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

• joantune 10y ago
  The question is, did they really have to engage in these tactics to "win"? This just makes Uber sound another notch less moral and legal to everyone further making it look like the evil corp. It's like their motto is the opposite of Google's 'Do no Evil'. And I guess the other question here is: does this matter for people (i.e. consumers)? I would argue that given two equivalent choices, one would vote for the one with better reputation, so yes, it matters
• cmelone 10y ago
  DAYUUUUUMMMM!! Savage
  • cmelone 10y ago
    Screw the downvoters
• zymhan 10y ago
  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 the like.
  • mikeash 10y ago
    That struck me too. A normal company might do this, but they'd at least pretend it was meant to deter criminals or catch abusers or whatever. Instead their statement says: "This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers." It's rather blatant. I assume they think that last part makes them look good and "officials" look bad, but to me it just says "we built this to avoid getting caught breaking the law."
    • kristofferR 10y ago
      Both things can be correct if you believe the law in question is bad. The Jefferson quote comes to mind: "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
      • eddieplan9 10y ago
        This. I know this country is unique. It's a country born from rebellion to begin with.
      • scythe 10y ago
        That's from Saint Augustine (famously quoted by ML King Jr in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"), not Thomas Jefferson.
      • mikeash 10y ago
        You'd think they would mention that the law was bad if that was their justification here.
        • FireBeyond 10y ago
          And the word 'entrap' is disingenuous. Entrapment is used to describe situations where law enforcement induces someone to break a law they would have been otherwise unlikely to commit. In this case, the drivers were already breaking the law (opinions on the righteousness of the law notwithstanding), and law enforcement was seeking to apprehend, not entrap.
        • dpraburaj 10y ago
          They probably underestimated the number of people who believe that not all regulations benefit consumers necessarily.
        • AnimalMuppet 10y ago
          Maybe not. That might tie their hands in court. It might leave "have the court declare the law invalid" as their only way to win. Limiting your options that way tends to be bad legal strategy (whether or not it would be the moral high ground). Disclaimer: IANAL.
  • CaptSpify 10y ago
    > 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 the like. As a FOSS enthusiast, I hope this becomes a good push to require those types of software to become FOSS.
  • kybernetyk 10y ago
    >It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device". I see this as the market routing around the defect that is regulation.
• Dangeranger 10y ago
  Are there legal grounds here for a court decision against Uber based on this? I suppose the answer depends on the nation or state in which this tactic was deployed. This behavior doesn't surprise me based on their strategy of negotiation regarding regulation.
  • tantalor 10y ago
    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.
    • mattmanser 10y ago
      Which courts? US ones are you talking globally?
      • Dangeranger 10y ago
        Good point, I updated the comment to reflect that complication.
    • duskwuff 10y ago
      Certainly not. You can't protect yourself from a lawful investigation by writing "NO COPS ALLOWED" on your front door, either.
      • tantalor 10y ago
        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.
  • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    Some of the tactics could fall afoul of anti-discrimination laws - particularly, grabbing device numbers of cheap pre-paid phones could have an adverse impact on minorities. Thinking about it a bit more, the next-level approach is to make sting activity look like african-american activity, then grab members of the african american community who now cannot hail an uber and sue under anti-discrimination measures.
• alexwebb2 10y ago
  Uber is having a very bad month.
  • PunchTornado 10y ago
    not as bad as the company deserves.
    • menacingly 10y ago
      Kind of weird IMO to think of a company as deserving or not deserving something. It's a group of people with a with array of opinions and behavior, many of whom probably like having a place to work It's much more constructive to want the organization to get better than to cheer on some kind of punishment we think it's owed
      • Dylan16807 10y ago
        > Kind of weird IMO to think of a company as deserving or not deserving something. Companies have patterns of behavior just like any other entity. As much as the idea of 'deserving' applies at all, it can apply to companies. > It's much more constructive to want the organization to get better than to cheer on some kind of punishment we think it's owed It's a strange implication that this is different from how we should treat individuals. We should be more focused on rehabilitation when it's an individual.
      • zepto 10y ago
        This logic would imply that companies don't deserve rights or personhood either.
• HorizonXP 10y ago
  How diabolical! In a world where privacy has been traded away for convenience, it's poetic justice where a startup uses data mining techniques to subvert the government. This is the same government that would have no issues to use the same techniques to spy on its own people for its own motives. I'm neither on Uber nor the government's side in this case, just simply making an observation. The lack of data privacy seems to be a double-edged sword for users and government/law enforcement alike.
  • zymhan 10y ago
    Yeah, while I'm outraged that Uber would go to such lengths to deceive the government, and by extension the people, there's certainly a bit of schadenfreude here.
    • eddieplan9 10y ago
      Deceiving the government does not necessarily extend to deceiving the people. It depends on whether the government represents people's interest in the case. In the Portland's case in particularly, it's absolutely certain the the government was not siding with the interest of the majority of the people. Similarly, if someone is protesting drone strike, it does not mean he is protesting against the US people.
      • zymhan 10y ago
        While the majority of people would surely like to have a cheaper, faster, easier taxi service available, that doesn't mean that Uber should be allowed to operate regardless of the municipality's laws. A city is a democracy, and Uber could certainly lead a campaign to convince citizens to get their political leaders to allow Uber to operate. There are plenty of ways to affect change that aren't just flouting the law.
  • maldusiecle 10y ago
    My perspective is the opposite. In a world where large multinationals have the power to evade the law in a deliberate and systematic way like this, it's easy for governments to claim they need the same kind of power. Things like this are exactly what bureaucrats point to when they make their arguments for a surveillance state. 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.
• carlmcqueen 10y ago
  How things like this remain secrets for so long is astounding to me. By definition of what the day to day of driving strangers around Uber has hundreds of drivers who hate their job yet it took this long for these stories to start finding their way into the press. With Volkswagon cheating the system it was a small group of engineers and covert approval from the top that explained how they could get away with it for so long.
• oculusthrift 10y ago
  I'm not excusing Uber at all because what they've done is extremely bad in multiple cases but find it strange all these hit pieces are coming out of the wood works. There is a large section of society that hates Uber and will spring at any chance to bring it down. Which is partially what I think happened with the whole #boycottUber thing and the new video of kalanick yelling at the driver. However, the sexism and dysfunction in the company is extremely disturbing. It almost starts to undermine the case against them when there are all these hit jobs coming out and it starts to seem that the media is biased or relishing their fall.
  • hyperbovine 10y ago
    This was leaked by their own employees. Including current ones.
    • alphonsegaston 10y ago
      Yeah, all these "hit pieces" cooked up by Uber employees because of their ethics are really undermining the case against Uber. /s If anything, I have greater respect for Uber employees after this series of leaks than I did before.
      • eridius 10y ago
        Wait what? How does that make any sense? Edit: This comment was written before the parent added the /s tag.
