Obstruction of justice is a crime. So are lying to an FBI agent, destroying evidence, resisting arrest, evading arrest, falsifying business records, destruction of documents with intent to impede an investigation, and of course perjury.
I don't know that any of these apply here, but yes, actively avoiding accountability is often a crime on its own. And correctly so, I'd say. Creating fake accounting records as a hobby would be odd but not immoral. But keeping two sets of books in a real business has no purpose beyond enabling illegal activity.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the moral case, I think it's pretty clear. When we the people set out to do something together, deciding to evade our joint decisions and mechanisms for self-regulation is an antisocial, antidemocratic act.
The government hasn't represented "we, the people" since forever, so all your arguments are void. It cannot be morally unlawful to resist a government that doesn't represent you.
You are welcome to your own opinions, but I disagree. I imagine most Americans would.
Regardless, if you have decided that the government doesn't represent the people, it makes your task harder. Unless you're just saying that you can do what you want (which doesn't strike me as much of a moral position) then you have to work to divine what the collective will of your fellow citizens is and honor that.
When big money monopolists corrupt our local governments to obtain taxi monopolies at the expense of working families, the environment, and vulnerable racial minorities that can't hail taxis but can get an Uber, then it's the system that's antisocial and antidemocratic.
Uber is a social reform movement organized as a profit-seeking business. Of course the forces of corruption and reaction are going to try to stop it under cover of law.
But if they're a social reform movement, they'd very well disguised. They threaten journalists, exploit workers, engage in a variety of skulduggery, and create such a toxic working environment that they need a former Attorney General to investigate.
I think the more likely case is that they are what they appear to be: greedy, amoral people disguising an attempt to gain a monopoly using the guise of social reform.
Certainly it depends on which one of many jurisdictions Uber operates in.
For a start, in the U.K. it's illegal to use radar detectors [Edit: this first is apparently false; they publically stated that they were going to, but never changed the law. Other countries apparently do ban them, according to wikipedia.], and people have been given criminal convictions for "Flashing their lights" in order to warn incoming motorists of a speed trap.
Apologies - apparently I'm mistaken with the first - apparently several years ago there were public discussions about it and they claimed they were going to, but never followed through. Probably some more secondary sources confirmed it for me that I never double checked. (Also, wikipedia claims that although the UK doesn't ban, plenty of other countries do - and in the US it seems only Virginia explicitly bans them)
True, but there's a big difference between turning away anyone who looks like a cop (as biker bars might do, and is on firm legal ground), versus lying specifically to those people you believe to be cops.
So, saying the bar's closed would be ethically unacceptable but just saying you're not allowed in isn't? I'm afraid I don't agree with this being a clear ethical distinction.
> I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them.
Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.
You'll find that the same argument gets thrown entirely out the window conveniently depending on a person's specific beliefs on any given issue. It's barely even built on sand as a premise.
See: racism and discrimination broadly, segregation, refugees, illegal immigration, unions / union strikes, marijuana, political corruption, cartels, government protected monopolies and so on. There are a vast number of topics that cause people at businesses to be willing to disregard the laws of a given jurisdiction at various points in time (regardless of whether one views the position as being on the moral side or not). It'd be hard to claim that it never makes sense to disobey the law for a business, given just the last century of history in just the developed world, with the plentiful display of wildly irrational or immoral laws that have existed.
We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations. These laws once had a good reason, but are now still on the books only because incumbents have regulators in their pockets.
As for lobbying to have the laws changed, if you expect startups to be able to lobby in every jurisdiction to get the law changed against incumbents when the regulators often come from the industry the startup is disrupting, then I got a bridge to sell you.
> We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations.
The thing is, we're not. What we've got is a cab company that can offer better and cheaper service than everyone else because it's breaking the law, and it's good at throwing VC money at lawyers to avoid the consequences. What we've got is further damage to the respect for the rule of law and thus to the fabric of civilization, as people see how Uber gets away with illegal activities. Hell, there are many people who are inspired by their antisocial behaviour, and see Uber as an example to follow.
Consider a hypothetical business in a historical era that provides great service by employing colored people to serve white customers. Imagine said business becomes successful, and even pushes some jurisdictions to change their laws against this practice.
I'd argue that this business is great - it's helping consumers and fixing the world.
One might argue that we are not better off because of this:
The thing is, we're not. What we've got is a business that can offer better and cheaper service than everyone else because it's breaking the law, and it's good at throwing money at lawyers to avoid the consequences. What we've got is further damage to the respect for the rule of law and thus to the fabric of civilization, as people see how this company gets away with illegal activities. Hell, there are many people who are inspired by their antisocial behaviour, and see Uber as an example to follow.
