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>[edit: reading this, I'm not sure his lawyer told him to do it, quite the opposite actually]

I didn't see anything in the article suggesting that, just that Uber's lawyers said they wanted him to release the information

[edited for accuracy given child comment, thanks late2part]



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No, Uber's lawyers said they wanted him to release the information. Very different from what you said.

The article seems to suggest that uber is complying with discovery by saying they have 0 documents and his lawyers are saying that revealing any documents he had would be testimony against himself.

>...it may indeed be the case that these documents were never given to Uber.

Then they should have their legal team pilloried and set ablaze for advising them to be this cagey.


>Uber recognizes the alleged conduct could be criminal versus just a tort

...or that his lawyer is competent.


I didn't know that, and that certainly changes things!

That also makes this statement kind of absurd...

"The spokesperson said Uber's legal team, rather than Sullivan, was responsible for deciding whether and to whom the matter should be disclosed."


> Sure, but keep in mind that in this situation he is a guy in his private life who has been blindsided and accused of ruining this guys life, with, what it seems like from other posts here, lies.

Oh come on, he's the CEO of Uber and he took an Uber. Probably every single Uber driver in the country if not the world knows who he is. If he doesn't have an expectation of being recognized and asked about the business he should hire non-Uber private cars. This isn't someone tracking him down on the street and sticking a mic in his face. It's completely fair game.


Just to be clear: I have no way of knowing the facts and am just commenting based on my memory of what I read.

What he says doesn't contradict what Uber said.

Uber let him go for not revealing the accusations. They have no way of knowing what the results of the investigation were.


> But lets not kid ourselves. This isn't anonymized data. Uber's publishing in a format that is unspecific, but they have all of the detailed data and can poke through it and infer things at their leisure, and they have no compunction around how they're doing it or why.

That's a fairly large accusation to make.

This blog post was originally published in 2012 - two years ago. Since then has anything come out that would confirm your suspicions? I haven't seen anything.


> It's still unclear to me how exactly Uber obstructed the investigation but maybe my reading comprehension is lacking.

Im terrible with dates so stuff like this slips by me ALL the time!

- Monday, December 5th, 2016, the crime

- Uber tells police that they "don't have a record of a trip..."

- March 3rd, 2017. first court date

- April 9th, uber amends statement to the police. We do have records but won't share due to privacy...

You know, telling the driver that they are a matter of a police investigation and that they would be sharing data with them (aka cooperating) would have given uber a leg to stand on. Uber saying "We gave all the info to the police, it is out of our hands, we don't control our contractors" goes a long way in court. Lying, changing your story, tends not to.


> But this information is being provided by Lyft inside their app.

No it isn't. Not according to the article. According to the article a fraction of that information is provided as part of the app but Uber went ahead and exploited the lack of operational security on Lyft's side to crawl _all_ the information by traversing over information intended for other users. Repeatedly.


> My guess is that this firing is mainly a move to improve Uber's political capital "Look we fired the bad apple". I'd assume Uber has probably figured out how to tie his interests into cooperating with him (to the detriment of exposing IP theft) though maybe granting him equity or some sort of financial incentive.

Uber is complying with a court order to do their utmost to compel him to cooperate and testify. This is not political and it's also possible that they still don't want him to testify either way but they have to be seen to do the "right thing" in the eyes of the court.


> since doing that would not in any way aid Uber's goal of harvesting phone numbers

You're just making assumptions about Uber's goal.

It's Gett's word against Uber's, and the latter is the one who has admitted engaging in immoral and possibly fraudulent activity.


Also according to the FT what the judge actually said was:

“I can’t trust anything you say because it’s been proven wrong so many times,” he told Uber. “You’re just making the impression that this is a total cover-up.”

Which also seems quite damning. https://www.ft.com/content/3d4cb174-d636-11e7-a303-9060cb1e5...


> Most people don't really know better.

Well, if this thread is any indication, people seem to always be confusing the roles and actions of lawyers, PR and the police to fit some bizarre conspiracy theory. The fact is that the dashcam video was released by police, and Uber admitted to being at fault with this latest statement. I honestly don't get why you're talking about lawyers now.


>trust a company with such personal information, and certainly I wouldn't either, but Uber as a company is very ethical and takes the responsibility that we are entrusted with very seriously.

HAHAHAHAHA Nice try!

> The ride-sharing company said that between July and December 2015, it had provided information on more than 12 million riders and drivers to various U.S. regulators and on 469 users to state and federal law agencies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/uber-customer-data-priva...

>the company's blog titled "Rides of Glory." The company examined its rider data, sorting it for anyone who took an Uber between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday night. Then it looked at how many of those same people took another ride about four to six hours later – from at or near the previous nights' drop-off point. (...) Uber has deleted the blog post

http://www.marketplace.org/2014/11/18/business/final-note/ub...

>Earlier this month Angie Bird woke up at her home in London to discover she had been billed for a series of minicab journeys she had allegedly made the previous evening … in the Mexican cities of Guadalajara and Aguascalientes, more than 5,500 miles away.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/apr/22/uber-scam-hack...

>Uber is using GPS to punish drivers in China who get too close to protests

http://fusion.net/story/150389/uber-is-using-gps-to-punish-d...

>Study: Uber and Lyft have ‘pattern of discrimination’ against black passengers. Waiting times for black Seattle passengers were 35% longer, and Boston drivers cancelled rides for black passengers more than twice as frequently, study found

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/31/uber-lyft...

>According to internal Uber emails, the investigation began with a note from Uber’s general counsel, Sallie Yoo. The day that Schmidt filed the complaint against Kalanick, Yoo sent an email to Uber’s chief security officer, saying, "Could we find out a little more about this plaintiff?" The request was forwarded to the company’s head of Global Threat Intelligence, Mathew Henley.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/10/12127638/uber-ergo-investi...

>Uber as a company is very ethical and takes the responsibility that we are entrusted with very seriously

Please go with your bullshit somewhere else.


> Uber did not want this because of the severity of the issue

And they were currently negotiating with the FTC over a different prior undisclosed data breach.


> Medium isn't a court of law, they don't owe anyone any evidence and you pointing out that there isn't any is implying that they have a reason to hide their name that isn't justified.

You're right. And I don't have to trust what I read on Medium -- what I'm suggesting is that I don't believe _this particular anonymous author_ (and to be careful, I'm entirely willing to believe a culture of unacceptable behavior exists at Uber).


> Chen promises that Uber does not use this information to pry you to pay surge

You're a bit to quick on the "asshole invasion of privacy".

> .. which sounds like a relief if that’s to be believed.

Maybe.

Even so, it is not related to privacy is it?


> if everything in here is true

Uber would have already sued her if it wasn't. It's almost certainly true.

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