        • alphonsegaston 10y ago
          Most of the Uber employees I've interacted with have taken a quite cynical "who gives a fuck - IPO" stance or will rationalize away their behavior to an absurd degree. With this series of leaks from current and former Uber employees, I'm glad to see that there are more ethical people at Uber than I had previously thought.
          • 10y ago
• the-dude 10y ago
  A shadowban of a sort. Very effective.
• deleted 10y ago
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• deleted 10y ago
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• dvcc 10y ago
  At first, I considered it more clever than anything. Using data to reduce ticketable-offenses for their drivers (in an undeniably unethical way). However, my view quickly soured when I read: > If those clues were not enough to confirm a user’s identity, Uber employees would search social media profiles and other available information online. For some reason, I make a mental distinction between some automated system blocking access and having employees research potential customers online for a ride-share app. The bad PR week for Uber continues.
• wjnc 10y ago
  You've got to admit Uber has brought the BigCorp stereotype of the 80s to life. I am amazed at the (US?)-culture that makes people enact so poisonous policies. In my corporation, literally the first line of our risk appetite says that we uphold the law and common norms and morality. Seems trivial, but still gives guidance to everyday actions. Could you explain it to your mom? Whole layers of management and lawyers flaunting common norms... I couldn't work there. How's VC-ing this different from bankrolling Al Capone?
  • ad_hominem 10y ago
    > we uphold the law and common norms and morality Well then I guess if your government lawfully asked you for a list of all your Muslim/Jewish/etc. customers or employees you would comply?
    • azernik 10y ago
      Hence "common norms and morality".
      • ad_hominem 10y ago
        A: "I need a ride" B: "I will give you a ride for $10" A: "Okay!" I would say a government interfering in such a simple transaction is immoral and violates common norms. Traditional taxi cabs and the gov't regulations that propped them up is a textbook example of rent-seeking.
        • raattgift 10y ago
          The government almost certainly creates and maintains the rights-of-way on which B will take you. Revert to horses in countryside settings: A to B: "I need a ride" B to A: "I will take you on horseback for a penny!" B to C: "I need to cross your field/forest/stream" C to B: "That will be a quarter of a penny, and no refund if you cannot negotiate for permission to enter and cross the next property along the way" [repeat] In the history encompassing the legal tradition of where Uber's HQ is based, governments have been interfering with this (by road, trackway and holloway construction and maintenance) since before the Romans invaded Britain. Indeed, formal regulation of taxi services appeared in England in 1635, with the Hackney Carriage Act setting up a legal framework, with further statutory and regulatory tools (including licensing, which imposed training and safety requirements on drivers and carriage owners, and which granted broad protections against rent-seeking by road owners, including public bodies) before the 1670s. So the "interference" in the market you pine for has been going on for many centuries.
• neom 10y ago
  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 lobbied and created special interests is absolutely mind blowing. Sometimes a CIO in city using our tool will go to the Mayor and show them how uber, lyft, airbnb etc could integrate to give the city more insight, and without fail the Mayor is scared to push the companies.
  • vogt 10y ago
    Off topic, I just checked out your site. Cool stuff. I work for a labor market data company of whom EDO/WIBs are a large portion of our client base. I'm curious to what kind of data you have at the zip level.
    • neom 10y ago
      Decent. Feel free to email me. John@stae.co
  • sah2ed 10y ago
    Uber recently released a tool on urban mobility [0] so how does this relate to your work? [0] https://movement.uber.com/cities https://movement.uber.com/cities
    • neom 10y ago
      This tool was created so uber can refuse to provide data to cities, the tool itself is useless to people who work in cities.
• valine 10y ago
  That's actually pretty impressive. I mean, it morally questionable maybe. Is there a law that says Uber is required to send a cab to city officials? The official gave Uber access to his personal details. If Uber doesn't want to fulfill the request it seems reasonable that ultimately it's Uber's decision. I'm not sure what to think about this one.
  • CompanionCuube 10y ago
    City officials are not a protected class in the US that are provided legal protections connected to being discriminated against.
    • wheelerwj 10y ago
      protected class refers to groups of people who shall not be targeted by laws and regulations. It has nothing to do with discrimination by companies towards groups of people.
      • maxerickson 10y ago
        It does in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
• bandrami 10y ago
  I wonder if this is an airing of dirty laundry ahead of Holder's upcoming review...
• swang 10y ago
  "we need to permanently track your location on the app to better serve you. unless you are a possible government official, in which case we will track your location to block you from the service" yes definitely not scary at all that they're tracking open/close of the app by location...
  • sokoloff 10y ago
    Where users open the app is just as legitimate a marketing tool as traffic counts or parking lot counts in retail, or musicians knowing where Spotify users are streaming their songs to inform concert tour plans, etc. If you give me location access permission, it seems reasonable to expect that I'm going to use that location access.
    • swang 10y ago
      i understand uber needs to use my location for their service. i don't expect them to use it to determine whether or not i should be allowed on their service. and also i don't expect them to continue using my location once i leave the app in the name of "user safety" _especially_ given the above info.
• andrewflnr 10y ago
  I don't see why this is so bad. They're a private business, and they're allowed to do business with whom they will. It doesn't really change anything w.r.t the fact that they're skirting regulation, especially if the given origin story is true. Pretty tame compared to the other stuff we've been seeing from Uber, lately.
  • mikeash 10y ago
    Displaying ghost cars and false cancellations strikes me as fraud, at the very least.
    • rrdharan 10y ago
      I kind of doubt it. It's not like you enter into a contract with Uber just by downloading the app, and I don't think you have a legal right to use their services. Maybe you could drum up some sort of civil rights violation? But I don't think law enforcement is actually a protected class...
      • mikeash 10y ago
        IANAL or even very knowledgeable so I could be way off here. Looking up the legal definition of fraud, I found that it requires: (1) a false statement of a material fact, (2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result. 1-4 seem obvious enough, but I'm not sure about #5. Would wasting their time or interfering with their enforcement job be enough to qualify as "injury"? Or, since they're acting on behalf of the local government, would it count as injury against that government due to not being able to prosecute crimes and apply fines that they would have been able to if Uber hadn't lied?
        • Dylan16807 10y ago
          1 isn't obvious to me. What makes the location of cars 'material'?
• deleted 10y ago
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• douche 10y ago
  I am so sick of Uber news
  • heywire 10y ago
    I bet they are too.
• striglia 10y ago
  So I ask this mostly out of horrified curiosity -- is there any negative press or revelation that could actually sink Uber at this point? What would it take for the company to fail? We've seen: * Systematic flouting of laws in public * Even further hidden avoiding of laws * Sexism complaints across the board * What appears to be a pervasive toxic culture, inspired (if not explicitly encouraged) straight from the CEO's behavior Are they actually too big to fail?
