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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 i

by jfoutz 10y ago

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 to tell people because i'm building cool stuff, but i can't, at least not until the product is ready. In the latter case, i'd be at least embarrassed, if not ashamed of the tools. But I agree, it's slick. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback when it's not my career at stake. With millions or billions of dollars on the line, my ethics might erode much faster than i want to admit. In that case, I'd hope evil jfoutz (or ethically devoid jfoutz) would build such a sophisticated tool.

austenallred 10y ago
I would imagine there are people who don't view it as a breach of ethics. And those types are probably more inclined to be working at Uber on the first place. I mean if you really believe the various transportations administrations are corrupt and that the way to solve it is to temporarily disregard the law, then Uber is probably the place to be
- avn2109 10y ago
  I seem to be the minority here, but I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Anyone who uses e.g. the Waze app to evade speedtraps is similarly guilty of "systematically avoiding the law." Lastly, let me just disclaim that I think Uber is run by assholes and so is the police.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    Exactly, if -for example- a police officer tries to pull me over for a traffic infraction, my speeding off and attempts to make it more difficult to ticket me is only a natural and decent personal impulse!
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      You have a legal obligation not to flee an officer. However, even if you sell drugs or sex, you have no obligation to approach a known police officer and offer to sell them drugs/sex.
      - xg15 10y ago
        You make a distinction between staying passive and not helping an investigation (the drugs example) - and actively deterring the investigation (the flight example). That's a valid distinction to make, however given how much development effort companies like Uber and VW invested in their tools, I think those are clear cases of active deferring.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        I'm not a lawyer, but I think you are making the wrong distinction. Fleeing a police officer is explicitly illegal, I believe the crime is resisting arrest or something equivalent. Actively telling all your hooker friends to stay home because the cops are out is not illegal. Nor is it illegal to say "oh hi there officer" before your hooker friend propositions a cop. That's basically what Uber did.
        areyousure 10y ago
        Don't be too sure! Check out this amazing survey article on "Crime-facilitating speech" by Eugene Volokh: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/facilitating.pdf http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/facilitating.pdf Not only will you find examples of things like courts finding liability if "a newspaper publishes the name of a witness to a crime, thus making it easier for the criminal to intimidate or kill the witness" (with no intent on the part of the newspaper) [18] or "a Web site or a newspaper article names a Web site that contains copyright-infringing material, or describes it in enough detail that readers could quickly find it using a search engine" [26], there are also examples more directly relevant to this situation. I think references [19, 37, 38, 39, 40] are most relevant. [19]: "publish[ing] . . .the residence address or telephone number" of various law enforcement employees "with the intent to obstruct justice" is illegal in many states, including California. [37] My reading of United States v. Lane, 514 F.2d 22 (9th Cir. 1975) is that advising people not to sell drugs to a person because you heard something interesting on a police scanner is aiding and abetting a conspiracy. The court said the defendant "could not seriously contend that he was discouraging, rather than aiding and abetting, the commission of the crime" in response to his assertion that "he actually advised against it". [38]: My reading of United States v. Bucher, 375 F.3d 929 (9th Cir. 2004) is that it is walking down a trail to warn a person whom park rangers intend to arrest is interfering with both the rangers and their official duties (and thus illegal).
  - ForHackernews 10y ago
    > I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - hype7 10y ago
      Herein lies the source of the disagreement. We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations. These laws once had a good reason, but are now still on the books only because incumbents have regulators in their pockets. As for lobbying to have the laws changed, if you expect startups to be able to lobby in every jurisdiction to get the law changed against incumbents when the regulators often come from the industry the startup is disrupting, then I got a bridge to sell you.
      - Qworg 10y ago
        We're all better off? That's an incredibly broad statement. The laws on the books still exist for a good reason. Even if you feel that Uber is somehow exempt/makes good choices with the people it chooses to employ via the platform, does that apply to any other "uber-esque" groups with more lax enforcement?
        jccooper 10y ago
        "The laws on the books still exist for a good reason." That's... optimistic. Many laws were put in place to benefit other (incumbent) businesses, or in reaction to conditions that no longer hold, or due to ideas proven false or at least no longer fashionable. That's not necessarily good reason to break the law (though sometimes it is), but anyone shold feel free to lobby for removal or change of a law.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        > We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations. The thing is, we're not. What we've got is a cab company that can offer better and cheaper service than everyone else because it's breaking the law, and it's good at throwing VC money at lawyers to avoid the consequences. What we've got is further damage to the respect for the rule of law and thus to the fabric of civilization, as people see how Uber gets away with illegal activities. Hell, there are many people who are inspired by their antisocial behaviour, and see Uber as an example to follow.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    Obstruction of justice and interfering with police duties are crimes in plenty of jurisdictions. I'm not sure Waze is a good comparison - your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law, so it'd be hard to argue it's obstruction of justice.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law It may be...it may also be to avoid the area, for illegitimate (I'm a criminal police are looking for) or legitimate (the local PD is notoriously racist against people of my race, and I want to avoid being hassled) reasons.