Your argument seems to apply equally well to this case - after all, your argument is not dependent on the law being just or unjust. It completely ignores that point.
Are you willing to follow your argument where it leads? Or do you recognize the flaw in it?
It's about the defaults. I believe laws should be obeyed by default, and only opposed in special circumstances. The burden of proving that the circumstances warrant disobedience should be on the disobedient party. And most importantly, breaking the law should be expensive, so that it never becomes a viable business strategy.
I'd even cut Uber some slack if they weren't so smug about what they're doing. This is just as much about breaking arbitrary laws as it is about how they keep showing that they don't give a shit about society.
> your argument is not dependent on the law being just or unjust. It completely ignores that point.
It does, because in real world, regulations are not uniformly distributed throughout the possibility space. In any working society you can - and should - assume that most laws are there for a reason, and that this reason is just. When that assumption doesn't hold, your country pretty much disintegrates. Hence, going against the law is a special case.
The way I see it, none of Uber's "innovations" actually required illegal actions. They simply don't care, because this way is faster and brings in more money.
As a proof of that I want to point out that many places in Europe managed to implement all those Uber "innovations" some time ago, and it didn't require breaking laws in the way Uber does. Sure, old cab companies were pissed, but things got settled in courts and regulations were updated - just like it should happen in any civilized society.
Ultimately, if Americans want to run their society this way, it's none of my business. I would be happy though, if they stopped exporting their "innovative" methods to countries with working regulatory frameworks.
I think Uber has proven that their disobedience is beneficial. In the US and India they have made the transit sector vastly better than it was before. Even ignoring the benefits of the app over hailing a cab, the drastic reduction in racial discrimination is an amazing improvement.
Note that India also had apps/SMS driven taxi hails - autowale.in started in Pune (my city). But Uber fixed transport and the political situation, whereas autowale.in is just a footnote in history.
In any working society you can - and should - assume that most laws are there for a reason, and that this reason is just. When that assumption doesn't hold, your country pretty much disintegrates. Hence, going against the law is a special case.
Then by your standard, the US and India are not working societies.
Then again, by your standard, it's pretty clear that not all of Europe is working. For example, witness how often French unions and others engage in violent and illegal actions (both assaulting Uber drivers/passengers and others) on a regular basis.
In any case, you seem to be backing away from your original claim and accepting that some laws are unjust and breaking them is ok. Do you argue that American or Indian taxi protectionism laws are just?
You are arbitrarily assigning Uber's disruption a positive social outcome, which appears to be the lynchpin of your argument. Your argument could be applied to many outcomes that would appear on the surface to be negative. A few (admittedly exaggerated) examples:
"ArmzDealR is providing a great service by eliminating government bureaucracy and providing access to arms that citizens should have. It's good that they help people avoid those onerous registration requirements."
"TraffiKR makes it easy to find cheap labor. There's no paperwork and the workers never complain!"
Are you willing to follow your argument where it leads? Should businesses be allowed to push against any rule at all? Are all laws 'unjust' or are there some laws that are in place to protect public good?
I'm simply pointing out that Temporal's argument that breaking the law is always wrong is simply incorrect.
I'm not saying all laws should be broken. I'm saying one must decide whether or not the law is just, and support those who break unjust laws. I see no one even attempting to make the argument that taxi protectionism laws are just. Do you have an argument that they are?
I haven't researched the rationales behind taxi protectionism laws, so I can only offer conjecture. Two two reasons I can imagine we have such laws are traffic congestion control and accident liability.
On the surface congestion control seems far easier to implement (especially in a pre-mobile phone context) via restriction of medallions. I don't have arguments one way or the other as to the necessity of congestion control because I've only rarely experienced large cities (NYC, Chicago, London). I believe they are popular for various reasons, but I am not familiar with the arguments for or against.
Determination of liability seems like another obvious reason for a medallion monopoly. Presumably taxis are a higher risk pool for insurance claims, due to the presence of multiple parties. It's unclear to me where the liability falls if an Uber driver is in an accident that mortally wounds a passenger; will their standard insurance (that presumes a certain risk profile) cover the claim? I'm simply not familiar enough to definitely comment, unfortunately.
The latter argument holds more weight with me, but I'm sympathetic to arguments against it.
You do see the problem with encouraging the erosion of mutual social trust? If "following the law" collapses as a percieved social expectation it would impoverish everyone.
That being said, it is clear that abusive and overwraught law and regulation invites this impovrishment.
Breaking the law always erodes the fabric of society. Normalizing it is worse.
