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

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731–740 of 805 posts

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

#731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a hypothetical business in a historical era that provides great service by employing colored people to serve white customers. Imagine said business becomes successful, and even pushes some jurisdictions to change their laws against this practice. I'd argue that this business is great - it's helping consumers and fixing the world. One might argue that we are not better off because of this: The thing is, we're…

It's about the defaults. I believe laws should be obeyed by default, and only opposed in special circumstances. The burden of proving that the circumstances warrant disobedience should be on the disobedient party. And most importantly, breaking the law should be expensive , so that it never becomes a viable business strategy. I'd even cut Uber some slack if they weren't so smug about what they're doing. This is just…

I think Uber has proven that their disobedience is beneficial. In the US and India they have made the transit sector vastly better than it was before. Even ignoring the benefits of the app over hailing a cab, the drastic reduction in racial discrimination is an amazing improvement.

Note that India also had apps/SMS driven taxi hails - autowale.in started in Pune (my city). But Uber fixed transport and the political situation, whereas autowale.in is just a footnote in history.

In any working society you can - and should - assume that most laws are there for a reason, and that this reason is just. When that assumption doesn't hold, your country pretty much disintegrates. Hence, going against the law is a special case.

Then by your standard, the US and India are not working societies.

Then again, by your standard, it's pretty clear that not all of Europe is working. For example, witness how often French unions and others engage in violent and illegal actions (both assaulting Uber drivers/passengers and others) on a regular basis.

In any case, you seem to be backing away from your original claim and accepting that some laws are unjust and breaking them is ok. Do you argue that American or Indian taxi protectionism laws are just?

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

#732

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…

How far does your scofflaw streak go? Is this different from adding law enforcement blocking controls to any illegal tech product? Should everyone get to decide what laws to follow? I think you are describing anarcho-capitalism, not libertarianism.

But here's the thing: What we have now is anarchy. It's just that the powerful make the laws, and con the masses. Some places it looks like capitalism, other places more like kleptocracy. But just about everywhere, the game is rigged.

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

#733
post #452
post #22

The company I work for builds software platforms for cities, tldr: we have a pretty basic sub/pub idea for city data, and give them a little abstraction tool that allows folks who work in cities but don't know what an API is a way to create and publish one so they can then hold the vendor to account (From IoT to the Ubers and Lyfts of the world) - I spent a lot of time in cities talking to them and the way uber has l…

Uber recently released a tool on urban mobility [0] so how does this relate to your work? [0] https://movement.uber.com/cities

This tool was created so uber can refuse to provide data to cities, the tool itself is useless to people who work in cities.

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

#734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a hypothetical business in a historical era that provides great service by employing colored people to serve white customers. Imagine said business becomes successful, and even pushes some jurisdictions to change their laws against this practice. I'd argue that this business is great - it's helping consumers and fixing the world. One might argue that we are not better off because of this: The thing is, we're…

You are arbitrarily assigning Uber's disruption a positive social outcome, which appears to be the lynchpin of your argument. Your argument could be applied to many outcomes that would appear on the surface to be negative. A few (admittedly exaggerated) examples: "ArmzDealR is providing a great service by eliminating government bureaucracy and providing access to arms that citizens should have. It's good that they he…

I'm simply pointing out that Temporal's argument that breaking the law is always wrong is simply incorrect.

I'm not saying all laws should be broken. I'm saying one must decide whether or not the law is just, and support those who break unjust laws. I see no one even attempting to make the argument that taxi protectionism laws are just. Do you have an argument that they are?

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

#735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which other ridesharing apps have fixed broken political systems? From what I can see, most of them wait for Uber to fix politics and then just swoop in after the fact to make money.

I don't think any ridesharing apps have "fixed broken political systems", least of all Uber. But there are many ridesharing apps which operated in local territories before Uber, and many of them managed to do it without writing software to deceive law enforcement, coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them or trying to kill startup competitors with fake bookings.

Before Uber, SF, NYC and Mumbai and many other political systems prevented competitors from providing better service than yellow cabs. Uber's political activism has fixed this.

coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them

This was an ethical hypothetical, not a thing that actually happened.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicole-campbell/what-was-said-...

fake bookings.