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      I think that Waze is a great comparison. There's an app which is explicitly used to find and avoid police in order to flaut the law. The main difference in my view is that Waze is individual people doing this, which we approve of, conversely Uber is a corporation many dislike. In situations like this it's important to acknowledge bias and try to abstract to the general case and reason about that.
      - fjdlwlv 10y ago
        Waze users are following the law when they get near Police officers. Uber users are continuing illegal behavior but obstructing police visibility. Uber's behavior is more like radar jamming or putting up a barrier in front of police.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    True, but there's a big difference between turning away anyone who looks like a cop (as biker bars might do, and is on firm legal ground), versus lying specifically to those people you believe to be cops.
    - mentat 10y ago
      So, saying the bar's closed would be ethically unacceptable but just saying you're not allowed in isn't? I'm afraid I don't agree with this being a clear ethical distinction.
  - booleandilemma 10y ago
    Greyball makes it easier for Uber to continue breaking the law. It's like drug dealers using police scanners to determine if the police are nearby.
    - mkolodny 10y ago
      Or like non-Jews hiding Jews from the Nazi police. Obviously that's a dramatic example, but so is the drug dealer example. If Uber believes that the taxi industry is wrongfully colluding with the government to try to stop Uber from operating, then it's not necessarily wrong for Uber to do whatever it can to continue operating.
      - Godel_unicode 10y ago
        A less extreme example would be saying that you bought that weed for your glaucoma.
      - adamsea 10y ago
        If Uber believes the taxi industry and the government are wrongfully colluding, it has the means to legally make that case as well as in the court of public opinion. That is obviously not true for the extreme example you cited of genocide under fascism, so, I don't think it makes sense to compare the two.
        gtirloni 10y ago
        Exactly. Uber didn't have to have Greyball in the first place. Every driver that got intimidated/assaulted should go to the police. Every time a competitor pulled some shenanigans against Uber, they should sue. And so on and so forth. This is just smokescreen. It's obvious what the intent was.
      - timecube 10y ago
        https://youtu.be/t5zQpN28xa4 https://youtu.be/t5zQpN28xa4 Life imitates art.
  - ImSkeptical 10y ago
    It may not be illegal to try and avoid a ticket, but imagine the sixteen year old who wants to give your kid a ride home from school says with a wink "Don't worry. I use Waze." That might make you think twice. If you're going to a lot of trouble to avoid law enforcement, doesn't that suggest you may be doing something illegal?
  - wpietri 10y ago
    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 hobby would be odd but not immoral. But keeping two sets of books in a real business has no purpose beyond enabling illegal activity.
    - wpietri 10y ago
      Oh, and if you're wondering about the moral case, I think it's pretty clear. When we the people set out to do something together, deciding to evade our joint decisions and mechanisms for self-regulation is an antisocial, antidemocratic act.
      - Asooka 10y ago
        The government hasn't represented "we, the people" since forever, so all your arguments are void. It cannot be morally unlawful to resist a government that doesn't represent you.
        wpietri 10y ago
        You are welcome to your own opinions, but I disagree. I imagine most Americans would. Regardless, if you have decided that the government doesn't represent the people, it makes your task harder. Unless you're just saying that you can do what you want (which doesn't strike me as much of a moral position) then you have to work to divine what the collective will of your fellow citizens is and honor that.
      - WildUtah 10y ago
        When big money monopolists corrupt our local governments to obtain taxi monopolies at the expense of working families, the environment, and vulnerable racial minorities that can't hail taxis but can get an Uber, then it's the system that's antisocial and antidemocratic. Uber is a social reform movement organized as a profit-seeking business. Of course the forces of corruption and reaction are going to try to stop it under cover of law.
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  > temporarily
- DaUR 10y ago
  Exactly. 1. They have no obligation to law enforcement to make it easy to catch them. They're making it so that it's harder for LE to use their own service against them. Good investigators wouldn't investigate under their real name, or with their police-union-linked credit card, so it only seems fair. 2. Taxi and municipal transport are easy pandering-demographics for local government, creating monopolies. This isn't Uber vs. competitors, or vs. average citizens, this is Uber vs. the cartels. Everyone, in the long-run, benefits.
mindcrime 10y ago
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 techno-libertarian or cypherpunk mentality would probably feel the same way.
- yannyu 10y ago
  But wouldn't it bother those same people to think they're working for a Megacorp instead? Maybe I have a dim view of law enforcement, but wouldn't I also not want to work for Ares Macrotechnology?
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    Some of them, yes. Depends on the Megacorp, I think. I mean, I work for a Megacorp now, while working on bootstrapping a startup on the side. But I don't think I'd work for Uber (not because of this though).
- jfoutz 10y ago