  • RodericDay 10y ago
    Their own economics will sink them. A lot of their most ardent fans are unscrupulous or shortsighted, so bad press probably won't do the trick.
  • gtirloni 10y ago
    They aren't too big to fail. What I have noticed is that even people that have concerns about their culture and unethical acts, will often use the service because it's convenient and (for now) cheaper than other alternatives. As long as Uber is fighting cities (instead of state/federal governments) and continues to have deep pockets... They will be around.
    • mi100hael 10y ago
      Seems like they haven't considered the fact that they would then be in the same situation their current competitors find themselves in, ripe for "disruption."
  • accountface 10y ago
    They're trying to become too big to fail, but aren't quite there yet. Essentially they're undercutting all competitors by artificially keeping fares very low and subsidizing drivers. Subsidies were the primary source of their enormous financial losses in 2016. Once the competition is completely gone (local cabs, and Lyft in some areas), then they can stop subsidizing themselves and basically hold a monopoly. It's their entire strategy.
    • 10y ago
• Fede_V 10y ago
  This is incredibly awful, but not particularly surprising. One of Paul Graham's most read essays is about the qualities that YC looks for in founders (http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html). In that essay, he specifically discusses 'Naughtiness' as a positive quality, and how it's one of the most important features of potential founders. The problem is that being clever and hacking around a system for curiosity is governed by a very different set of incentives than being clever and hacking for profit. Feynmann's safecracking at Los Alomos was done to complain about an absurd system and to play pranks on his colleagues, not to enrich himself. Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out.
  • JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out. Depends on whether you view this particular detail as part of providing a service people want (and thus want to pay for), or whether you view it as exclusively in the service of profit (whether it benefits people or not). Ignoring regulations so you can make money by hurting people would be evil. Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. (It's still a dangerous road to go down, but not universally wrong.) I've seen what the attempts at "local", "authorized" alternatives look like; they're almost all terrible, and even the ones that work half as well as Lyft or Uber suffer from being non-universal (you need a different service for each location). Look at the various places actually fixing their broken taxi regulations; would they have even considered doing so if the far better alternatives had asked nicely before developing a huge base of interested customers who see how much better the alternative works? As you said, "break dumb rules to show how pointless they are" can serve as the first step in fixing them. (For the sake of clarity: Uber has done some truly and unambiguously awful things. This particular story just doesn't seem like one of them.)
    • 10y ago
• nfriedly 10y ago
  It sounds like Greyball started out as a fairly legitimate tool to protect their drivers and customers from violence and abuse. And, then, of course it's use started broadening to the current status...
  • rl3 10y ago
    This is reminiscent of a dynamic seen with certain intelligence programs.
• alphonsegaston 10y ago
  What if local law enforcement officer was posing undercover as an Uber customer as part of a sexual assault investigation or trying to track down all drivers in relation to a recent crime? This is framed as getting around restrictions on taxi services, but any time you proactively thwart law enforcement, you're inviting a lot of dangerous unintended consequences. None of which I'm sure Uber is concerned about.
  • JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > What if local law enforcement officer was posing undercover as an Uber customer as part of a sexual assault investigation or trying to track down all drivers in relation to a recent crime? If they were, then I suspect that Uber would go out of their way to cooperate, using the detailed information they have on ride histories. Get a warrant, serve it to Uber, and get the data needed for the investigation. This ignores the question of whether Uber should gather and keep that much information, but given that they do, using it seems far more useful than anything this mechanism would have thwarted.
    • alphonsegaston 10y ago
      They're pre-emptively choosing to obstruct enforcement of whatever laws they deem unacceptable. So that's quite a rosy expectation about their willingness to cooperate.
      • jdminhbg 10y ago
        The US has a pretty robust system for dealing with this. Get a warrant.
      • redbergy 10y ago
        I don't think you could consider this obstruction. It's their service, it's private, they can serve data to users the way they wish. There is a method and a system in place if law enforcement can prove they need unfettered access – a warrant issued by a judge.
  • 10y ago
• RangerScience 10y ago
  I'm confused by what laws were broken by Greyball. It's certainly deceptive, but is that illegal? In these cases I'm sympathetic to Uber - Let's call it "don't delay the pie to get your slice". One of the types of circumstances described is where a municipality doesn't know how to handle ride-shares, so Uber does questionable things to get ride-shares going while the legal situation is figured out. This seems reasonable (within bounds) - because: should the municipality be able to delay the pie while they figure out how to get their slice? Not exactly incentivized to do it in a timely manner; while, if the pie is out there happening, they're incentivized to get their slice in a timely fashion.
  • DannyBee 10y ago
    "I'm confused by what laws were broken by Greyball. It's certainly deceptive, but is that illegal? " Depending on circumstances/jurisdiction, and done for the explicit purpose of preventing law enforcement or other officials from being able to catch criminals (again, the uber drivers breaking the law by driving when it's banned), yes, it's absolutely illegal. (whether it should be is a different question, but it definitely is)
  • tyingq 10y ago
    Obstruction of justice comes to mind. There's a concept of "misleading conduct" typically in obstruction laws. Not sure, though, if it applies to tort type infractions...which is usually where Uber plays, or only in cases where the obstruction is hindering investigation of criminal activity.
    • FireBeyond 10y ago
      Exactly. You are not obligated to assist the police. But lying to / actively deceiving law enforcement in the act of their work is usually considered a crime.
• olivermarks 10y ago
  I thought the whole 'animated cars' user interface thing was faked anyway? http://gizmodo.com/uber-is-faking-us-out-with-ghost-cabs-on-its-passenge-1720576619 http://gizmodo.com/uber-is-faking-us-out-with-ghost-cabs-on-...
  • rconti 10y ago
    This was exactly my thought.
  • tomjakubowski 10y ago
    I suspect that the counterpart in the Lyft app is not actually faked. I've often had a driver accept a ride and appear on the map almost exactly where a car had been previously in the "animated cars" UI.
• paulcole 10y ago
  Uber really getting Theranos-ed lately. It's like the press was saving up their Uber hit pieces and is just unleashing them this week.
  • jjawssd 10y ago
    Unlike Theranos, Uber has a product that works very well and at a low cost to the consumer.
    • accountface 10y ago
      The cost is artificially low due to loss-backed driver subsidies.
      • kristofferR 10y ago
        What could be greater than getting your rides subsidized by fat cats?
        • accountface 10y ago
          livable wages for drivers
• deleted 10y ago
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• mdns33 10y ago
  bash them for the sexism agreed, but not everything. When riding a taxi was ridiculously expensive. Uber made it affordable and bought it to the middle class. Haters will remain haters.