Uber made real bookings and then gave the driver a sales pitch during the ride. All they did was pay their competitors for the right to offer drivers a better deal.

Kind of the opposite of Google/Apple/etc colluding NOT to offer each other's employees a better deal.

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

#736
post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean hacker news' shadow ban?

My accounts at home keep getting shadow-banned... was wondering why suddenly everyone stopped responding. Tried registering a new one but it didn't let me. Wonder if this one will show up after I log in from home...

Yes, it shows up :)

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

#737
post #675
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's closer to them saying, "Yes, sure...I'm happy to take money for sex...wait right here for a while", and then hiding. Which could be obstruction. If the app told them they were banned, it would be closer to your analogy. But, it shows fake cars circling about that never pick you up. It's actively deceiving law enforcement

Ah, but is it deceiving law enforcement with the knowledge that that person is right now trying to arrest you, or is it just refusing service to law enforcement because they don't like them? The latter is covered by the TOS where it says they can refuse service to anyone for whatever reason.

there are a number of holes in your thought process.

first, and most important to this discussion, is that it is definitely deceptive especially when you are going to such extremes as documenting burner mobile phones and preventing their use on the pretense of hiding from regulators.

second, and less important for this discussion, but a business has he right to refuse service to any ONE person for whatever legal reason they choose (whether they specify hat reason or not is a different topic). this should not be confused with deniying service to a GROUP of people for whatever reason they want which is discrimination, and is illegal, whether outline in a TOS or not.

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

#738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any ridesharing apps have "fixed broken political systems", least of all Uber. But there are many ridesharing apps which operated in local territories before Uber, and many of them managed to do it without writing software to deceive law enforcement, coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them or trying to kill startup competitors with fake bookings.

Before Uber, SF, NYC and Mumbai and many other political systems prevented competitors from providing better service than yellow cabs. Uber's political activism has fixed this. coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them This was an ethical hypothetical, not a thing that actually happened. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicole-campbell/what-was-said-... fake bookings. Uber made real bookings and t…

To be honest, the fact that an executive is prepared to publicly advocate harassment of journalists as an "ethical hypothetical" thing is a pretty good indication of what they actually are prepared to do in private. Sorry but the "I'm a good friend who overheard part of the conversation and don't think he said the things he's already apologised for saying" defence isn't the most convincing, especially given the company's well-publicised use of comparable tactics in other areas, including hiring private investigators to go after employees that had reported sexual harassment. Your insistence that Uber made real bookings (and just happened to cancel most of them) is a lie, period.

You don't have to think taxi medallion laws are particularly rational to find Uber's behaviour in many, many areas indefensible.

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

#739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obstruction of justice is a crime. So are lying to an FBI agent, destroying evidence, resisting arrest, evading arrest, falsifying business records, destruction of documents with intent to impede an investigation, and of course perjury. I don't know that any of these apply here, but yes, actively avoiding accountability is often a crime on its own. And correctly so, I'd say. Creating fake accounting records as a hobb…

Would you say that using an app to avoid speed traps is obstruction of justice? What about radar detectors?

Certainly it depends on which one of many jurisdictions Uber operates in.

For a start, in the U.K. it's illegal to use radar detectors [Edit: this first is apparently false; they publically stated that they were going to, but never changed the law. Other countries apparently do ban them, according to wikipedia.], and people have been given criminal convictions for "Flashing their lights" in order to warn incoming motorists of a speed trap.

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

#740
post #263
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not a popular opinion but I find this entire thing pure genius. >I couldn't find a good source, but it doesn't seem like that's something a CC merchant would have access to. Do they really get to see that? The first 6 digits of a credit card can identify the issuing bank (BIN number - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_number ). If you ask your merchant they can readily provide you and up to date list.…

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…

Given the examples of transit authority collusion and cartel competitors wielding bats, accosting drivers and making customers feel like Baghdad is safer by comparison; I was thinking genius like Ragnar Danneskjöld.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar typifies law enforcement as it ought to be (in Rand's view)--engaging those who claim authority but resort to violence instead of productivity as a means of controlling wealth.

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