4 ms·

The alternative, giving them a password that gives them read/write access to sensitive systems, would be insane. Subpoena for particular data.

dh2022 2y ago
You can give them read access tokens that expire every couple of hours....
- golemotron 2y ago
  The problem is deeper than that. When a physical space is raided, its scope is obvious. Digital spaces don't have that characteristic. There can always be hidden indexes.
MichaelZuo 2y ago
Yeah it's hard to see how any French official would have authority to conduct searches 10 meters beyond French borders, let alone over all of Uber's computers located in dozens of other countries.
- wang_li 2y ago
  Hard to see how a company can imagine it can do business in a country and not follow that country’s record keeping laws and be subject to criminal and civil statutes in that country.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    How is this relevant to Uber's files and computers located in other jurisdictions?
    - jraph 2y ago
      If you do business in France, you are accountable in France. Your problem to provide the asked documents if it's the law to provide them. That you are using computers elsewhere to store stuff should not be any relevant. You shouldn't really be able to have it both ways, should you?
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Uber's files and computers located in French territory are of course accountable to French authorities, but that's simply not the case for those located in other jurisdictions… Unless there is some international law or treaty mandating that?
        wang_li 2y ago
        It's not a matter of what's located in France. It's a matter of what documentation about your company requires you to keep. Regardless of where the computers you use are physically located if you can't produce the required documents you get to be fined, be shut down, and/or go to prison. No company gets to play the game of "we're doing business in Uzbekistan but our accounting servers are in Sealand so we don't have to file any taxes or provide any other records." Not only is the idea absurd, anyone who thinks that is congenitally stupid or stupid by choice.
        jraph 2y ago
        [flagged]
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Attempted insults only decrease the credibility of the writer… anyways I didn’t claim Uber is supplying less than the legally required amount of paperwork? Nor is it likely. All the accounting, insurance, banking, regulatory, etc… paperwork legally necessary for even a large company in France can easily fit in a set of binders that fit in a single bookcase. So it’s literally possible for all of it to be ready and available for inspection before anyone even touches a keyboard. And in fact that was the case for every company in France pre 1960s.
        jraph 2y ago
        Authorities might not be able to seize computers and files in another country, although I think interpol can get involved in tax fraud or tax evasion matters. Preventing access to your accounts during an audit is quite fishy, especially for an onsite audit without warning which, in France, is supposed to happen only if the authorities have doubts that you could make some evidences disappear. During an audit, the CEO is supposed to provide the documents, the inspectors are not supposed to access your files themselves I think. (So blocking access for security reasons is bullshit, to answer someone else, the right thing to do is to have all the pieces in order for when an audit happens anyway)
- tokinonagare 2y ago
  If a company is doing business here, the actual location of file is irrelevant. Also when the government is really motivated, he can arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if they are doing business illegally.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Also when the government is really motivated, he can arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if they are doing business illegally. You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand access to data? If they actually did something illegal, they can be arrested/tried for that, but arresting executives as a means to coerce companies into doing stuff is a total perversion of the rule of law.
    - izacus 2y ago
      > You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand access to data? If they actually did something illegal, they can be arrested/tried for that, but arresting executives as a means to coerce companies into doing stuff is a total perversion of the rule of law. Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it. Except in this case it's not the executive that has the data. The data is sitting on some cloud server somewhere, and the executive no longer has access because the CISO got wind of the raid and locked his account. If you're holding the executive, you're not holding the executive because he's refusing to cooperate with a warrant, you're holding the executive as a hostage so HQ would turn over the document.
        2y ago
aaronax 2y ago
Thinking the systems that a company has are so sensitive that the company is basically above the law is the insane thing. It is just a company--a group of people granted certain rights. They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused).
- gruez 2y ago
  > They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused). That analogy doesn't work, because the "filing cabinets" are actually sitting somewhere else, possibly in another country/continent. It's not obvious that authorities in one country has authority over documents stored in another country.
  - aaronax 2y ago
    I think it is not crazy to think that if the contents are used from some country then intentional obstruction of justice stuff like kill switches or dropping VPN connections should be treated as intentional obstruction of justice. AKA reality of use matters more than "location" of data.
- valval 2y ago
  I and many others think the government should have 0 business in my filing cabinet. That difference in world view might be what makes this topic more complex than you seem to think.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    [Not parent poster] So even the most heinous act of violence become unprosecutable when the suspects/accomplices have moved all remaining evidence into a magically inviolable filing cabinet? No? Then the world is a lot more complex than property rights trumping everything else.
atoav 2y ago
You are aware of the fact that tax evasion means these companies are freeloading on the tax money the rest of us (including: you) are paying? Especially in the case of uber which is essentially using public infrastructure to make their money having them pay taxes should be normal. I agree that customer data needs to be protected, but it is bold to assume that is the case at all with these powerful corporate entities: if they lie to the state when filing taxes what makes you believe they are ernest when it comes to the protection of their users privacy? Maybe it is a weird ideology I am holding here, but the more powerful an entity is, the more transparent it should become — nowaday we got this completely reversed with poor people being naked in front of the state and big corps literally fooling everyone. Edit: some also seem to think the state is the behemoth that jumps on the poor little companies here. To that I just have to think about the account of the German public prosecutor Bäumler-Hösl (of wirecard fame) where she told about a raid on a bank where she and 4 collegues were opposed by 130 (!) company lawyers.
- gruez 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - atoav 2y ago
    Corporations are not people, any law who treats them as such has been perverted IMO.
- haccount 2y ago
  The law was always there to step on the little man, the VIPs always had it easier. Stop thinking too much about it.
  - atoav 2y ago
    nah I think we need systemic rules that help the little man while making it harder the bigger an entity grows.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > if they lie to the state when filing taxes In general this is not what they do. What they do is read the tax code carefully and structure their operations in such a way as to minimize taxes, e.g. because tax is paid on "profits" (revenues minus expenses) so they shift more expenses into jurisdictions with high tax rates etc., causing "profits" to go down in those jurisdictions and up somewhere else. Then they don't pay any taxes in the jurisdictions with higher tax rates and politicians go on TV and complain about the companies following the laws that the politicians enacted. Because if they actually fixed the laws, the taxes would be paid based on the extent to which the company does business in that jurisdiction, and then companies could only avoid taxes by not doing business there (costing the country jobs) or, for taxes associated with local sales, by raising prices there. Neither of which the politicians actually want to do, so instead they pass laws that allow companies to avoid taxes and then complain about it when the companies do it.
pyrale 2y ago
Uber has a history of serving falsified data to the justice, though. Their offices are raided because they can’t be trusted with a subpoena.
- golemotron 2y ago
  The real issue is that technology has rendered office raiding useless. People are welcome to explore alternatives.
  - pyrale 2y ago
    > People are welcome to explore alternatives. For companies that deliberately obstruct justice work? Have the board and a healthy amount of executives serve 20 years in a high security prison, seize the assets and investigate their investors' due dilligence process. Gather proof with infiltrated workers. Tech leaders need to learn that criminal conspiracy is not part of a good business plan. If they start using mafia tactics, so can Justice.