  • subpixel 10y ago
    In the US, riding in a taxi has never been ridiculously expensive, and it has not gotten any cheaper on account of Uber. Moreover, Uber did not create a business to offer affordable rides to the middle class. They created a business to offer the sort of luxury that titans of industry who have private drivers experience, to people willing to pay for that service. What Uber did do is make the 'car on demand' idea functional and ubiquitous. But A) they didn't do it legally and B) it turns on the 'on demand' part matters more to customers than the 'luxury' part. So today, because rides are subsidized, you can summon a car and be driven around for what seems like quite a bargain. But subsidies are pretty much the opposite of 'product market fit'. This news appears to be a clear-cut example of Uber not only breaking the law, but of obstructing justice to protect their illegal operations from enforcement of the law. I think that ought to be looked upon contemptuously.
  • deleted 10y ago
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• downandout 10y ago
  This is certainly a hardball approach, but I see nothing especially wrong with it. When you install Uber, you authorize it to send location data. If you happen to work at a transportation enforcement office, that is going to be immediately apparent to them unless you take countermeasures, such as using a GPS spoofing app. If I declare myself to be an enemy of a given entity, I fully expect them to use every resource at their disposal to attempt to defeat me - especially when that entity has billions of dollars at stake. That they are using tactics like this shouldn't be surprising. It should be expected. I kind of have a newfound respect for Uber's ingenuity after reading this. It's probably one of hundreds of examples of the reasons that they have risen so fast.
  • untog 10y ago
    > If I declare myself to be an enemy of a given entity, I fully expect them to use every resource at their disposal to attempt to defeat me What an absolutely absurd way to characterise the actions of those who enforce law with those who attempt to break it.
    • downandout 10y ago
      It isn't necessarily about breaking laws. There are many legitimate reasons to deny service to undercover law enforcement personnel who are often simply looking for ways to boost their agency's revenue through specious allegations. Uber has no legal obligation to do anything for people that do not declare themselves to be law enforcement personnel with special rights. Not that it will ever stop them, but I often build a clause into the TOS of my websites that law enforcement personnel may not use the site without prior authorization. I have no idea if this will ever stand up in court, but perhaps this clause will, for example, be useful in defeating a search warrant for user information since the suspicion upon which the warrant is based would necessarily have been obtained without authorization unless the government asked for permission to access the site in advance. A healthy disdain for government agents makes for a healthy, free society.
  • hackuser 10y ago
    > If I declare myself to be an enemy of a given entity, I fully expect them to use every resource at their disposal to attempt to defeat me For dealing with individuals, I don't agree that it's ok to use every resource at their disposal. For example, getting the person fired or slandering them is not acceptable. But this is dealing with government. Avoiding the law and law enforcement is wrong and often illegal.
• DannyBee 10y ago
  It says uber legal approved this, but uber legal is mostly corporate and ip counsel. I strongly doubt they had anyone with significant criminal experience look at this, because i have trouble seeing someone not immediately saying "you're joking,right? Are you stupid?" (unless they were a canonical tv mob lawyer)
  • cbr 10y ago
    Maybe Greyball was approved by Uber legal when it was envisioned as a system for excluding bad users (rival companies etc) and then without additional legal review they started using it to exclude suspected law enforcement?
    • djloche 10y ago
      My guess is that the approved tool the company allows to merely build a profile of the additional details necessary to provide additional 'white glove' style service to VIPs to ensure positive word of mouth occurs. Then they realized that they were seeing data that indicated that they were being watched a little closer by the .gov, and 'adjusted' the software to reject or process those people's Uber experiences differently.
• EnFinlay 10y ago
  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.
  • ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
    > 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.
    • EnFinlay 10y ago
      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.
• spitfire 10y ago
  Lets not forget that YC has endorsed Uber multiple times in public statements. When YC says "be naughty" this is what they mean. They'll try to distance themselves from this now, but their statements were "be naughty" while holding up AirBnB and Uber as examples to be proud of. Take what you will from that.
  • TAForObvReasons 10y ago
    > holding up AirBnB With AirBnB they went one step further: they invested in it. AirBnB is one of YC's biggest winners.
  • kilroy123 10y ago
    I thought of the same thing when I read this. I have to admit, this was really smart and "naughty" on their part. I'm not happy to hear what kind of company Uber is, internally. However, they seem to operate how VCs want companies to act and "disrupt" markets. (Minus the harassment stuff.)
  • Gibbon1 10y ago
    Problem with 'being naughty' is there is constant pressure to 'be a little more naughty than before'. Rinse lather repeat till the grand jury issues a criminal indictment.
  • getpost 10y ago
    In jurisdictions where Uber is illegal, Uber's graywall activities are organized crime; there's no other way to put it. How is it any different than, say, an app that advises drug couriers where there are (possibly undercover) enforcement agents. This is serious stuff, and in no way does the desire to provide better taxi service justify it. In 20 seconds of googling I didn't find pg urging entrepreneurs to be naughty. I did find YC's ethics policy[1], and the only mention the of the law that I see is related to sales tactics, "Not using misleading, illegal or dishonest sales tactics." This needs revision. There are lots of laws that are challenging and problematic, even impractical to follow exactly, e.g., the tax code. It's one thing to interpret the tax code in your favor; it's another thing to write a program to distort your business information to avoid taxes. [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/ https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/ EDIT: Found the naughtiness link. Reading now.... EDIT 2: I'm completely opposed to drug laws. Drugs laws are sickening and immoral, and our society and countless individuals have paid a terrible price as a result of these laws, but that doesn't make it ok for me to sell drugs on the street.
• SilasX 10y ago
  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’s credit card information and whether that card was tied directly to an institution like a police credit union. 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?[2] Also, how were they able to do it so accurately without disrupting their service? Most city employees and police aren't going to be involved in sting operations against car services, so their customer support will have to deal with a torrent of very confused government employees [1] who keep getting mysterious rejections when they try to use they app, and which support can't give a truthful answer on. Plus, this seemed to require significant on-the-ground intel and human intervention: >If those clues were not enough to confirm a user’s identity, Uber employees would search social media profiles and other available information online. Once a user was identified as law enforcement, Uber Greyballed him or her, tagging the user with a small piece of code that read Greyball followed by a string of numbers. So, I'm surprised it worked at all. [1] identified by the fact of that person having more-than-usual activity inside something recognized as a government building [2] EDIT: Okay, I get it -- you can look up banks from the CC number. Can we not have further comments just to point this out?
  • fisherjeff 10y ago
    > 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 six digits identify the issuing institution. Here's a free service for looking up a bank based on that information: https://binbase.com https://binbase.com
    • chris_wot 10y ago
      They also record the last 4 digits. I guess they could use some sort of algorithm to determine the probability it is an official, especially if they combine it with other data.
• rc_bhg 10y ago
  I came away from this article impressed with how smart the guys at Uber are. Very impressive!
  • chris_wot 10y ago
    Not smart enough to realise the ethical and moral line they were crossing, it appears.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• RRRA 10y ago
  Good thing Uber was not in the Apple seat about backdooring specific iPhones... We know on which side of ethic they are... I'm happy that, at least in Montreal, we have Téo as a more legit alternative.
