than 2 streets of the same name in Berlin (mostly, an aftereffect of the DDR/BRD split and reunification).

Re: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities

#520

Post by matt4077 » Fri, May 05, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

stepitup wrote: post #46

What's really strange is that I bet a good percente of the people reading this comment will know exactly what I mean when I refer to a: "Startup that employs mafia tactics and forces businesses to pay a protection fee, or actively fucks them up and attempts to hurt them." Why aren't the authorities going over the ACTUAL, honest-to-god mafia startup? Sorry, I realize it's off topic here, but my first thought when I re…

It's not that easy... For extortion, the punishment you're threatening someone with also needs to be illegal. For example: "Pay me 100$ or I'm going to tell all my friends how bad your food is" isn't extortion.

I'm not sure about the actual situation with Yelp, but as long as they're not making up negative reviews (which could be slander), it might be ok, legally. Given their size in that market, anti-trust concerns might come into play, though.