  But you know that upfront. You can take appropriate precautions up front. If this is actually illegal, the poor engineers could be looking at conspiracy charges at least. You know the danger and you're doing it with your eyes open. They probably didn't know, and i'd bet Uber sacrifices a few engineers just like VW did.
- blackguardx 10y ago
  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.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
joe_the_user 10y ago
It's definitely highly intelligent but just as definitely something that implies a sort of double-or-nothing attitude. IE, Anything is on the table here, it seems (an attitude that can foster creativity certainly). For example, in the end game would Uber's enemies fair badly if they caught a ride in Uber's automatic cars? Indeed, the cars might even be seeking out people for "accidents". There's reason even the most innovative Mafiosos often don't make it to old age. Note also: "Perverting the course of justice is an offence committed when a person prevents justice from being served on him/herself or on another party. In England and Wales it is a common law offence, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverting_the_course_of_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverting_the_course_of_justi... "Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice And we're talk systematically evading regulators world-wide. ianola but my legal-fantasy mind could compose for people facing a millennium in prison. I assume the reality would be a slap on wrist if they company's influence falls.
- sigmar 10y ago
  I'm not sure of what my opinion of the morality is, but I (as a non-lawyer) don't see this as obstruction of justice. If I am a prostitute working the streets, and a police officer approaches me to offer me money for sex. But I notice he has police officer boots on, and suspect he is a cop. I then tell him I am not looking to offer any services for money. Is that obstruction of justice? Perhaps the credit card lookups (or other methods) violated privacy laws, but I don't see how refusing service should count as obstruction of justice.
  - corvus_sapiens 10y ago
    IANAL either, but there's a difference between not falling into a trap and deceiving the authorities. To continue the analogy, it would be more akin to telling the officer that you're willing to offer services if he meets you at a different street corner with the intention of fleeing later.
cowsandmilk 10y ago
> 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. If you worked at Uber, would you work on a feature meant to prevent lyft employee from using the app to poach data about car locations and hailing rides to recruit new lyft drivers? That was supposedly the original reason for this. Plenty of people do work to keep corporate secrets safe.
SilasX 10y ago
>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. It reminds me of the VW emissions cheating case: "Hey, have it detect whether the test cycle is running and emit a signal if true." 'Um... why would the system need to know that?' "Uh, because we don't want the car to freak out when the wheels are turning but it's not moving." 'Oh ... seems legit.' "And you -- have it minimize NO2 when it gets this signal. But don't talk to him." In the Uber case, employees might have been told, "oh we want to offer a special discount to law enforcement" ... though even that seems seedy. But (per my original comment) I don't see how they can keep the circle small. What do they tell support employees to say when someone reports not being able to get a ride despite all the fake cars around?
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Uber's support is pretty worthless - every interaction is with a different person, and none of them read the conversation history. I'd expect the person would get a runaround and just wind up going in circles.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- konceptz 10y ago
  Agreed, and also the article states that multiple current and former employees reported this information.
  - hrasyid 10y ago
    But NYTimes might be mistaken in its reporing?
    - actsasbuffoon 10y ago
      I doubt it. Reputable news sources require at least two independent sources before they'll print a story. If NYT didn't have multiple current or former employees telling them about this then you wouldn't be reading this story.
lithos 10y ago
But imagine how interesting the system is. Tying together so many data sources, and creating any output you want.
- codedokode 10y ago
  I guees it just makes a list of suspicious people and later managers look through them and ban them manually.
clusmore 10y ago
>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. Actually I find this harder to believe than the engineers knowing full well what the system does and doing it anyway. Personally I would never want to work on a system without knowing the value it provides and how it fits into the larger picture.
kaishiro 10y ago
What does it say about me that I'd relish the thought of working on building this out for production?
daodedickinson 10y ago
I'd rather go homeless than work on that.
- cududa 10y ago
  Really?
  - daodedickinson 10y ago
    Yeah... I guess I am too picky. My uncle was even better at engineering school than me and he also ended up as a derelict / janitor so maybe it is genetic. We both seem to be content with a rather low standard of living + powerful imaginations so that we can enjoy that almost as much as we would a much higher standard of living although we wouldn't really enjoy either all that much due to depression or whatever.
wheelerwj 10y ago
if they are doing that to people they don't want to ride, doesn't it make sense they are doing this with riders?
wheelerwj 10y ago
if they are doing that to people they don't want to ride, doesn't it make sense they are doing this with riders?
problems 10y ago
> I like to think i'd decline to work on that Does it say something bad about me that I'd be the one jumping up and down to work on this? It seems really interesting from an analytical perspective and the malicious side of it would leave me very satisfied if it worked. Morality be damned it'd be satisfying.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Well, it is deviously clever. But using it at scale with drivers and investors at risk? That's crazy.
steamer25 10y ago
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.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
How do we feel about agreeing to do it and then quieting reporting everything I do?