• briandear 10y ago
  I'm not supportive of Uber anymore because of the apparently toxic culture, however, I DO side on the free market, especially when it comes to things like taxis, etc. The fact that a grown adult with a car can't engage in a transaction with another consenting grown adult to exchange money for a ride somewhere (or pick your product of choice..) to me, that's anti-liberty. The argument has always been "we have to protect the public." However, if that's the case, then why wouldn't the government "protect" people from hitchhiking? Apparently hitchhiking is legal. (https://expertvagabond.com/hitchhiking-america/ https://expertvagabond.com/hitchhiking-america/) Getting into cars with strange guys someone meets at a bar is also legal. Going to eat food at someone's unlicensed kitchen in their home is legal -- as long as you don't pay for it. All "dangerous" activities. In terms of "protecting" the public, why does the public always need protecting? For example, arguments against marijuana, yet alcohol is legal. Drinking 1000 Coca Colas is perfectly legal, but the Szechuan peppercorn was was banned in the US from 1968 until 2005 to "protect" people. Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal. Swimming pools kill over 3,500 people per year in the US -- far more than die (or are even injured) in Ubers. Yet we need to restrict Uber/Lyft/etc. because "protecting the public?" Regarding "protecting" us from "unsafe" drivers -- that really ought to be up to the individual to decide. If Uber, Lyft, et al were getting into daily fatal accidents, then the public would likely chose another means to get a ride -- meaning, the market (when it's allowed to work,) does achieve an equilibrium. If one service is "dangerous" or "rude" or whatever, a competitor can win business by promoting "safety" or "politeness." Yet, when the taxi mafia controls a town, the market can't respond because there are artificial barriers to entry. "Don't like Yellow Cab? -- ok, you could try calling Yellow Cab if you want an alternative." I strongly condemn Uber's apparently toxic culture -- but in terms of the need for "regulation" or other such nonsense, I feel like grown adults ought not need to be continually "protected." There are some notable exceptions; pharmaceuticals for example because there are long-term ill effects from faulty medicines and the general public isn't knowledgable about molecular biology. However there aren't any long-term ill effects from riding in an Uber -- not any more so than riding in any other paid conveyance. Regulating hair stylists? Even exotic dangers have to have a license in many places: a girl actually has to have permission from some city agency to take off her clothes and dance. That's just nonsensical. Freedom ought to matter, but nowadays it seems as if it's freedom, as long as you fill out a bunch of forms and pay a fee or have political influence (as does the taxi mafia.) Who cares if some dude wants to take people in his car for money. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to ride. Cities are pissed at Uber not because citizens are dying in Uber wrecks but because they're missing out on extortionate fees and/or campaign donations from the taxi lobby. Funny how "liberal" Portland and Austin had banned Uber. Not very liberal at all if you ask me -- just old fashioned money-grubbing cronyism. Portland had legal marijuana but illegal Uber. Ridiculous. True liberalism is about freedom -- not the nanny state. Good for Uber in doing what they can to thwart these "officials" that seem to think their mission in life is to control, subdue and "protect" the population.
• rl3 10y ago
  Setting aside the rather questionable ethics for a moment, this program is quite badass when looking at it from a purely logistical point of view. In fact, it's so machiavellian that it feels like I'm reading an article disclosing an NSA program and not a private transportation company's activities. If only they had the same fervor for say, combating sexual harassment in the workplace.
• greghendershott 10y ago
  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 anything goes ethically and professionally. Which is your choice. It is also my choice to be concerned about doing business with you and steer clear.
  • CaptSpify 10y ago
    EDIT: After re-reading your statement, it doesn't appear you meant customers. Leaving my statement below anyway. > 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. Or because I don't really have an option. Cabs are still terrible and require me to carry cash which I don't, and lyft doesn't work on my phone.
    • rrdharan 10y ago
      Curious, what phone are you using where Uber works and Lyft doesn't? I actually agree with the OPs statement as it applies to customers (at least when there's a reasonable alternative). I live in NYC so it was pretty easy for me - I deleted the app and switched to using Lyft.
      • CaptSpify 10y ago
        Well, that's complicated but... I currently use android, and lyft won't work without permanent access to my location and contacts, which I consider unacceptable. I'm supposed to get the ubuntu phone in about a week, and afaik, there's no lyft client for that. There is an uber webpage, m.uber.com or something that should work with it though. This is all untested on my new phone, so I may be incorrect.
        • warcher 10y ago
• harryh 10y ago
  Let's be clear here. The laws Uber violated here were bad laws. They were the result of a semi-corrupt relationship between city governments and taxi cab companies. Uber has been the prime mover in killing these laws. That's a good thing.
  • mikey_p 10y ago
    Laws about accessibility and safety are bad laws?
    • harryh 10y ago
      Portland trying to prevent Uber from operating there had nothing to do with accessibility or safety.
  • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    Some city governments and some taxi cab companies. It bugs me that people talk like there's some kind of global Big Taxi monopoly that Uber is heroically disrupting. That's drinking the Kool-Aid.
• pegasos1 10y ago
  This seems like one of the first major illicit uses of data science. There should be more regulation and oversight over the data owned by corporations.
  • kristofferR 10y ago
    It seems like a good idea until you think more about it. I at least wouldn't let the US Government, NSA included, have even more access to private data.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  > Uber then served up a fake version of its app that was populated with ghost cars, to evade capture. > To date, Greyballing has been effective. In Portland that day in late 2014, Mr. England, the enforcement officer, did not catch an Uber, according to local reports. > To circumvent that tactic, Uber employees went to that city’s local electronics stores to look up device numbers of the cheapest mobile phones on sale, which were often the ones bought by city officials, whose budgets were not sizable. Holy moley. That is so slimy and sneaky. Well heck this opens a new startup opportunity -- build a device or service to create phone and accounts to evade Greyball and sell its usage to local law enforcement. The price would be low enough if it is sold or provided per hour for example. They could afford that.
• remx 10y ago
  I like this. Some call it hustle, others call it evading LE because cashflow is king, and nothing shall stop the flow. I commend this but also frown at it for being so brazen. If such a tool was used for the opposite reasons (spotting crime and reporting it to police), then perhaps the tool might stand a chance, but showcasing it in full view of LEOs is outright brazen and guaranteed to embarrass. People are campaigning on Twitter to #DeleteUber[0] but fail to recognize the naive nature of the story. I consider Uber nothing more than an ongoing experiment, and any tool they release to increase their revenue should be both commended and also be treated with suspicion. [0] https://twitter.com/hashtag/deleteuber https://twitter.com/hashtag/deleteuber
  • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    > I commend this but also frown at it for being so brazen. If such a tool was used for the opposite reasons (spotting crime and reporting it to police), then perhaps the tool might stand a chance That's like commending a hammer murderer for his swing technique, but frowning on him for practicing on skulls instead of nails.
