
Uber Accused of Espionage, Bribery, Hacking, in Former Employee's Letter - danso
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/ric-jacobs-uber-letter-allegations-waymo
======
Apocryphon
This is what the behavior of a wannabe megacorp looks like:

> Uber “used undercover agents to collect intelligence against the taxi groups
> and local political figures. The agents took rides in local taxis, loitered
> around locations where taxi drivers congregated, and leveraged a local
> network of contacts with connections to police and regulatory authorities.”

> the things Uber was doing overseas “needlessly exposed Uber and its
> employees to severe risk — including the likely termination of Uber's
> operations and possible imprisonment of its employees — should capable
> security services in many overseas locations discover Uber's espionage.”

> Uber hired at least one CIA-trained contractor to collect "mobile-phone
> metadata either directly through signal-intercept equipment, hacked mobile
> devices, or through the mobile network itself.

Or, perhaps, a nation-state.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Taking rides in taxis and loitering where they congregate isn’t necessarily
illegal. Bribing foreign officials and illegally tapping peoples’ phones is.
There is a bright line between hustling and plainly violating the law.

~~~
solatic
IANAL but definitions of espionage are typically broader than that - if the
information isn't published with the intention for it to become public
knowledge, or at least somehow knowingly divulged (e.g. EULA/contractual),
then it's private, and collecting (i.e. recording) the data which is private
to a company or society is espionage.

~~~
skybrian
Well sure, the word "espionage" can be certainly be used to make things that
aren't illegal or immoral sound bad.

Employees and other people sign contracts to keep company information private,
but nobody else (including journalists, competitors, investors, or just anyone
curious about them) is required to help them. We can share what we know and
gossip about it.

------
WisNorCan
Wow. I can see why Uber did not want this document to come out. It appears
that Uber was operating their own intelligence agency with bribes,
surveillance, breach of systems, impersonation, etc. I can see it opening
further lawsuits from many other angles.

From competitors like Lyft:

>"Uber had successfully obtained trade secrets with the complete download of
its driver database ... It contained approximately 35,000 taxi driver records"

>"Uber used driver and customer impersonation to steal competitor trade
secrets. This conduct not only violated the trade secrets law discussed above
but also wire fraud law"

From regulators:

> "In January 2017, contacted Jacobs on Wickr and advised they had a bug in a
> meeting with transport regulators and that they needed help cleaning up the
> audio."

> "Jacobs heard about the practice of bribing foreign government officials.
> Based on his knowledge of targeting foreign officials to identify those with
> influential power, and the rapid insights into new markets"

~~~
willstrafach
Regarding this: “Uber had successfully obtained trade secrets with the
complete download of its driver database”

If you look at how that is described in the document it appears that such data
was actually obtained just by using the API and perhaps some scraping. Not so
sure this actually has any legal issues. The API requests being spread over a
2 month timeframe also makes it hard to accuse them of causing any sort of
burdensome load on the server.

~~~
toomuchtodo
This is a violation of the CFAA, a criminal offense, if the API owner did not
authorize Uber to access it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)

~~~
willstrafach
There is no indication that they accessed the API improperly.

That link to the CFAA page on Wikipedia does not substantiate your claim.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The statute I referenced specifically prohibits the unauthorized access of
servers and access which exceeds authorization. It is not difficult to argue
that Uber’s activities fall under “unauthorized access” or “exceeding
authorization”.

“Uber accessed a protected computer database to lure drivers away to work for
the company even though "the database was protected by 'Captcha' to prevent
the sort of automated downloading that Uber's MA team intended to carry out.
MA was ultimately successful in hacking the system and obtaining the driver
database. Because Uber knowingly accessed a protected computer in order to
fraudulently capture its valuable contents to gain a competitive advantage,
the hack violates the [Computer Fraud and Abuse Act], as well as California
Penal Code Section 502."”

The CFAA is broad by design unfortunately. We’ve jailed people for enumerating
customer data by incrementing a query parameter.

[https://www.wired.com/2013/03/att-hacker-
gets-3-years/amp/](https://www.wired.com/2013/03/att-hacker-gets-3-years/amp/)

------
paul7986
Even though I loathe Uber I read their lawyer saying the ex-employee was
extorting them.

Then I read that Uber paid him 4.5 million ... umm Uber paid that much to an
extortionist for claims that aren’t truthful? Ok yeah right .. whose pays that
much to silence a lier?

~~~
on_and_off
The theory is that you might be inclined to pay in order to avoid a scandal
that would be costlier.

