Wasting the time of an abusive user? Probably okay. Kicking off law enforcement officers? Probably okay. Deliberately wasting the time of investigators? Probably crosses the line.

Compare two scenarios when an undercover officer is investigating a biker bar for dealing meth:

Scenario A: The officer seems somehow off to the bartender. Bartender glances around at his buddies, who shake their heads. "We don't want your kind in in here, get out."

Scenario B: Officer is identified as a cop. Bartender invites him to sit at a table far in the back with no view of anything. Any time the officer gets up, he's told to leave or sit back down. They have members stand within earshot of him and pretend to plan out fake meth deals at places where nothing will actually happen.

In A, the bar is on firm legal ground. In B, they're not, and that's basically what the Greyball program is.

Note: insights drawn from the earlier discussion about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564

If you put into action a plan that's intent is to mislead investigators that you believe are attempting to investigate you, then how do you claim that this can't be obstruction of justice? They are attempting to obstruct the investigation.

What you are doing to trying to evaluate the action separate from the intent, and claim that it's innocuous because there could be many explanations for the action.

Obviously at trial, the DoJ would be trying to prove intent, so trying to ignore it doesn't really make sense.

Your points relating to Uber stand, I'm just wondering how it'd work in the case of an individual feeling like they are being shadowed.

Then you have your lawyer make that argument in court and try to convince the jury.

mens rea ("guilty mind") and actus reus ("guilty act")

http://law.jrank.org/pages/22506/Criminal-Law-Elements-Crime...

If there's no actus reus in your example, then there's no crime.

Also, even though law is like computer code in being pretty specific and executable, it's unlike computer code in being executed by humans.

Or, like XKCD puts it, https://xkcd.com/1494/.

Or, more simply, judges are not stupid and can figure out if you're playing games with them.

How is money laundering a "fake" crime?

(At least in the U.S. Do EU citizens have to report themselves for such transactions?)

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/individuals/cash-contro...

In Greece they have even extended this to other comodities such as gold and you have to report it regardless if you're moving it or not, otherwise they can freely confiscate it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-01/greeks-told-declare...

No, but transactions over X € must be conducted using a traceable medium - cheques, credit cards, bank transfer, sometimes Bitcoin. X varies by country.

Conducting transactions above X € in cash doesn't automatically constitute criminal money laundering, of course, it just gets fined.

As for eliminating cash, yes we try to do that, but the reason given is not money laundering. The two reason/excuses which are commonly given are 1) preventing tax evasion and 2) preventing store robberies. Also note that the ones most heavily pushing for elimination of cash is not our government but our banks. I think card payments are much more profitable for banks compared to cash. But it is not like our government makes a secret about that its regulations surrounding cash payments are there to prevent tax fraud.

And the worst country for when it comes to hunting taxes is probably the US. A couple of days ago I had to sign two forms when opening a bank account where I guaranteed that I had no ties to America. Many smaller European banks wont even accept American citizens as customers due to the extra paper work to report stuff to the American IRS.

Or perhaps it's simpler than that. I have a bunch of money in geographic location A, and I want to spend it in B, so I put it in a suitcase and walk/fly/drive on over.

Now LE comes along and says, gee whiz, our jobs are really hard having to catch criminals doing criminal stuff. You know, let's make it illegal to use your money as you like, to have any sort of privacy in your transactions. Tada, now they can just go after people for moving money around.

The sad thing is, they've won. They've made "money laundering" sound like something serious, instead of totally made up to make their jobs easy, and people seem to support such laws.

Maybe they'll call encryption "data laundering", "bit smuggling", "safety obstruction" or something catchy to get people against it.

But that's beside the point. The crime isn't "moving money around in unconventional ways," it's lying to the IRS and other government agencies. It's signing your name on all those tax documents that say "under penalty of perjury" after filling them in with false information.

Now LE comes along and says, gee whiz, our jobs are really hard having to catch criminals doing criminal stuff. You know, let's make it illegal to use your money as you like, to have any sort of privacy in your transactions. Tada, now they can just go after people for moving money around.

Edit: Keep in mind if your original money you evaded taxes on, that's already a crime. As is committing crimes, if that's how you got the money. "Laundering" is just a non-crime used to make LE's job easy, expanding power and reducing privacy. AML and KYC laws are an affront to liberty.

So, assuming that money isn't illicitly gotten, I'm pretty sure that's not money laundering.

You can say it's "not your job" all you like--if you are operating in the United States, you are not correct and it would go very poorly for you to try.