• sidlls 10y ago
  I'm a bit torn by this. On the one hand Uber is a terrible company exploiting people desperate enough to sell themselves in the "gig economy" and breaking all manner of laws in the process. On the other hand I remember my friends and neighbors being abused by police and our "justice" system on a near daily basis as I grew up so it's hard for me to muster much sympathy when their efforts are thwarted. To me this looks like two powerful entities engaged in a game of slap-fight that ultimately disregards folks of lesser social and economic means.
• trimal 10y ago
  I think Uber needed such tool because they tried to barge their way in a hostile market. I think people blaming Uber for being unethical should ask question what led them to do such behavior (because of ancient government laws) I'm not defending Uber but I think if they didn't enter market people would have never know what is it.
  • vslira 10y ago
    I second this feeling. Uber may be a terrible company led by terrible people, but they opened the floodgates for a better framework of cab transportation. I hope that sticks (the model, idc about the company)
    • zepto 10y ago
      They did produce a useful innovation, but their strategy is about stifling competition and there's nothing good about that.
• nunez 10y ago
  "But unknown to Mr. England and other authorities, some of the digital cars they saw in the app did not represent actual vehicles. And the Uber drivers they were able to hail also quickly canceled. That was because Uber had tagged Mr. England and his colleagues — essentially Greyballing them as city officials — based on data collected from the app and in other ways. The company then served up a fake version of the app populated with ghost cars, to evade capture." Holy shit that's actually impressive in how deceitful it is.
  • splonk 10y ago
    It's actually pretty common if you cast this as an abuse detection tool, which it sounds like this may have started out as. Think of it like shadowbanning - when you catch someone, your measures are more effective if the person doesn't realize you've done it. You want to hide the mechanism by which they got caught, and then you want to delay their ability to take countermeasures. This basically checks those boxes.
    • mintplant 10y ago
      The name suggests this as well. "Ban" is to "shadowban" as "blackball" is to "Greyball".
• nunez 10y ago
  Greyball officially makes Uber the Zenefits of the ridesharing industry now.
• losteverything 10y ago
  It's a 'bad' culture. Somebody said we could do this (greyball). I know how. And some body else above this person should have shot down the idea as "just wrong" But the culture missed that lesson.
• csense 10y ago
  Even if the law says that Uber must admit taxi inspectors, it's hard to say Uber's breaking the law if the inspectors don't "show their badge" or otherwise identify themselves as officials. Of course if they do show their badge, there's a great incentive for Uber to say "Sorry, no drivers are available in your area" even if this is not really true. So you have this curious cat-and-mouse game where the taxi inspector pretends to be somebody else, and Uber tries to penetrate the facade.
  • alphabettsy 10y ago
    That would make sense if they didn't go out of there way to identify potential investigators and law enforcement. I don't see how they could create a system to target law enforcement and then say they didn't know they were.
• eddieplan9 10y ago
  I am trying to come up with an analogy to comprehend this. Imagine a city government has a rule against palm oil and no restaurants are supposed to use palm oil. A restaurant think that rule is nuts and decides to protest it publicly by using it. At the same time, they rip off the label from the palm oil. The city was having trouble finding the palm oil in the restaurant. You can claim that the restaurant has broken the city rule - which is not a secret. But I don't think ripping off the label or making the regulators life more challenging is a crime by itself.
  • lordnacho 10y ago
    Imagine murder is illegal. But some guy thinks it isn't and does it anyway. He puts bodies in acid, hides them in concrete, and so on. Now this kind of behaviour is likely to mean the authorities will take a lot longer to find murderers. Murderers will get away with it from time to time. And a lot of resource needs to be spent just to find the criminals. We do tend to be more forgiving with crimes where the criminal confesses, and rightly so.
    • eddieplan9 10y ago
      Equating outdated city-level taxi regulations to universal law punishing murder is disingenuous, to say the least. FTC did a report [1] in 1984 about taxi regulations and pointed out why cities were not well-equipped nor incentivized to regulate for the purpose of market efficiency: > There are, in fact, reasons to doubt that existing regulations are efficient. One problem is that the analytical and informatiqnal problems involved in determining the efficient levels of the relevant policy variables are great. It is doubtful that regulatory authorities generally have the necessary expertise or information to determine these levels. Also, taxi ordinances and the government agencies that issue taxi regulations may not be motivated primarily by concern for market failure and achievement of an efficient resource allocation. It appears that taxi regulations have often been designed to protect public transit systems and existing taxi firms from competition. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/economic-analysis-taxicab-regulation/233832.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/ec...
• erjjones 10y ago
  I don't understand why it was so difficult for officers to find a Uber driver? Why didn't they just stand outside a bar at 2am?
• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  That is pretty interesting, although 'greyballing' as a analog for 'blackballing' as an analog of creating a list of people you won't serve is taking it a bit deep. I wonder if a counter hack would be to make it illegal to discriminate against people based on whether or not they were a public employee. I think it is completely reasonable to have a 'reputation' system where drivers can rate passengers as well as passengers rating drivers, and then sharing that rating so that drivers wouldn't pick up people known to be combative drunks. Having your app display a bunch of 'ghost cars' always out of reach has a certain poetic justice. But parts of this are really mind blowing, going into shops and recording the IMEI's of burner phones for later correlation? I think that's a service right there.
• verdverm 10y ago
  Uber leadership provides yet another reason to be happy with deleting their app. A weak apology that didn't even mention their most egregious behaviors??! Travis, you should do the right thing and step down as CEO. You will never be thought of as trustable or honorable again (if you ever were...)
• AlexCoventry 10y ago
  So much bad news all at once for Uber, recently. Is there some sort of campaign in motion to buy them out or destroy them?
• losteverything 10y ago
  One question. If i'm uber and I want to know who is at npa-nxx-xXxX cell number (not a customer obviously) where does uber pick up that name?
• tarunm 10y ago
  If anything, I find this very clever. While there are many valid reasons that justify anger against Uber (workplace harassment and predatory pricing), I don't think this is one. Instead of outlawing Uber, cities and governments should take a step back and reflect on these laws which Uber has proven servers no one.
• pencilpup223 10y ago
  This insane, yet somehow I'm not surprised. Could this culminate in a real change at Uber - no more Travis, maybe?
• Digory 10y ago
  Of all the things Uber is accused of this week, I'm pretty sure this one is the least concerning. It seems to involve the ethical dilemma of a radar detector. Speed limits are about public safety, too, but speed traps are usually about money. Ride-sharing regulations might be about safety, but Uber 'stings' seem to be about hurting drivers (not Uber) and preserving the value of taxi medallions. If the police want information, subpoena Uber; don't play spy vs spy with folks trying to eke out a few bucks.
