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Uber Used Another Secret Software To Evade Police, Report Says (bloomberg.com)
schwit1 shares a Bloomberg report: In May 2015 about 10 investigators for the Quebec tax authority burst into Uber Technologies's office in Montreal. The authorities believed Uber had violated tax laws and had a warrant to collect evidence. Managers on-site knew what to do, say people with knowledge of the event. Like managers at Uber's hundreds of offices abroad, they'd been trained to page a number that alerted specially trained staff at company headquarters in San Francisco. When the call came in, staffers quickly remotely logged off every computer in the Montreal office, making it practically impossible for the authorities to retrieve the company records they'd obtained a warrant to collect. The investigators left without any evidence.
Most tech companies don't expect police to regularly raid their offices, but Uber isn't most companies. The ride-hailing startup's reputation for flouting local labor laws and taxi rules has made it a favorite target for law enforcement agencies around the world. That's where this remote system, called Ripley, comes in. From spring 2015 until late 2016, Uber routinely used Ripley to thwart police raids in foreign countries, say three people with knowledge of the system. Allusions to its nature can be found in a smattering of court filings, but its details, scope, and origin haven't been previously reported. The Uber HQ team overseeing Ripley could remotely change passwords and otherwise lock up data on company-owned smartphones, laptops, and desktops as well as shut down the devices. This routine was initially called the unexpected visitor protocol. Employees aware of its existence eventually took to calling it Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver's flamethrower-wielding hero in the Alien movies. The nickname was inspired by a Ripley line in Aliens, after the acid-blooded extraterrestrials easily best a squad of ground troops. 'Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.'
Most tech companies don't expect police to regularly raid their offices, but Uber isn't most companies. The ride-hailing startup's reputation for flouting local labor laws and taxi rules has made it a favorite target for law enforcement agencies around the world. That's where this remote system, called Ripley, comes in. From spring 2015 until late 2016, Uber routinely used Ripley to thwart police raids in foreign countries, say three people with knowledge of the system. Allusions to its nature can be found in a smattering of court filings, but its details, scope, and origin haven't been previously reported. The Uber HQ team overseeing Ripley could remotely change passwords and otherwise lock up data on company-owned smartphones, laptops, and desktops as well as shut down the devices. This routine was initially called the unexpected visitor protocol. Employees aware of its existence eventually took to calling it Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver's flamethrower-wielding hero in the Alien movies. The nickname was inspired by a Ripley line in Aliens, after the acid-blooded extraterrestrials easily best a squad of ground troops. 'Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.'
Most tech companies don't expect police to regularly raid their offices
Every non-government entity should treat the government as an adversary. Government agencies want to compromise everything.
I've always defended Uber against accusations of not having insurance (they documented that every driver is covered by a $1M policy while driving for Uber) and against being treated as a taxi (in the same way GrubHub, Eat24, and Delivery.com aren't restaurants or delivery services, but a service connecting an independent delivery restaurant with an independent customer).
Then, all kinds of bullshit started coming out of Uber.
I still say Uber as a business model is fine and sensible: you're using their service whether you're a driver or passenger. Nobody is trying to drive a stake into Lyft these days for doing the same sort of business (well, almost nobody).
I haven't come out to defend Uber in a long, long time because nobody's been attacking them based on what kind of business they want to pretend Uber is. Uber shit its own pants this time, and it never stopped shitting. Sexual harassment, corporate espionage, invasions of privacy, and now they've taken it all the way up to bona fide organized crime with countermeasures in place to impede investigators. They have a great business model, but they've ruined it with terrible business ethic.
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I don't know how it is in Canada but in the US a search warrant does not obligate you to preserve evidence or assist in the search in any way. Being served with a subpoena triggers a requirement to preserve evidence but a police raid is not a subpoena. Notifying the San Francisco main office that a raid is in progress isn't obstruction and the San Fran office is outside of Canadian jurisdiction anyway. I don't see how Canada could go after anyone unless their laws are nastier than I already understand them to be.