Certainly, there can be laws that are worth breaking. You should be extremely careful before assuming that's the case in any given scenario, and I don't think taxi rules are it, no matter how dysfunctional the USA might be.
Really though we are. Even if Uber goes out of business, taxi companies are going to get wise that customers want the Uber experience and all of a sudden they'll all have to get apps to compete.
Uber broke a status quo in the state of the transportation industry and we should all be grateful for that. They also became a champion for a certain type of activism that I think a lot of us would like to see more of.
Think carefully before you deny Uber the activist label. Using ethically shady methods to push through social agendas is precisely what activism is. Not everyone falls on the same side of the line, but you can't not call it activism. Labor strikes were considered extremely problematic to many.
I have a perspective of an European. Here on the Old Continent, we've already had that "Uber experience", and it didn't require companies to blatantly ignore the law and burn money to keep regulators at bay (not to say there weren't regulatory tensions, but they quickly got resolved in courts and regulations were updated; that's how a civilized society is supposed to work). So excuse me if I don't see Uber as innovative.
As for their activism, this is the flavour we know from dystopian movies about evil corporations disregarding the laws to eke out some profits. In a way, I can't wait for an Uber in biotech sector - maybe a small engineered pandemic is what people need to understand that regulations should not be ignored on a whim by companies seeking profits.
We're all better off? That's an incredibly broad statement.
The laws on the books still exist for a good reason. Even if you feel that Uber is somehow exempt/makes good choices with the people it chooses to employ via the platform, does that apply to any other "uber-esque" groups with more lax enforcement?
"The laws on the books still exist for a good reason."
That's... optimistic. Many laws were put in place to benefit other (incumbent) businesses, or in reaction to conditions that no longer hold, or due to ideas proven false or at least no longer fashionable.
That's not necessarily good reason to break the law (though sometimes it is), but anyone shold feel free to lobby for removal or change of a law.
Let's also acknowledge that it's not just Uber the company skirting the law, it's also the millions of people who use their service. The people have spoken with their dollars instead of their votes.
lets also acknowledge that there are billions of people who are using their dollars to vote against uber by taking taxis, use lyft, take public transportation, purchae cars, walk, or ride their bike.
in other words, thats a terrible argument in support of uber.
> Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate.
To some extent. If the fine is $50 for each infraction, and you have $10bn in the bank, you really don't have to obey the law.
You can lobby to have the law changed and not obey the law (if you are willing to pay any and all fines, while you are lobbying). Uber's use case didn't exist 10+ years ago, and as such, most laws weren't made for that not set up to account for that.
I personally find that to be a valid example of where it's acceptable not to follow the law.
Do regular citizens, such as Rosa Parks, not have the same obligation?
Personally I consider civil disobedience of unjust laws to be acceptable, for either a single person or for an organized group of people (such as Uber).
Civil disobedience implies actions in the open and being willing to suffer the consequences of your actions. If Uber had made a public statement that they were instituting a policy to refuse service to city and law enforcement officials and were willing to take their lumps, you might have a point.
And uber does things in the open. They openly violate the law and reveal to citizens how much corrupt politicians are hurting them by taking away their transportation choices.
This works only if it happens on a massive scale. If Uber didn't use this program, it's likely that their civil disobedience would end before it's large enough to get their message out.
It appears that other ridesharing apps have managed to "get the message out" without devising nefarious plots to confuse law enforcement. And for that matter despite various covert Uber-run attempts to sabotage their business and take away the public's transportation choices.
The idea that Uber is some civil liberties campaign for improved transportation options rather than a corporation with an unusually aggressive disregard for anyone that gets in their way is rather exploded by the most cursory examination of their actions.
Which other ridesharing apps have fixed broken political systems? From what I can see, most of them wait for Uber to fix politics and then just swoop in after the fact to make money.
I don't think any ridesharing apps have "fixed broken political systems", least of all Uber. But there are many ridesharing apps which operated in local territories before Uber, and many of them managed to do it without writing software to deceive law enforcement, coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them or trying to kill startup competitors with fake bookings.
Before Uber, SF, NYC and Mumbai and many other political systems prevented competitors from providing better service than yellow cabs. Uber's political activism has fixed this.
coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them
This was an ethical hypothetical, not a thing that actually happened.
Uber made real bookings and then gave the driver a sales pitch during the ride. All they did was pay their competitors for the right to offer drivers a better deal.
Kind of the opposite of Google/Apple/etc colluding NOT to offer each other's employees a better deal.