  • neilc 10y ago
    It seems to involve the ethical dilemma of a radar detector. It is similar, but I think an important difference is that Uber, as an organization, was deliberately flouting the law and also building tools to avoid suffering the consequences of that behavior. I'd say it is similar to the difference between an individual using a radar detector for personal travel vs. a trucking/shipping company equipping all of their vehicles with radar detectors and making it a company policy to violate the speed limit.
    • Digory 10y ago
      Yes, the ethics at the level of "should I sell a device that lets (usually) minor law breakers avoid surprise enforcement." Uber here seems to be in the same league as radar detector manufacturers, Waze's "Police" alerts, police scanner apps, etc.
  • iamcasen 10y ago
    I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. Seems like a waste of an article.
    • Digory 10y ago
      Oh, it's clever, just not particularly evil.
• poyu 10y ago
  Well, the final call for Uber in Taiwan is this, the government let anyone to report the driver and can receive reward in money if successfully doing so. Soon enough, Uber stopped operating.
  • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    Obvious-to-me countermeasure: spam the government with fabricated false positives. If most Taiwanese citizens opposed the government on this, it'd work.
    • PhantomGremlin 10y ago
      spam the government with fabricated false positives Right. So you say people should lie to their government???! Martha Stewart thought that she was so smart that she could lie to the FBI when they came to talk to her. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that making false statements to government investigators is a federal crime. Martha wound up doing time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Sentence I have to believe that the USA is not the only country where it is a crime to lie to investigators. You have a right to remain silent, not a right to lie.
      • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
        Right, good point. I (embarrassingly) forgot that that was an option for dealing with invalid input.
• leroy_masochist 10y ago
  I wonder what rate of false negatives is, in terms of assigning Greyball status to someone who is not in fact a local official conducting a sting operation. Picture a 19-year-old woman in college whose dad convinced her to put Uber on her phone so she'd have a way to get home safely at night -- and linked her account up to his credit card so she wouldn't worry about having to afford the ride. Now picture her leaving a house party drunk at 2am. The party happens to be close to city government offices, and her dad's a cop and his credit card tracks back to a police credit union. She opens the app and tries to get a car, but there are no cars. Or there are lots of cars, but none will give her a ride. A low-probability edge case, to be sure, but I wonder if Uber considered the possibility?
  • danielweber 10y ago
    It would be pretty stupid to make your very first use of a service an escape from a dangerous situation. Lots of people are scared to use Uber/Lyft at first and need to be convinced to ride.
    • leroy_masochist 10y ago
      I get that it would be stupid, but wouldn't it also be pretty realistic for a college student to use Uber for the first time when she knows it's too late and she's too drunk for the walk home to be a good idea? Especially if she's a responsible individual who doesn't want to rack up charges on Mom and Dad's credit card, and therefore this is the first time she's pulled the trigger?
  • dpatru 10y ago
    Your example would be better put to government officials trying to shut down Uber.
    • leroy_masochist 10y ago
      That's a very fair point.
• perseusprime11 10y ago
  Why so much negative news around Uber recently?
  • PravlageTiem 10y ago
    Democrats trapped at the municipal level are uppity that they can't milk cab unions and medallions for free extortion money anymore.
• Balgair 10y ago
  Hmm, so it seems we have a relatively small corporation duking it out with many sovereign governments and standing a good chance of winning the fight. Governments have ultimate authority in their territorial regions (Westphalian Peace), but that idea may no longer be valid these days. My small survey of the zeitgeist says that it is likely to continue this way. So then, what is the next step. We have some sort of corporate-governmental feudalism right now, where either of them 'farms' the people and you elect to be a serf of Google or FB or Uber or many at once, just as you were a Huguenot and a Frenchman and a Gascon all at once. What is the next step here?
• kybernetyk 10y ago
  >Uber had tagged Mr. England and his colleagues — essentially Greyballing them as city officials — based on data collected from the app and in other ways. The company then served up a fake version of the app populated with ghost cars, to evade capture. Wow, that's genius. Uber has my full support when it's them vs. outdated entrenched state regulations.
• songzme 10y ago
  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.
  • seppin 10y ago
    > I'm now reinstalling Uber. Most people admit the service is needed, and well executed. But the company is shit. So use lyft
• Jordrok 10y ago
  Wow. This has GOT to be illegal...right?
  • CodeWriter23 10y ago
    Isn't that Uber's specialty?
• JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
  This is just as bad as the Volkswagen emission testing scandal and I hope just as disastrous for the offending company.
• CodeWriter23 10y ago
  It seems like someone really wants Kalanick to step down.
• waynenilsen 10y ago
  If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so. -Jefferson
• chinathrow 10y ago
  If you work for Uber and read these stories, day after day, how do you feel working there? I am really interested - were there thoughts of walking away because of it?
  • iamcasen 10y ago
    I used to work at Uber, and there would always be bad press. Negative spins on just about everything we did. It didn't deter me at the time simply because 90% was totally bogus and completely blown out of proportion. Just like this article is. I left the company because it grew too big and the culture began to suffer for it, but all these doom and gloom stories about Uber breaking the law are just silly. Existing taxi regulations are terrible, and none of it makes any sense. None of it even benefits taxi drivers. They are designed to benefit companies who hold medallions, companies who are deep in bed with local governments. Cities would never have had the incentive to get with the times if it wasn't for Uber, Period.
• pcvarmint 10y ago
  Now we know why they wanted your location after your ride -- to profile your home and work activities and possibly infer your occupation.
• joering2 10y ago
  The question I'm not getting answers through reading comments here is this: can someone go to jail for this? That's the most important thing. Anything else is a noise, even if considered bad PR I don't think those who hail for a cheap ride could care less.
• PravlageTiem 10y ago
  Is the HackerNews official stance to froth madly at anything Uber because, at the heart of the matter, they are long-standing medallion monopolies held by entrenched officials in very wealthy cities? Next time you write software, make sure you have Politburo approval in triplicate to stay in the good graces of HN. This is where you reply about asshole CEOs to sidestep the question.
• memmcgee 10y ago
  People seem to be defending Uber by saying they're disrupting taxi cab monopolies. But Uber themselves is positioning themselves to become a monopoly. It's naive to think that once they're there they are going to have the people's interests at heart.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• candiodari 10y ago
  And what if the tool doesn't actually track police officers ? Tracking bad customers by credit card, and making it difficult for them to inconvenience other drivers after doing it a few times would seem to be a quite normal thing for any credit card payment receiver to do. I mean this thing would probably be looking for jokers (think ordering pizza to your neighbour's house), people with invalid credit cards, people who abuse drivers, and so on and so forth. So what happened is probably more like this: officers order cars, have the Uber drivers drive up to them, cancel the ride and ticket the driver. The Uber app then proceeds to ask the drivers to "rate the passenger". Needless to say, the police accounts get very bad scores. After doing this 2 or 3 times, the app still shows the police officers the normal interface, but doesn't actually calls cars, knowing the rides will be canceled. The tool now has 2 or 3 separate pieces of information indicating these are not good-faith customers and stops acting in good faith towards them. So it don't tell the bad users it's ignoring them, because they'll just get a new account and start harassing more drivers again. And there you have it: "greyballing". So it could very well be this isn't designed to catch law enforcement. It just happens to.