by jfoutz 10y ago

austenallred 10y ago

I would imagine there are people who don't view it as a breach of ethics. And those types are probably more inclined to be working at Uber on the first place. I mean if you really believe the various transportations administrations are corrupt and that the way to solve it is to temporarily disregard the law, then Uber is probably the place to be

avn2109 10y ago
I seem to be the minority here, but I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Anyone who uses e.g. the Waze app to evade speedtraps is similarly guilty of "systematically avoiding the law." Lastly, let me just disclaim that I think Uber is run by assholes and so is the police.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  Exactly, if -for example- a police officer tries to pull me over for a traffic infraction, my speeding off and attempts to make it more difficult to ticket me is only a natural and decent personal impulse!
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    You have a legal obligation not to flee an officer. However, even if you sell drugs or sex, you have no obligation to approach a known police officer and offer to sell them drugs/sex.
    - xg15 10y ago
      You make a distinction between staying passive and not helping an investigation (the drugs example) - and actively deterring the investigation (the flight example). That's a valid distinction to make, however given how much development effort companies like Uber and VW invested in their tools, I think those are clear cases of active deferring.
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        I'm not a lawyer, but I think you are making the wrong distinction. Fleeing a police officer is explicitly illegal, I believe the crime is resisting arrest or something equivalent. Actively telling all your hooker friends to stay home because the cops are out is not illegal. Nor is it illegal to say "oh hi there officer" before your hooker friend propositions a cop. That's basically what Uber did.
        areyousure 10y ago
        Don't be too sure! Check out this amazing survey article on "Crime-facilitating speech" by Eugene Volokh: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/facilitating.pdf http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/facilitating.pdf Not only will you find examples of things like courts finding liability if "a newspaper publishes the name of a witness to a crime, thus making it easier for the criminal to intimidate or kill the witness" (with no intent on the part of the newspaper) [18] or "a Web site or a newspaper article names a Web site that contains copyright-infringing material, or describes it in enough detail that readers could quickly find it using a search engine" [26], there are also examples more directly relevant to this situation. I think references [19, 37, 38, 39, 40] are most relevant. [19]: "publish[ing] . . .the residence address or telephone number" of various law enforcement employees "with the intent to obstruct justice" is illegal in many states, including California. [37] My reading of United States v. Lane, 514 F.2d 22 (9th Cir. 1975) is that advising people not to sell drugs to a person because you heard something interesting on a police scanner is aiding and abetting a conspiracy. The court said the defendant "could not seriously contend that he was discouraging, rather than aiding and abetting, the commission of the crime" in response to his assertion that "he actually advised against it". [38]: My reading of United States v. Bucher, 375 F.3d 929 (9th Cir. 2004) is that it is walking down a trail to warn a person whom park rangers intend to arrest is interfering with both the rangers and their official duties (and thus illegal).
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  > I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - hype7 10y ago
    Herein lies the source of the disagreement. We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations. These laws once had a good reason, but are now still on the books only because incumbents have regulators in their pockets. As for lobbying to have the laws changed, if you expect startups to be able to lobby in every jurisdiction to get the law changed against incumbents when the regulators often come from the industry the startup is disrupting, then I got a bridge to sell you.
    - Qworg 10y ago
      We're all better off? That's an incredibly broad statement. The laws on the books still exist for a good reason. Even if you feel that Uber is somehow exempt/makes good choices with the people it chooses to employ via the platform, does that apply to any other "uber-esque" groups with more lax enforcement?
      - jccooper 10y ago
        "The laws on the books still exist for a good reason." That's... optimistic. Many laws were put in place to benefit other (incumbent) businesses, or in reaction to conditions that no longer hold, or due to ideas proven false or at least no longer fashionable. That's not necessarily good reason to break the law (though sometimes it is), but anyone shold feel free to lobby for removal or change of a law.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations. The thing is, we're not. What we've got is a cab company that can offer better and cheaper service than everyone else because it's breaking the law, and it's good at throwing VC money at lawyers to avoid the consequences. What we've got is further damage to the respect for the rule of law and thus to the fabric of civilization, as people see how Uber gets away with illegal activities. Hell, there are many people who are inspired by their antisocial behaviour, and see Uber as an example to follow.