dh2022 2y ago

You can give them read access tokens that expire every couple of hours....

golemotron 2y ago
The problem is deeper than that. When a physical space is raided, its scope is obvious. Digital spaces don't have that characteristic. There can always be hidden indexes.

MichaelZuo 2y ago

Yeah it's hard to see how any French official would have authority to conduct searches 10 meters beyond French borders, let alone over all of Uber's computers located in dozens of other countries.

wang_li 2y ago
Hard to see how a company can imagine it can do business in a country and not follow that country’s record keeping laws and be subject to criminal and civil statutes in that country.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  How is this relevant to Uber's files and computers located in other jurisdictions?
  - jraph 2y ago
    If you do business in France, you are accountable in France. Your problem to provide the asked documents if it's the law to provide them. That you are using computers elsewhere to store stuff should not be any relevant. You shouldn't really be able to have it both ways, should you?
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      Uber's files and computers located in French territory are of course accountable to French authorities, but that's simply not the case for those located in other jurisdictions… Unless there is some international law or treaty mandating that?
      - wang_li 2y ago
        It's not a matter of what's located in France. It's a matter of what documentation about your company requires you to keep. Regardless of where the computers you use are physically located if you can't produce the required documents you get to be fined, be shut down, and/or go to prison. No company gets to play the game of "we're doing business in Uzbekistan but our accounting servers are in Sealand so we don't have to file any taxes or provide any other records." Not only is the idea absurd, anyone who thinks that is congenitally stupid or stupid by choice.
        jraph 2y ago
        [flagged]
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Attempted insults only decrease the credibility of the writer… anyways I didn’t claim Uber is supplying less than the legally required amount of paperwork? Nor is it likely. All the accounting, insurance, banking, regulatory, etc… paperwork legally necessary for even a large company in France can easily fit in a set of binders that fit in a single bookcase. So it’s literally possible for all of it to be ready and available for inspection before anyone even touches a keyboard. And in fact that was the case for every company in France pre 1960s.
      - jraph 2y ago
        Authorities might not be able to seize computers and files in another country, although I think interpol can get involved in tax fraud or tax evasion matters. Preventing access to your accounts during an audit is quite fishy, especially for an onsite audit without warning which, in France, is supposed to happen only if the authorities have doubts that you could make some evidences disappear. During an audit, the CEO is supposed to provide the documents, the inspectors are not supposed to access your files themselves I think. (So blocking access for security reasons is bullshit, to answer someone else, the right thing to do is to have all the pieces in order for when an audit happens anyway)
tokinonagare 2y ago
If a company is doing business here, the actual location of file is irrelevant. Also when the government is really motivated, he can arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if they are doing business illegally.
- gruez 2y ago
  >Also when the government is really motivated, he can arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if they are doing business illegally. You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand access to data? If they actually did something illegal, they can be arrested/tried for that, but arresting executives as a means to coerce companies into doing stuff is a total perversion of the rule of law.
  - izacus 2y ago
    > You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand access to data? If they actually did something illegal, they can be arrested/tried for that, but arresting executives as a means to coerce companies into doing stuff is a total perversion of the rule of law. Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it. Except in this case it's not the executive that has the data. The data is sitting on some cloud server somewhere, and the executive no longer has access because the CISO got wind of the raid and locked his account. If you're holding the executive, you're not holding the executive because he's refusing to cooperate with a warrant, you're holding the executive as a hostage so HQ would turn over the document.
      - 2y ago

