I think the buttons in offices to nuke all records electronically if being raided by authorities is maybe extremely illegal?
End of the day, tech companies exist and can attract investment due to IP protections provided by the rule of law.
That rule of law involves actually having the laws being followed.
VCs backing companies like Uber don't get to have it both ways and violate the laws they deem worthy of disrupting while employing legal departments to ensure the laws that protect their IP are followed.
That's not what they did, just closed access which is legal and fine. Nobody is obliagted to leave stuff easily available for access. They can go subpoena it instead if they want. The whole "kick down the doors and take everything" is authoritarian, it should only be used where legal attempts at getting specific documents don't work because somebody won't comply with the legal order. And raiding people is fucked up bc they don't usually get a chance to even review the warrant. From an article on it:
> Uber told the court it never deleted its files. It cooperated with a second search warrant that explicitly covered the files and agreed to collect provincial taxes for each ride.
And there's nothing wrong with companies working around dumbass laws. Governments are too corrupt to fix them otherwise especially here with massive lobbying to keep them.
From the PoV of a cop with a warrant, that is effectively the same thing. The evidence they have a warrant to collect is deliberately made inaccessible to anyone at that location.
I've not seen it reported that it ever happened. The point is that they prepared for it and intended to take that action if the situation occurred. That they planned and implemented a method to obscure evidence is a strong indicator that they knew some of what they were doing was not legal (leaving aside discussion of where wrong & illegal do/don't overlap, in their opinion or ours or anyone else's).
> it would probably not be satisfied via the Uber app UI.
This part isn't about the app. It is about making data inaccessible at an office should the authorities enter that office - equivalent to quickly ramming documents through the shredder when you see an auditor approaching the building.
Greyball is a "fake version" of the Uber app. The Uber app displays a live map of driver locations. If the app thinks you're a cop, it will display fake locations.
> This part isn't about the app. It is about making data inaccessible at an office should the authorities enter that office - equivalent to quickly ramming documents through the shredder when you see an auditor approaching the building.
It would appear I got myself confused between the collection dirty tricks that Uber have been shown to have perpetrated.
“they just cut off access to remotely hosted resources” from the top of this thread covers cutting off fixed locations as well as mobile app instances.
End of the day, tech companies exist and can attract investment due to IP protections provided by the rule of law.
That rule of law involves actually having the laws being followed.
VCs backing companies like Uber don't get to have it both ways and violate the laws they deem worthy of disrupting while employing legal departments to ensure the laws that protect their IP are followed.