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Justice Department Opens Criminal Probe Into Uber (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the band-on-the-run dept.

parallel_prankster quotes a report from Washington Post: The Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Uber's use of a secret software that was used to evade authorities in places where its ride-sharing service was banned or restricted, according to a person familiar with the government's probe. The investigation is in its early stages, but deepens the crisis for the embattled company and its chief executive and founder Travis Kalanick, who has faced a barrage of negative press this year in the wake of high-profile sexual harassment complaints, a slew of high-level executive departures, and a consequential trade secrets lawsuit from Google's parent company. The federal criminal probe, first reported by Reuters, focuses on software developed by Uber called "Greyball." The program helped the company evade officials in cities where Uber was not yet approved. The software identified and blocked rides to transportation regulators who were posing as Uber customers to prove that the company was operating illegally.

13 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. At the shop by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shopkeeper: what can I get you?

    Me: I'd like a dozen softwares and three hardwares, please.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Re:Virtual pleading the 5th by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Informative

    Methods to evade laws have nothing to do with the 5th Amendment. One can argue for or against the areas that ban Uber and their laws, but your analogy is flawed. This software is more like a real criminal using methods to avoid undercover police.

  3. Uber should be shut down by WCMI92 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They've already commited enough shenanigans to warrant the corporate death penalty.

    --
    Corporatism != Free Market
    1. Re:Uber should be shut down by TWX · · Score: 3, Informative

      They are not publicly traded but they still have a business license that was granted to them. Time to revoke it and force asset liquidation. If anything it's better that they're not publicly traded, the people most hurt by the behavior are those who invested in the criminal enterprise, losing their venture capital dollars may convince them to avoid these kinds of business practices in the future.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  4. Poor old Travis by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder if this particular specimen of arrogant entitled Tech Bro will finally realise its better to work with regulators around the world than to try and bully your way onto the scene and hope you built up enough critical mass to bulldoze your way through all those tedious regulations and laws that other companies have to comply with.

    The idea behind Uber is a good one, but I hope the company itself goes out of business. Its business and HR practices stink and we don't need a company like that running transportation services (not that they'd stop there tbh).

    1. Re:Poor old Travis by dbIII · · Score: 3, Informative

      He hasn't just been bullying, he's been sweetening people in power up as well.
      It's an odd kind of feeling seeing these guys come in and treat places in the west as if it's a banana republic with easily bought officials - not just insulting but depressing when it works.

    2. Re:Poor old Travis by TWX · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Some of Ubers ideas are good, but most of the good ones could have been evaluated by regulatory bodies and then applied to existing passenger livery regulations. It's not unreasonable to have a better booking system for rides. It's not unreasonable to use mapping software to determine the approximate cost of a fare. It may possibly even be reasonable to allow the use of private vehicles for passenger livery part-time, which means that part-time drivers would have to buy-in to whatever dispatch service they wish to work for. It even may be reasonable to allow customers to rate drivers and drivers to rate customers to essentially determine risk/worth/surcharge.

      Thing is, at the end it still is necessary for the drivers to make sustainable wages. It's necessary to protect passengers with proper insurance. It's necessary to ensure that drivers are properly vetted. Bad things have happened over the years, many taxi and sedan regulations are reactions to those bad things, and while it's always a good idea to re-evaluate rules to see if they're still necessary, I expect that since the act of moving a fare from one place to another really hasn't changed all that much, most of those regulations still need to be in-effect.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:Poor old Travis by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I wonder if this particular specimen of arrogant entitled Tech Bro will finally realise its better to work with regulators around the world than to try and bully your way onto the scene and hope you built up enough critical mass to bulldoze your way through all those tedious regulations and laws that other companies have to comply with.

      Kalanick and Elizabeth Holmes should get together. They would be the power couple of fraudulent...I mean disruptive...tech startups. They could start a new company called Uberos to disrupt the corrupt lab-testing industry by creating an app that allows people who have bought their own equipment for personal testing to test samples for other people too!

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  5. Re:Two to go! by Jzanu · · Score: 2

    facilitating murder sprees or white power movements

    Give it a month, Uber is taking pains to hide from oversight for a reason. Practically it will be tied into the same bullshit that has taken root in many of the fake "innovation" companies like Airbnb.

  6. What Distraction will they Announce Next? by BarneyGuarder · · Score: 2

    Let's see, Uber has already had large public announcements abut developing self-diving cars, then flying cars. Each of these were after some bad press about Uber. What will they announce next to distract from this.

    Alternatively, there just could be so much bad press that any PR stunt they hold will be immediately after something bad came out.

    Uber challenged the stale Taxi monopolies with a new dispatch and payment processing system. However, eventually VCs will get tired of buying people cab rides.

    1. Re:What Distraction will they Announce Next? by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

      Let's see, Uber has already had large public announcements abut developing self-diving cars, then flying cars. Each of these were after some bad press about Uber. What will they announce next to distract from this.

      The self driving cars came _before_ the bad news about technology being stolen from Google. And I bet Google will have flying pigs before Uber has flying cars.

  7. Re:Virtual pleading the 5th by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    I would say it is more like radar jammer where it uses a false transmission to hide the activity.

    Highly illegal, of course.

  8. Re:Virtual pleading the 5th by Jzanu · · Score: 2

    You are ignorant and illiterate. Read! Uber's criminal activity before the software fiasco was operating in the city in violation of law banning exactly that. The software was designed explicitly to allow Uber to operate despite the law and evade detection. Now in addition to that original charge, they are guilty of obstruction of justice by interfering with official investigation.