For this kind of scandal, my armchair opinion is that you still have to do
something at least a bit murky in order to allow yourself to be black mailed.

~~~
scoggs
Agreed. Back when the news of the payoff first became public things were a lot
murkier in terms of the broad picture but now that we've had the lid peeled
back and we can see a bit more.

It seems a bit more obvious, to me at least, that Uber was and still is doing
whatever it can to try to get to final valuation / being bought out / IPO
before the severity of the scandal was fully known. I also think that we've
reached the point of no return for that matter so I'm definitely interested to
see how Uber and this entire debacle winds up.

------
eh78ssxv2f
May be I am being too naive, but can somebody answer two questions for me here
(note: I have no personal relationship with Uber or Lyft except that I like
ride sharing services more than traditional taxis):

(1) Taxi industry has been using medallion system to create artificial
scarcity and scam passengers by providing low quality service at higher
prices. And, this scam has been running with the help of local politicians at
false pretexts (too many taxis ruin the look and appeal of the city etc.).
What exactly are Uber's options in a city where the scam is supported by
politicians?

(2) I personally know a lot of cities where Uber sued or used other means to
force the local politicians to open up the city for ride sharing services.
This benefited not only Uber, but other ride sharing companies too such as
Lyft. If we believe that Uber used unethical means to get in many of the
cities, what ethical responsibilities do we expect from Lyft? Should Lyft stay
away from these cities or is it ethical for them to take a dip in these
unethical gains provided by Uber?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
(1) Only some cities use medallions. Many do not. Many more have little to
zero taxi presence - you won't see cabs waiting on city streets to pick folks
up. Gotta call to get one and wait. But there is a slew of other regulations
to follow - such as having a special category of drivers license. The options
for Uber are to follow laws or work on changing them if they want to work
legally. In my opinion, this is Lyft's greatest strength. They tend to work
with others.

(2) Suing isn't illegal, and a valid form of getting things changed. And sure,
others can benefit from this way of _working with instead of against the
system_ , just like a ruling on gay marriage isn't limited to the one couple
that sued. Or like civil rights aren't limited to the few that caused
problems. Asking Lyft to stay away because the market was helped by someone
else doing things isn't exactly fair (Lyft has been going into markets as well
and trying to change things, so I refuse to give all credit to Uber. Uber
simply gets more press).

Lawsuits aren't really the thing that is unethical, though. We expect
companies to not spy. Not outright break the law. Treat people equally. and so
on. This applies to lyft as well as Uber.

------
0xmohit
Seems to remind of "Greyball".

How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-
greyball-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-
program-evade-authorities.html)

------
JacobAldridge
I have a long-bet that Uber will be out of business by August 2020. A friend
and I have a decent bottle of wine (Grange Hermitage) riding on the outcome.
And with every passing month I feel more and more confident!

It's obviously possible they'll limp through the deadline, or sell some assets
like the brand. But I want to believe a company driven by ethics this bad from
the top down, and which loses this much money month on month, can't survive.
Bring on the fragmented second-movers in the space.

~~~
nikcub
Has a company ever gone bankrupt due to bad ethics where it wasn't also a
financial fraud? The core Uber business seems to still be doing well and
resetting the taint of bad ethics is as easy as putting up a "under new
management" sign - which what they've done

~~~
CaptainZapp

      The core Uber business seems to still be doing well
    

I wouldn't call a business, which loses billions "doing well".

------
s73ver_
So when do we finally get to say, "You're too slimy to be a company anymore."

~~~
geofft
As soon as our culture decides that sliminess, or literally anything other
than profitability, is relevant to whether you can be a company.

~~~
s73ver_
So they get to break the law as much as they want, and it's not going to make
a difference.

------
diebir
Isn't this the same old news from a week or two ago? Something about a letter
from lawyers of guy that worked at Uber, that contains various allegations,
some of which the guy now refuses to acknowledge. Very confusing.

~~~
Fricken
It came out in 3 news items. First it was reported that Alsup had received
evidence from the DOJ which prompted him to delay the case. Earlier this week
parts of the letter was made available to the public, and today much more
about the letter, and where it came from was revealed.

------
bitmapbrother
The similarities between Uber and E Corp are getting closer by the day.

------
NelsonMinar
It never fucking ends with this company, does it?

~~~
furioussloth
Is this a bot which comments exact same thing on every Uber story? Just an
observation because of how most of your comments make sense but every uber
story has exact same question.

~~~
cududa
It's my observation that Uber deserves this response with each revelation

~~~
Spooky23
Uber keeps providing the material.

~~~
chronic193
And you, me, and 98% of readers and lurkers on HN will continue to use Uber
tomorrow. Whether it be to work, to the grocery store, or to the airport.

~~~
stevekemp
Some of us are lucky enough to live in cities where public-transport is both
common-place and effective.

I've used Uber a couple of times in the UK, but only on a company-account.
Here where I live there is a presence, but I've never used it personally, nor
do I intend to. (Same goes for competitors.)