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Obstruction of justice and interfering with police duties are crimes in plenty of jurisdictions. I'm not sure Waze is a good comparison - your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law, so it'd be hard to argue it's obstruction of justice.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law It may be...it may also be to avoid the area, for illegitimate (I'm a criminal police are looking for) or legitimate (the local PD is notoriously racist against people of my race, and I want to avoid being hassled) reasons.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    I think that Waze is a great comparison. There's an app which is explicitly used to find and avoid police in order to flaut the law. The main difference in my view is that Waze is individual people doing this, which we approve of, conversely Uber is a corporation many dislike. In situations like this it's important to acknowledge bias and try to abstract to the general case and reason about that.
    - fjdlwlv 10y ago
      Waze users are following the law when they get near Police officers. Uber users are continuing illegal behavior but obstructing police visibility. Uber's behavior is more like radar jamming or putting up a barrier in front of police.
- SilasX 10y ago
  True, but there's a big difference between turning away anyone who looks like a cop (as biker bars might do, and is on firm legal ground), versus lying specifically to those people you believe to be cops.
  - mentat 10y ago
    So, saying the bar's closed would be ethically unacceptable but just saying you're not allowed in isn't? I'm afraid I don't agree with this being a clear ethical distinction.
- booleandilemma 10y ago
  Greyball makes it easier for Uber to continue breaking the law. It's like drug dealers using police scanners to determine if the police are nearby.
  - mkolodny 10y ago
    Or like non-Jews hiding Jews from the Nazi police. Obviously that's a dramatic example, but so is the drug dealer example. If Uber believes that the taxi industry is wrongfully colluding with the government to try to stop Uber from operating, then it's not necessarily wrong for Uber to do whatever it can to continue operating.
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      A less extreme example would be saying that you bought that weed for your glaucoma.
    - adamsea 10y ago
      If Uber believes the taxi industry and the government are wrongfully colluding, it has the means to legally make that case as well as in the court of public opinion. That is obviously not true for the extreme example you cited of genocide under fascism, so, I don't think it makes sense to compare the two.
      - gtirloni 10y ago
        Exactly. Uber didn't have to have Greyball in the first place. Every driver that got intimidated/assaulted should go to the police. Every time a competitor pulled some shenanigans against Uber, they should sue. And so on and so forth. This is just smokescreen. It's obvious what the intent was.
    - timecube 10y ago
      https://youtu.be/t5zQpN28xa4 https://youtu.be/t5zQpN28xa4 Life imitates art.
- ImSkeptical 10y ago
  It may not be illegal to try and avoid a ticket, but imagine the sixteen year old who wants to give your kid a ride home from school says with a wink "Don't worry. I use Waze." That might make you think twice. If you're going to a lot of trouble to avoid law enforcement, doesn't that suggest you may be doing something illegal?
- wpietri 10y ago
  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 hobby would be odd but not immoral. But keeping two sets of books in a real business has no purpose beyond enabling illegal activity.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    Oh, and if you're wondering about the moral case, I think it's pretty clear. When we the people set out to do something together, deciding to evade our joint decisions and mechanisms for self-regulation is an antisocial, antidemocratic act.
    - Asooka 10y ago
      The government hasn't represented "we, the people" since forever, so all your arguments are void. It cannot be morally unlawful to resist a government that doesn't represent you.
      - wpietri 10y ago
        You are welcome to your own opinions, but I disagree. I imagine most Americans would. Regardless, if you have decided that the government doesn't represent the people, it makes your task harder. Unless you're just saying that you can do what you want (which doesn't strike me as much of a moral position) then you have to work to divine what the collective will of your fellow citizens is and honor that.
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      When big money monopolists corrupt our local governments to obtain taxi monopolies at the expense of working families, the environment, and vulnerable racial minorities that can't hail taxis but can get an Uber, then it's the system that's antisocial and antidemocratic. Uber is a social reform movement organized as a profit-seeking business. Of course the forces of corruption and reaction are going to try to stop it under cover of law.
ForHackernews 10y ago
> temporarily
DaUR 10y ago
Exactly. 1. They have no obligation to law enforcement to make it easy to catch them. They're making it so that it's harder for LE to use their own service against them. Good investigators wouldn't investigate under their real name, or with their police-union-linked credit card, so it only seems fair. 2. Taxi and municipal transport are easy pandering-demographics for local government, creating monopolies. This isn't Uber vs. competitors, or vs. average citizens, this is Uber vs. the cartels. Everyone, in the long-run, benefits.