To be honest, the fact that an executive is prepared to publicly advocate harassment of journalists as an "ethical hypothetical" thing is a pretty good indication of what they actually are prepared to do in private. Sorry but the "I'm a good friend who overheard part of the conversation and don't think he said the things he's already apologised for saying" defence isn't the most convincing, especially given the company's well-publicised use of comparable tactics in other areas, including hiring private investigators to go after employees that had reported sexual harassment. Your insistence that Uber made real bookings (and just happened to cancel most of them) is a lie, period.
You don't have to think taxi medallion laws are particularly rational to find Uber's behaviour in many, many areas indefensible.
Yeah, Rosa Parks civil disobedience was a for profit operation! Please stop insulting her. Uber is the embodiment of corporate evil, these people think they are above the law.
I didn't say she made a profit. I said she broke a law she felt was unjust, same as Uber, and that according to ForHackernews' reasoning she should not have done this. My point is that his reasoning is wrong, and merely a post-hoc rationalization for general dislike of Uber.
I did not make the comparison you seem to be arguing against, namely that Rosa Parks and Uber are equivalent in all possible ways.
They're making the important point that what people really mean is "laws I agree or don't agree with" not "laws". Hopefully not only on HN do people have reflective capacity to see this.
I disagree that they should lobby to change it. I understand that realistically that is what they will do, but I don't think it's the ethically correct thing.
Laws are in place to benefit all of society, they shouldn't be changed on behalf of specific corporations, regardless of how much money the "donate".
Laws are in place to benefit those in power not "all of society," as anyone who does not benefit from them can attest to. And I agree, corporations cannot be allowed to change the laws to suit them.
Laws are passed by a tiny percentage of the population, alleged (not necessarily de facto) representatives of the interests of majority. So not confuse republic with a direct democracy.
No but I am for Google and Apple investors holding the management to their fiduciary duty to turn a profit. Lobbying for gay rights seems very loosely connected to that goal.
Edit: There is not a fiduciary duty to turn a profit, but there is a fiduciary duty to put the corporation's interests above your personal interests.
You are right - thanks for the correction. However, there is certainly a fiduciary duty to put the interests of the corporation above your personal interests as a high-level manager.
Yes, I'm against corporate lobbying in all cases, even when they're lobbying for causes that I believe in like LGBT rights and net neutrality. I would be quite a hypocrite if I only supported corporate lobbying when it was for causes that I agreed with. Ideally corporations would have no place in politics.
And please don't conflate "doesn't support lobbying for XXX" with "doesn't support XXX". They're really orthogonal concepts.
Or like non-Jews hiding Jews from the Nazi police.
Obviously that's a dramatic example, but so is the drug dealer example.
If Uber believes that the taxi industry is wrongfully colluding with the government to try to stop Uber from operating, then it's not necessarily wrong for Uber to do whatever it can to continue operating.
If Uber believes the taxi industry and the government are wrongfully colluding, it has the means to legally make that case as well as in the court of public opinion.
That is obviously not true for the extreme example you cited of genocide under fascism, so, I don't think it makes sense to compare the two.
Uber didn't have to have Greyball in the first place. Every driver that got intimidated/assaulted should go to the police. Every time a competitor pulled some shenanigans against Uber, they should sue. And so on and so forth.
This is just smokescreen. It's obvious what the intent was.
Laws take years, even decades to change. We'd never have any progress if every technological advancement had to wait for the law to catch up and regulate it.
We do have quite a lot of advancement which comes without violating the law. Also breaking the social canvas to correct something you feel is unfairly repressed/enforced is not something to do lightly.
Let me give you an example here. I think Uber is a bad thing, but there's nothing I can do to oppose them, legally, that is. Should I carry out my own justice, illegally ? You can see that this pattern of thought quickly falls down, because making compromises is actually an important part of living in society.
It does - you just need a certain amount of karma (500?) to get it. That's why some answers are grayed out; get enough downvotes, and your writing will blend in more and more with the background.
I know. HIPAA and SEC regulations are the reason why tech can't quite seem to disrupt the medical and financial industry. I wish a company like Uber will just go in and break every rule until enforcement finally realizes medical and financial regulation is a silly idea.
Tax avoidance and laundering of criminal money is a genuine value-add to many an individual's portfolio I don't know why governments around the world want to prevent banks from doing it.
I get what you're going for. Where's the line beyond which avoiding detection / policing is wrong. Like for example, if I'm a terrorist, then if I'm plotting an attack and avoiding surveillance and policing, would I still be wrong if I've not executed the plot yet?
Obstruction of justice and interfering with police duties are crimes in plenty of jurisdictions. I'm not sure Waze is a good comparison - your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law, so it'd be hard to argue it's obstruction of justice.
