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

Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by SilasX on Friday March 03, 2017 @04:18PM (#13786690)

>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?

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by bri3d on Friday March 03, 2017 @06:43PM (#13787989)

The system has extremely obvious use cases in abuse mitigation - it's basically HN shadow banning for car service. Only a few needed to know about the spot-the-officials aspect, and the rest is legitimate. And support don't need to know anything - if someone is reporting fake cars, they're an undesirable customer anyway so from Uber's standpoint, it's fine if support get confused and do a bad job.

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by azernik on Friday March 03, 2017 @08:12PM (#13788493)

From my read of the article, abuse mitigation seems to have been an early motivation for some components of this feature - in markets where, for example, competitors would threaten Uber drivers with damage against person or vehicle. And then someone got the bright idea of who else they could shadowban...

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by h84hgihrgeg on Friday March 03, 2017 @09:19PM (#13788757)

A Philadelphia agency was caught teaming up with taxi companies to fight Uber http://www.vox.com/2016/1/30/10873372/uber-lyft-taxi-philade...

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by wheelerwj on Saturday March 04, 2017 @10:13AM (#13791178)

caught is a bit hyperbolic. Government agencies have every right to work with industry partners to promote, understand, and enforce regulation. This happens all day everyday in industries around the world. Uber isn't somehow exempt from that.

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by M_Grey on Friday March 03, 2017 @07:09PM (#13788166)

It may be that asking questions like that is simply not encouraged at Uber.

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by Karunamon on Friday March 03, 2017 @04:53PM (#13787083)

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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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by konceptz on Friday March 03, 2017 @06:27PM (#13787899)

Agreed, and also the article states that multiple current and former employees reported this information.

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by hrasyid on Friday March 03, 2017 @06:51PM (#13788031)

But NYTimes might be mistaken in its reporing?

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by actsasbuffoon on Saturday March 04, 2017 @07:24AM (#13790589)

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.

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[dead]

Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by jsmthrowaway on Saturday March 04, 2017 @11:28AM (#13791529)

It's concerning to see this narrative already working, considering a Carlos Slim "billion dollar investment" in the NYT is, itself, a lie. The good news for you is that a transaction that large would be public record, so I look forward to being proven wrong with a citation. (I suggest you look up the market capitalization of The New York Times Company.)

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by WildUtah on Saturday March 04, 2017 @12:01PM (#13791722)

On the order of 1bn, but my memory of exact figures from a decade ago needed refreshing. In fact only $350 million of corrupt foreign monopolist cash is enough to buy the editorial position of America's premier source of fake news.

Good luck defending the NY Times on that basis.

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Re:How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authoriti... by jsmthrowaway on Saturday March 04, 2017 @12:03PM (#13791733)

He increased his investment by $100ish million in 2015, which more than doubled his stake. This is easily found via Google, and is on the order of an order of magnitude below a billion dollars. You can't just make things up while decrying fake news. The trend line on these goalposts moving will eventually lead to an investment I can afford.

This is even beyond my position on the paper. You're just typing complete falsehoods and expecting to get away with it now, which is sad.

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