Legal Cara Mas Que Tal

At least 50 people within Uber knew about Greyball, and some questioned whether it was ethical or legal. Greyball was approved by Uber`s legal team, led by Salle Yoo, the company`s general counsel. Ryan Graves, one of the first employees to become senior vice president of global operations and board member, was also aware of the program. At the time, Uber had just launched its ride-hailing service in Portland without getting permission from the city, which later declared the service illegal. To build a case against the company, officials like England posed as a driver, opened the Uber app to call a car and watched miniature vehicles make their way to potential fares on the screen. Greyball was part of a program called VTOS, short for “violation of the terms of service,” that Uber created to eradicate people it said were using or targeting their service inappropriately. The program, including Greyball, began in 2014 and continues to be used primarily outside the United States. Greyball has been approved by Uber`s legal team. And two weeks after Uber began posting drivers to Portland, the company reached a settlement with local officials that UberX would finally be legally available in the city after a three-month suspension. With UberX, people who have passed a background check and vehicle inspection can quickly become Uber drivers. In the past, many cities have banned the service and declared it illegal. After authorities learned what was going on, Uber and local officials often clashed.

Uber has run into legal issues with UberX in cities like Austin, Texas, Philadelphia and Tampa, Florida, as well as internationally. Finally, agreements have been reached under which regulators have developed a legal framework for low-cost service. External legal experts stated that they were unsure of the legality of the program. Greyball could be considered a violation of federal computer fraud and abuse law, or possibly intentional obstruction of justice, depending on local laws and jurisdictions, said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University who also writes for The New York Times. On Friday, Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Democratic Party in the Netherlands, wrote that she had written to the European Commission asking, among other things, whether she planned to investigate the legality of Greyball. Yet using its app to identify and circumvent authorities that regulators have said Uber is breaking the law goes further toward ethical — and perhaps more legal — lines. Some at Uber who were familiar with the VTOS program and how the Greyball tool was used were concerned about this. Uber`s use of Greyball was filmed in late 2014 when Erich England, a code enforcement inspector in Portland, Oregon, attempted to call an Uber car downtown as part of a stab operation against the company.

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. If these clues didn`t confirm a user`s identity, Uber employees searched for social media profiles and other information available online. When users were identified as being linked to law enforcement, Uber provided them with a small piece of code that said “Greyball” followed by a series of numbers. In these areas, greyballing began as a way to search for the locations of UberX drivers to prevent competitors from finding them. Uber said this is still the primary use of the tool. If someone named a car that way, Uber could encrypt a series of ghost cars in a fake version of the app so that person could see them, or show that no cars were available. Sometimes when a driver accidentally picked up someone who was marked as an officer, Uber would call the driver with instructions to end the ride. This is where the VTOS program and the use of the Greyball tool came into play. When Uber moved to a new city, it appointed a general manager to take charge. This person would use a variety of technologies and techniques to try to recognize law enforcement officers. In total, there were at least a dozen signifiers in the VTOS program that Uber employees could use to assess whether users were new regular riders or likely city officials. Other techniques involved examining a user`s credit card information and determining whether the card was directly linked to an institution such as a police credit union.

“With any sort of systematic thwarting of the law, you are flirting with disaster,” Professor Henning said. “We all take our foot off the accelerator when we see the police car in front of us at the intersection, and there`s nothing wrong with that. But this goes far beyond avoiding a speed trap. Uber, which allows people to hail rides using a smartphone app, operates several types of services, including a luxury black car offering where drivers hold a commercial license. But one Uber service that many regulators have struggled with is the lower-cost version, known in the U.S. as UberX. One technique involved drawing a digital perimeter, or “geofencing,” around government offices on a digital map of a city monitored by Uber. The company observed which people frequently opened and closed the app — a process known internally as the apple of the eye — near these locations, evidence that users could be associated with city authorities. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What is their motivation to tell us about it? Have they proven reliable in the past? Can we confirm the information? Even when these questions are answered, the Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The journalist and at least one editor know the identity of the source. The program, which includes a tool called Greyball, uses data collected by the Uber app and other techniques to identify and bypass officials who have tried to crack down on the ride-hailing service.

Uber has used these methods to evade authorities in cities like Boston, Paris, and Las Vegas, as well as countries like Australia, China, and South Korea. That`s because the ability to preload a non-commercial driver — this is how UberX drivers who use private vehicles are typically classified — was often unregulated. By entering new markets, Uber took advantage of this lack of regulation to quickly recruit UberX drivers and put them to work before local regulators could stop them. In a statement, Uber said: “This program denies ride requests to users who violate our terms of service — whether they are people who aim to physically injure drivers, competitors who want to disrupt our operations, or adversaries who collaborate with officials on secret `stabbings` designed to trap drivers. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said in a statement: “I am very concerned that Uber has deliberately worked to thwart the city`s work to protect the public. To date, greyballing has been effective.