> your behavior around knowing where a police car was sighted is to comply better with the law
It may be...it may also be to avoid the area, for illegitimate (I'm a criminal police are looking for) or legitimate (the local PD is notoriously racist against people of my race, and I want to avoid being hassled) reasons.
I think that Waze is a great comparison. There's an app which is explicitly used to find and avoid police in order to flaut the law.
The main difference in my view is that Waze is individual people doing this, which we approve of, conversely Uber is a corporation many dislike. In situations like this it's important to acknowledge bias and try to abstract to the general case and reason about that.
Waze users are following the law when they get near Police officers. Uber users are continuing illegal behavior but obstructing police visibility. Uber's behavior is more like radar jamming or putting up a barrier in front of police.
Exactly, if -for example- a police officer tries to pull me over for a traffic infraction, my speeding off and attempts to make it more difficult to ticket me is only a natural and decent personal impulse!
You have a legal obligation not to flee an officer. However, even if you sell drugs or sex, you have no obligation to approach a known police officer and offer to sell them drugs/sex.
You make a distinction between staying passive and not helping an investigation (the drugs example) - and actively deterring the investigation (the flight example).
That's a valid distinction to make, however given how much development effort companies like Uber and VW invested in their tools, I think those are clear cases of active deferring.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think you are making the wrong distinction. Fleeing a police officer is explicitly illegal, I believe the crime is resisting arrest or something equivalent.
Actively telling all your hooker friends to stay home because the cops are out is not illegal. Nor is it illegal to say "oh hi there officer" before your hooker friend propositions a cop. That's basically what Uber did.
Not only will you find examples of things like courts finding liability if "a newspaper publishes the name of a witness to a crime, thus making it
easier for the criminal to intimidate or kill the witness" (with no intent on the part of the newspaper) [18] or "a Web site or a newspaper article names a Web site that contains
copyright-infringing material, or describes it in enough detail that readers could quickly find it using a search engine" [26], there are also examples more directly relevant to this situation. I think references [19, 37, 38, 39, 40] are most relevant.
[19]: "publish[ing] . . .the residence address or telephone number" of various law enforcement employees "with the intent to obstruct justice" is illegal in many states, including California.
[37] My reading of United States v. Lane, 514 F.2d 22 (9th Cir. 1975) is that advising people not to sell drugs to a person because you heard something interesting on a police scanner is aiding and abetting a conspiracy. The court said the defendant "could not seriously contend that he was discouraging, rather than aiding and abetting, the commission of the crime" in response to his assertion that "he actually advised against it".
[38]: My reading of United States v. Bucher, 375 F.3d 929 (9th Cir. 2004) is that it is walking down a trail to warn a person whom park rangers intend to arrest is interfering with both the rangers and their official duties (and thus illegal).
Uber isn't looking after its hooker "friends" though, it's attempting to thwart investigations into its own business model which is profiting from contractors operating in a legally grey area in many jurisdictions.
Seems more akin to developing a system to screen guests at your hotel - which you insist isn't an illegal brothel and is making good faith attempts to uphold the law - to ensure you're only earning "enhanced room service" commissions from people that aren't investigating whether they might be illegal.
Even if that isn't an offence in itself, it still looks like hard evidence against any claims they might make of intent to comply with the law in various other cases being brought against them.
It's closer to them saying, "Yes, sure...I'm happy to take money for sex...wait right here for a while", and then hiding.
Which could be obstruction.
If the app told them they were banned, it would be closer to your analogy. But, it shows fake cars circling about that never pick you up. It's actively deceiving law enforcement
Ah, but is it deceiving law enforcement with the knowledge that that person is right now trying to arrest you, or is it just refusing service to law enforcement because they don't like them? The latter is covered by the TOS where it says they can refuse service to anyone for whatever reason.
there are a number of holes in your thought process.
first, and most important to this discussion, is that it is definitely deceptive especially when you are going to such extremes as documenting burner mobile phones and preventing their use on the pretense of hiding from regulators.
second, and less important for this discussion, but a business has he right to refuse service to any ONE person for whatever legal reason they choose (whether they specify hat reason or not is a different topic). this should not be confused with deniying service to a GROUP of people for whatever reason they want which is discrimination, and is illegal, whether outline in a TOS or not.
I don't know how this is handled in US law, but in many law systems there is the question of intent. If you say "hi officer" with the intent of warning your partner that might in theory already be illegal. (obstruction of justice)
While in that case, intent would be be very difficult to prove, it's rather obvious if you spend planning time and resources building a software tool with the express purpose to warn you of officers.
Anyone who uses e.g. the Waze app to evade speedtraps is similarly guilty of "systematically avoiding the law."
Lastly, let me just disclaim that I think Uber is run by assholes and so is the police.