mindcrime 10y ago

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 techno-libertarian or cypherpunk mentality would probably feel the same way.

yannyu 10y ago
But wouldn't it bother those same people to think they're working for a Megacorp instead? Maybe I have a dim view of law enforcement, but wouldn't I also not want to work for Ares Macrotechnology?
- mindcrime 10y ago
  Some of them, yes. Depends on the Megacorp, I think. I mean, I work for a Megacorp now, while working on bootstrapping a startup on the side. But I don't think I'd work for Uber (not because of this though).
jfoutz 10y ago
But you know that upfront. You can take appropriate precautions up front. If this is actually illegal, the poor engineers could be looking at conspiracy charges at least. You know the danger and you're doing it with your eyes open. They probably didn't know, and i'd bet Uber sacrifices a few engineers just like VW did.
blackguardx 10y ago
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.
- Karunamon 10y ago

joe_the_user 10y ago

It's definitely highly intelligent but just as definitely something that implies a sort of double-or-nothing attitude. IE, Anything is on the table here, it seems (an attitude that can foster creativity certainly). For example, in the end game would Uber's enemies fair badly if they caught a ride in Uber's automatic cars? Indeed, the cars might even be seeking out people for "accidents". There's reason even the most innovative Mafiosos often don't make it to old age. Note also: "Perverting the course of justice is an offence committed when a person prevents justice from being served on him/herself or on another party. In England and Wales it is a common law offence, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverting_the_course_of_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverting_the_course_of_justi... "Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice And we're talk systematically evading regulators world-wide. ianola but my legal-fantasy mind could compose for people facing a millennium in prison. I assume the reality would be a slap on wrist if they company's influence falls.