  • Ardren 10y ago
    Please don't throw out random speculations before reading the article.
• bsder 10y ago
  Magically your Uber cars never arrive and the system LIES to you about it. At the very least shouldn't this qualify as false advertising? How does this not disturb people here greatly? Are you really so sure that you will never magically be in a group that is considered "undesirable"? If you want to defend Uber on the axis that they are a "proper" taxi replacement who is "just" sweeping away old, stupid regulations, this just lost you the argument. In addition, lying to people is how you get MORE regulation piled on you, not less.
  • Applejinx 10y ago
    You might want to be careful. If Uber employees can associate your identity with the fact you say things like 'the Uber system lies to you', they already have a shadowban system set up and might be motivated to punish you for your cruel, meanie opinions. Perhaps never being able to get transportation would be a suitable punishment. Who are you going to complain to, the cops? They aren't running the system ;)
• llcoolv 10y ago
  It is very interested how Uber is seen as extremely evil and the government chaps & taxi drivers are the good. I'd say that what they are doing is "Rent Seeking"[1], which has extremely detrimental effects on the economy and that if some of the conversations between them were made public, they would end up in an even bigger mess. My impressions come from the halting of the Uber service in Sofia, where the link between local authorities ans taxi companies was even more obvious than in Paris, Berlin and other cases. What are your thoughs on that? It seems to me that Uber is in a lesser moral violation and hence the lesser evil. Are there any mainstream medias which represent neo-libertarian or whatever it is called views and or at least try to be objective? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking P.S. Isn't this nearly morally/legally equivalent to using those speed gun detectors or police camera location applications?
• trjordan 10y ago
  There was a time when Lyft employees would call Uber cars, wait 2 minutes, then cancel the ride. This left riders driving around to pick up phantom rides, unable to make any money servicing legit customers. If you're questioning whether this system should exist, it seems totally reasonable to build. The question is how aggressively do you use it to protect the company, and from which threats. (And yes, Uber did that to Lyft too.)
• transfire 10y ago
  Uber did it.
• dpatru 10y ago
  It's sad that Uber has to go to such lengths to avoid busybody government officials from interfering in peaceful commercial transactions. The people of Portland should fire these officials. Not only are they wasting taxpayer money, but they are also imposing costs on Uber and their customers.
  • ForrestN 10y ago
    It's sad that sweatshop owners have to go to such lengths to avoid busybody government officials from interfering in peaceful commercial transactions with children. The people of the United States should fire these officials. Not only are they wasting taxpayer money, but they are also imposing costs on manufacturers and their customers. Uber has demonstrated a willingness to treat their employees like shit. The fact that local governments haven't interfered more is a testament to the pervasive attractiveness of two-bit libertarian confusion. I don't want to be driven around by a driver on their 14th hour of work. I don't want to be driven around by a driver with a poor driving record. I don't want to be driven around by a worker who is being exploited because they have been wrongly classified as a contractor and willfully mislead about their earning prospects. That's why we have government labor and safety regulators, because the profit motive is constantly in conflict with the rights of individual works or customers. Don't like e coli? Don't like false advertising? Don't like children smoking cigarettes? Don't like predatory lending? Thank a regulator!
    • dpatru 10y ago
      Regulators are not protecting the public when they go after Uber; they are protecting the monopoly profits of the taxi services. Uber, a ride-sharing service, is not a dangerous bacteria; it's not a sweatshop using child laborers; it's not false advertising; it's not children smoking cigarettes; and it's not predatory lending. Associating Uber with these is an attempt to substitute misdirection for honest arguments.
• rock57 10y ago
  It seems to me that Uber here is facing its "Zenefits moment".
• stanfordkid 10y ago
  Glad to see the government being handed back some of it's own techniques. They seriously think they can spy on American citizens? Just wait until the the large tech companies start spying on them.
• ransom1538 10y ago
  This is clear cut conspiracy [1]. It's 5 years of federal time (no parole). I am sure once a federal agent arrives at the uber office for a few questions people will be pointing fingers & divulging information without lawyers. Brutal. Hilariously, the people that turned over the docs to the nytimes didn't realize they will also be indicted. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 [1]
• dayaz36 10y ago
  The title of this article could of just as easily been "Uber protects it's drivers from sting operations". I am on Uber's side on this
• randomname2 10y ago
  "Greyball-as-a-service" would make for a startup with interesting applications (think protecting sex workers etc.)
• beedogs 10y ago
  Unethical, shitty company does unethical, shitty thing. Cue unwavering show of support from the HN faithful.
• davidf18 10y ago
  There are laws that protect people from physical harm such as licensing for doctors or to keep people in certain fields from working too many hours (e.g. airline pilots and Emergency Room Doctors). There are laws that protect patents, copyrights, and other forms of IP so that inventors, writers can get some returns on their work. Then there are laws put in place by special interest groups to benefit themselves economically creating a market inefficiency (e.g. "rent-seeking") at a cost to others. In NYC, before Uber/Lyft came on the market the was a political restriction ("rent seeking") of 13,000 hailable cabs throughout a city of population exceeding 8 million creating a politically-induced scarcity. At times it was hard to get cabs, the value of a Taxi medallion was $1.2 million. Then Uber/Lyft/Gett/Via came along and hailable taxis are more readily available at lower costs but the value of the Taxi medallion is now less than $750,000. Naturally the medallion owners fought politically to protect their politically induced scarcity that harmed consumers in both availability and pricing. Many of the laws that Uber is countering is in the form of "rent-seeking" laws that create a market inefficiency benefiting special interests and that harms consumers in terms of availability and price. It is wrong that taxpayer money go into enforcing these laws that benefit special interests over consumers. Tax money on law enforcement should be spent fighting violent crime and activities that lead to violence crime, insider trading and other forms of white collar crime, etc.
  • wheelerwj 10y ago
    You call it "rent seeking" but that's just not the case. Almost every law is founded in some sort of public interest. In 1937, NYC passed the Haas Act to clean up the taxi industry which had become so competitive that taxi drivers were not able to make ends meet (sound familiar?) and were turning to less than legal means to supplement their income. While that law is 80 years old, its original principle was to provide a safer more reliable experience for the average person. And it worked. Should it be re-examined, yes absolutely. But to disregard it as "rent-seeking" and suggest that uber/lyft other tech startups shouldn't be subject to the same rules as everyone else is grossly negligent and demonstrates a true lack of understanding of the problem at hand. Not to mention, this is entirely off topic from the Greyball tool.
    • 10y ago