aaronax 2y ago

Thinking the systems that a company has are so sensitive that the company is basically above the law is the insane thing. It is just a company--a group of people granted certain rights. They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused).

gruez 2y ago
> They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused). That analogy doesn't work, because the "filing cabinets" are actually sitting somewhere else, possibly in another country/continent. It's not obvious that authorities in one country has authority over documents stored in another country.
- aaronax 2y ago
  I think it is not crazy to think that if the contents are used from some country then intentional obstruction of justice stuff like kill switches or dropping VPN connections should be treated as intentional obstruction of justice. AKA reality of use matters more than "location" of data.
valval 2y ago
I and many others think the government should have 0 business in my filing cabinet. That difference in world view might be what makes this topic more complex than you seem to think.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  [Not parent poster] So even the most heinous act of violence become unprosecutable when the suspects/accomplices have moved all remaining evidence into a magically inviolable filing cabinet? No? Then the world is a lot more complex than property rights trumping everything else.

atoav 2y ago

You are aware of the fact that tax evasion means these companies are freeloading on the tax money the rest of us (including: you) are paying? Especially in the case of uber which is essentially using public infrastructure to make their money having them pay taxes should be normal. I agree that customer data needs to be protected, but it is bold to assume that is the case at all with these powerful corporate entities: if they lie to the state when filing taxes what makes you believe they are ernest when it comes to the protection of their users privacy? Maybe it is a weird ideology I am holding here, but the more powerful an entity is, the more transparent it should become — nowaday we got this completely reversed with poor people being naked in front of the state and big corps literally fooling everyone. Edit: some also seem to think the state is the behemoth that jumps on the poor little companies here. To that I just have to think about the account of the German public prosecutor Bäumler-Hösl (of wirecard fame) where she told about a raid on a bank where she and 4 collegues were opposed by 130 (!) company lawyers.

gruez 2y ago
[flagged]
- atoav 2y ago
  Corporations are not people, any law who treats them as such has been perverted IMO.
haccount 2y ago
The law was always there to step on the little man, the VIPs always had it easier. Stop thinking too much about it.
- atoav 2y ago
  nah I think we need systemic rules that help the little man while making it harder the bigger an entity grows.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> if they lie to the state when filing taxes In general this is not what they do. What they do is read the tax code carefully and structure their operations in such a way as to minimize taxes, e.g. because tax is paid on "profits" (revenues minus expenses) so they shift more expenses into jurisdictions with high tax rates etc., causing "profits" to go down in those jurisdictions and up somewhere else. Then they don't pay any taxes in the jurisdictions with higher tax rates and politicians go on TV and complain about the companies following the laws that the politicians enacted. Because if they actually fixed the laws, the taxes would be paid based on the extent to which the company does business in that jurisdiction, and then companies could only avoid taxes by not doing business there (costing the country jobs) or, for taxes associated with local sales, by raising prices there. Neither of which the politicians actually want to do, so instead they pass laws that allow companies to avoid taxes and then complain about it when the companies do it.

pyrale 2y ago

Uber has a history of serving falsified data to the justice, though. Their offices are raided because they can’t be trusted with a subpoena.

golemotron 2y ago
The real issue is that technology has rendered office raiding useless. People are welcome to explore alternatives.
- pyrale 2y ago
  > People are welcome to explore alternatives. For companies that deliberately obstruct justice work? Have the board and a healthy amount of executives serve 20 years in a high security prison, seize the assets and investigate their investors' due dilligence process. Gather proof with infiltrated workers. Tech leaders need to learn that criminal conspiracy is not part of a good business plan. If they start using mafia tactics, so can Justice.