sigmar 10y ago
I'm not sure of what my opinion of the morality is, but I (as a non-lawyer) don't see this as obstruction of justice. If I am a prostitute working the streets, and a police officer approaches me to offer me money for sex. But I notice he has police officer boots on, and suspect he is a cop. I then tell him I am not looking to offer any services for money. Is that obstruction of justice? Perhaps the credit card lookups (or other methods) violated privacy laws, but I don't see how refusing service should count as obstruction of justice.
- corvus_sapiens 10y ago
  IANAL either, but there's a difference between not falling into a trap and deceiving the authorities. To continue the analogy, it would be more akin to telling the officer that you're willing to offer services if he meets you at a different street corner with the intention of fleeing later.

cowsandmilk 10y ago

> 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. If you worked at Uber, would you work on a feature meant to prevent lyft employee from using the app to poach data about car locations and hailing rides to recruit new lyft drivers? That was supposedly the original reason for this. Plenty of people do work to keep corporate secrets safe.

SilasX 10y ago

>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. It reminds me of the VW emissions cheating case: "Hey, have it detect whether the test cycle is running and emit a signal if true." 'Um... why would the system need to know that?' "Uh, because we don't want the car to freak out when the wheels are turning but it's not moving." 'Oh ... seems legit.' "And you -- have it minimize NO2 when it gets this signal. But don't talk to him." In the Uber case, employees might have been told, "oh we want to offer a special discount to law enforcement" ... though even that seems seedy. But (per my original comment) I don't see how they can keep the circle small. What do they tell support employees to say when someone reports not being able to get a ride despite all the fake cars around?

Karunamon 10y ago
Uber's support is pretty worthless - every interaction is with a different person, and none of them read the conversation history. I'd expect the person would get a runaround and just wind up going in circles.
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konceptz 10y ago
Agreed, and also the article states that multiple current and former employees reported this information.
- hrasyid 10y ago
  But NYTimes might be mistaken in its reporing?
  - actsasbuffoon 10y ago
    I doubt it. Reputable news sources require at least two independent sources before they'll print a story. If NYT didn't have multiple current or former employees telling them about this then you wouldn't be reading this story.

lithos 10y ago

But imagine how interesting the system is. Tying together so many data sources, and creating any output you want.

codedokode 10y ago
I guees it just makes a list of suspicious people and later managers look through them and ban them manually.

clusmore 10y ago

>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. Actually I find this harder to believe than the engineers knowing full well what the system does and doing it anyway. Personally I would never want to work on a system without knowing the value it provides and how it fits into the larger picture.

kaishiro 10y ago

What does it say about me that I'd relish the thought of working on building this out for production?

daodedickinson 10y ago

I'd rather go homeless than work on that.

cududa 10y ago
Really?
- daodedickinson 10y ago
  Yeah... I guess I am too picky. My uncle was even better at engineering school than me and he also ended up as a derelict / janitor so maybe it is genetic. We both seem to be content with a rather low standard of living + powerful imaginations so that we can enjoy that almost as much as we would a much higher standard of living although we wouldn't really enjoy either all that much due to depression or whatever.

wheelerwj 10y ago

if they are doing that to people they don't want to ride, doesn't it make sense they are doing this with riders?

wheelerwj 10y ago

if they are doing that to people they don't want to ride, doesn't it make sense they are doing this with riders?

problems 10y ago

> I like to think i'd decline to work on that Does it say something bad about me that I'd be the one jumping up and down to work on this? It seems really interesting from an analytical perspective and the malicious side of it would leave me very satisfied if it worked. Morality be damned it'd be satisfying.

mirimir 10y ago
Well, it is deviously clever. But using it at scale with drivers and investors at risk? That's crazy.

steamer25 10y ago

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.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

How do we feel about agreeing to do it and then quieting reporting everything I do?