1. I'm not sure why you'd do that. You'd have to pay taxes on the money twice as ordering pizzas is not tax deducible.

2. You'd then have to make 1000 pizzas.

Maybe the repercussions wouldn't be from the authorities, in your hypothetical situation.

I wonder if that's been used against Uber drivers.

It's not their right to operate where they are prohibited, and it's also not their right to feed people believed to be enforcing that prohibition false information to prevent themselves from being busted for violating that prohibition.

Scraping APIs with fake profiles isn't the right way to go about this.

RICO gives federal jurisdiction over cases of interstate entities committing obstruction of justice.

"If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371

If a law enforcement agency wants to catch child predators, it is entirely legitimate for them to make fake profiles of children and see who responds, and it's going to be a lot more productive than sending subpoenas to the creepiest-looking people in town saying "Are you a child predator Y/N".

This is the "it's okay to not answer questions, it's not okay to deliberately mislead"

To whom even Miranda warning will apply to ?

Or in a custodial interrogation as per wikipedia[1]. My point is not every interaction, even if you are a person, is a custodial interrogation. I can stop talking. I can move away. Or even joke (Not recommended). It would not have any legal repercussions. LEO has to warn me the mode of interaction has been changed to serious from courteous.

> the App was designed with a feature created with the explicit purpose of disrupting a police investigation. They intended to disrupt an investigation, and as a direct result of their actions the investigation was disrupted.

First, the purpose and intentions are allegations yet to be proven in court.

What I guess the Uber can say is these features are design to deny serivce to all LEOs wheather they are on investigations or not. Uber cannot even know if some investigation is taking place. Which I can empathize with. No one wants LEOs up in their shxt if they legally can avoid them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning

In the case i'm aware of, law enforcement was investigating criminal violations of local ordinances by unlicensed uber drivers.

While i'm sure not a felony, that's definitely a criminal investigation they were seeking to stymie.

(Your example is not close to what happened here, as again, that would have been more okay. They did not warn the drivers. They hid the law violating drivers from the cops when they knew the cops were looking for them, and did so to make themselves money. It would be more akin to being able to change what the cop sees so that, at your command, all he saw was people going the speed limit, and nothing else)

"Operating without the required licenses is a second-degree misdemeanor. Illegal drivers face a fine of up to $500 and/or 60 days in jail."

I'm not sure why you believe they are civil. They pretty much never are.

Also, given how often Uber is brought up in these forums for ignoring/breaking local laws, I really would not be surprised to find that they have committed real crimes. I would be far more surprised if they had not.

This is more analogous to the food safety inspectors showing up, and Uber intentionally leading them to a different restaurant's kitchen - always, even when the inspector isn't there to officially inspect them.

Nothing wrong with telling a customer their shrimp plate will be done any minute now and hoping they give up and leave.

See the keyword "intent" there? If your intent with an action is to break the law, the action is illegal.

Now the part that Uber is hiding up someone elses wrongdoing makes a bit more sense, but still seems to be the same kind of thing. If investigators wanted to know, they should have gotten an order against Uber and audited their records.

After all, I encrypt communications. Sometimes with the explicit intent of making sure LE can't see what I've written. Should encryption be interfering? All the people suggesting we wipe devices before crossing a border, is that not the same?

Now, the reality is that these inspectors don't need an explicit order to inspect you. If they did, then Uber should simply take these inspectors to court or claim that any evidence they found is inadmissible. Tying up their resources and getting away is beyond simply hiding something, it's purposefully diverting their resources somewhere else. If they simply didn't respond to regulators asking for a car, maybe you would have a point, but they're tying up these resources.

It may "seem so" to you. But the law "seems to" say otherwise.

Which is precisely the point.

If you had LEOs peering into your office windows (legal, but undesirable), wouldn't you want to at least have a blind to try and stop them from peeking?

If it's actually fraudulent, then, yes, you should stop it by suing and getting an injunction against the illegal government action.

If it's just enforcing the law that you are breaking, maybe you should quit breaking the law rather than engaging in elaborate technical means to conceal the violation, and expecting that won't cause additional problems when it is discovered.

Enforcement is not 'fraudulent use'. These analogies are very strained while the thing that took place is very simple.

If a LEO lies to you during the course of an investigation, do you think that you will be able to successfully claim that as fraud?

The labeling can serve as evidence toward the smuggling case without needing to be its own crime.

that'll be like arthur andersen shredding enron's financial accounts. can't investigate if there's nothing to investigate!

Disagreeing with a law doesn't give you the "right" to not follow the law.

No, they have to provide service to everyone, equally. Imagine a situation: a cake store decides not to prepare a cake for gay wedding.