Uber Admits Its Ghost Driver 'Greyball' Tool Was Used To Thwart Regulators, Vows To Stop (usatoday.com)

Uber has admitted it used a tool to thwart city regulators, and announced a review of its controversial Greyball technology. From a report on USA Today: Greyballing, a play on blackballing, was a way for Uber officials to remotely provide ghost driver information to a targeted individual. A March 3 report on the program in The New York Times cited a 2014 example where a regulator in Portland, Ore., a city in which Uber was operating without approval at the time, was unable to hail a car because of his Greyball-powered app. "We have started a review of the different ways this technology has been used to date," Joe Sullivan, Uber's chief security officer, wrote in a blog post. "In addition, we are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward."

Comments

`We don't need regulation, we pinky-swear'

[TimothyHollins]

Ahh yes, the classic "We promise to stop if you promise not to double-check".

Who here will bet that the regulators won't get caught in some other filter instead, perhaps one sending a "certified" car for the pickup?

Re:`We don't need regulation, we pinky-swear'

[roman_mir]

Soviet era style tactics are the best, aren't they? Turn half of the population into informers, you don't even need that many people, you just need to seed the doubt in the people's minds that they are constantly being watched. Except that they are being watched constantly

Give me a break

[Anonymous Coward]

They know *precisely* how it has been being used. This company just continues to define unethical and creepy in the 21st century (no mean feat, when they are competing with the likes of Facebook and Google for that disctinction). Enough, already. Somebody, please, regulate the living **** out of them.

Drivers should be able to control this feature

[MrNJ]

Drivers have the 1st Amendment right to association
Right to association includes right to refuse to associate.
If the drivers do not want to associate with one or more people, they should have the ability.
If Uber provides a tool that the drivers can use to limit who they associate with, good for the drivers.
So perhaps instead of blanket application of the "greyball" tool, there should be a checkbox in the Uber app that the drivers can use to turn it on or off.

Re:Drivers should be able to control this feature

[silentcoder]

Driver in a cab company is an employee of a public business. Public businesses do NOT have unlimited right of association - and are required to serve all members of hte public the same. It's called the Civil Rights Act.

Companies are not people and do not have, nor should they have, the same freedoms as individuals.

Re:So Uber is bad now?

[TWX]

You're ignoring the middle-ground, which includes those in cities that lack a medallion system, where there can be as many cabs as the market will bear. In these environments, taxi regulation is reactionary to bad things that have happened in the past, like sexual assault, robbery, severe injury in traffic collisions, and a lack of insurance to fully cover injuries sustained by passengers.

Taxi and sedan companies have laws that regulate them because of incidents that happened in the past. Following those regulations costs money. If a company ignores those regulations then they can charge less, but that means that the conditions now exist that may let those previous kinds of incidents return. That's where I have a problem with Uber and its ilk, they're a taxi or sedan service attempting to masquerade as an until-now unclassified "ride sharing" entity so they can violate the laws governing passenger safety.