Was anyone ever taken to court, charged and convicted of Sexual Harassment, or is this just another case of accusation and the label sticking?
Yeah, because that's really an option for someone when Uber has a mandatory arbitration clause in their contracts disallowing you from taking your case to court. It makes a good soundbite to hollar "no court cases, no convictions, so innocent" but the reality is very different, and not just at Uber. If we ever get a government that cares about humans more than corporations again, we need to ban contract clauses that allow people to sign away their constitutional rights to speak out, to sue for redress, etc., but until then corporations like Uber will continue to bury their dirt, and those they've wronged, in arbitration where the outcome is a foregone conclusion that favors those who pay the bills--namely the corporation, and not the wronged individual.
There is another salient difference between a warrant and a subpoena: a subpoena requires the cooperation of the target. The writ obtains that cooperation viathreat of punishment -- in fact that's the root of the word: sub poena -- under punishment.
However that threat is empty if you're never caught.
If subpoenas truly compelled a suspect to turn over evidence, you'd never have to do anything like a high stakes drug raid. You'd simply have the court issue a writ ordering the suspect to turn over all the drugs and related records and wait for your evidence to show up at the court on the appointed date.
So the choice of search warrant and subpoena in the case of a company like Uber depends on your estimate of their willingness to risk defying the law.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That isn't abuse. If there are reason to believe criminal acts are happening and people refuse to co-operate with legal requests the material can and will be confiscated. It isn't punishment nor harassment - it's called an investigation.
It never cease to amaze me that people don't understand basics and instead push forward legal arguments that aren't generally even internally consistent.
Police: "We have reason to suspect you are violating rule X and according to law Y we request that you produce the material Z as you are required"
Unter: "Nope, we don't wanna - it wuld be harrussment"
Police: "Okay, have a good day"
Except the cops had a warrant.
Warrants allow for searches and seizures. And that is what police did. But a warrant for the machines doesn't mean the company needs to help officers access accounts, read the data, nor help by decoding or decrypting them.
There are many legal tools if the authorities want to obtain specific documents and records. An unannounced visit to seize computer equipment is typically the worst of those tools. The searches are often sloppy and (for those who are prepared) the searches are easily overcome by measures like those in the story. Authorities love "snatch and grab" because the surprise often grants access to a wide range of other secondary data, also including ad-hoc statements and access to items that are nearby on whiteboards and both on and inside desks and at the time of the police break-in.
The company still has a fight ahead, but the policy generally is a strong case that they were protecting user's data rather than obstructing justice. Agents had an order to seize computers, the computers were seized. If agents produce an order to produce specific documents, I'm sure they could be produced. They complied with the requests while also protecting private information of millions of customers. That isn't obstruction.
If they actually destroyed their data, or if they altered or falsified data, those actions would be obstruction. But locking down records for proper data preservation and basic data security are not obstruction.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
They're providing cheaper transportation fares despite gov't regulations that protect entrenched taxi companies from upstart competitors
While avoiding paying taxes and paying their 'workers' less than labour laws require.
They aren't shouldering a share of the costs of the community/society from which they are making money and they aren't paying enough to their workers to meet the requirements of the law. If the labour laws are poor, incomplete or even corrupt - change them. But a company making an end-run around them is not a useful solution.
Government created/protected monopolies exist (ideally) in industries where competition would be harmful to the industry and/or society. Taxis are a good example of this. Unregulated competition creates a race to the bottom with desperate drivers in cars that are barely roadworthy competing to find a fare, then having to find a way to milk that fare to cover costs.
However, these monopolies must be regularly challenged and scrutinised to prevent the sort of entrenched corruption that becomes almost inevitable. To that extent, I think start-ups that challenge monopolies are fantastic. But that becomes a fig leaf when the company is simply exploiting the community (no/low tax) and their workers (avoiding labour laws). The potential benefit of shaking up an entrenched player does not justify breaking the law, nor the sort of exploitation that the regulation/monopoly was created to prevent.