
Federal judge rips Uber apart over dirt-digging investigation - unfunco
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/29/federal-judge-rips-uber-apart-over-dirt-digging-investigation/
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erdevs
I wish that more of silicon valley would penalize people for reprehensible
behavior. If Uber execs were ostracized rather than lauded... if investors
pounded the table about legal risks and the importance of ethical business
rather than cheering along any behavior that makes the numbers grow
(temporarily)... we might not have Zenefits melting down, nor sociopathic exec
teams at major companies that are held up as scions of the tech world. If this
is one of the best and brightest companies the tech industry has to offer, we
have a deeply worrisome problem. If pursuing paper growth absolutely trumps
ethical concerns, we are feeding into a horrible system. If nobody calls this
shit out and there isn't actual financial and social/cultural consequence,
things will only get worse.

~~~
WayneBro
I don't see what's so wrong about using an investigator to find out more about
the guy who is suing you.

Can someone explain that to me? Is it against the law to find all publicly
available information about someone or to follow them around?

The big criminal act that I can see here is that "Ergo" (the company that Uber
hired) wasn't licensed in NY. Seems like that would be on Ergo, not Uber.

~~~
fatbird
"Investigation" covers a wide range of activities, and many things one would
do while investigating can themselves be chilling, intimidating, or harassing;
and using investigation to chill, intimidate or harass can be the point. The
Church Of Scientology is famous for using "investigation" to destroy its
critics. In this case, the judge clearly felt that Ergo's investigations were
far beyond routine due diligence on a plaintiff.

Remember, there was previously an incident where an Uber exec bragged at a
party about using investigators to destroy journalists who might investigate
them. [0]

[0]
[http://www.dailytech.com/Uber+Exec+Threatens+to+Spend+Millio...](http://www.dailytech.com/Uber+Exec+Threatens+to+Spend+Millions+to+Stalk+Female+Reporter+and+Her+Family/article36907.htm)

~~~
WayneBro
Interesting. Thanks for elaborating.

If investigators don't have any power to do anything that a normal public
person can do, like finding public information or digging through someone's
trash...then I don't see why anyone should be barred from employing that.
However, I know that in many states you must be licensed to advertise yourself
as a Private Investigator.

I don't know why that would be the case though unless PIs have special
authority to do things that normal people can't do. I mean, I do know why -
it's political for one thing since you can't even be a PI in some states
without having police or military experience.

Looking around, I don't see any special privileges that a PI has that a normal
person does not. They cannot trespass on private property, they cannot wiretap
a phone or gain access to private records. The only special privilege that
they enjoy is that they generally won't be subject to harassment or stalking
laws if they follow someone around in public.

~~~
fatbird
You're not barred from investigating someone or using investigators to do so
in a trial, but the prohibition here is about the effect created by the
investigation (just like it's the effect of 100 phone calls a day that
constitutes stalking, not using the phone itself). Legal proceedings have a
well developed decorum/civility to them that the judge can enforce at her
discretion, including criminal penalties.

If Uber/Ergo had limited itself to not interviewing the plaintiff's family,
friends, and acquaintances, they'd probably have been fine; but going around
to everyone you know and asking a lot of dark questions is pretty clearly
going to intimidate a plaintiff and chill other potential plaintiffs, and
that's obviously the point--especially when interviewing is unlikely to
surface anything not already found through records searches and the discovery
process.

~~~
WayneBro
Thank you. I can totally see why that kind of behavior should be prohibited.

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mabbo
I don't get it. Uber are offering an extremely good service, one that I'd pay
more money for than they're asking. They don't need to be terrible humans to
be successful so why do they do it? This seems to be par for the course of
them in terms of shady shit they've been accused of or caught doing.

~~~
kafkaesq
_They don 't need to be terrible humans to be successful so why do they do
it?_

That's what gets me, too. Though it can be easily copied, their service model
is such a night-and-day improvement over the state of things previously that
they should be universally loved for what they're doing.

And yet they keep pulling these asshat antics, and gratuitously making a bad
name for themselves -- over and over and over again.

~~~
aetherson
I think that to some extent, companies -- especially relatively young
companies -- reflect their founders. And Travis Kalanick seems like he's just
kind of a dick.

But more so, remember that everything's on a margin, here. Uber can obviously
be very successful on the level of "a company that provides taxi services in a
lot of cities." But they've taken in _more than $10B in funding_ on the
premise that they can be much more than "a company that provides taxi services
in a lot of cities."

So even though it seems like they should be coasting into victory, they're
actually super tense and worried, because what they could coast into victory
for is not what they're now obligated to become, based on the money they've
taken in and the promises they made to the people who bought them.

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neves
Creepy. My city local taxis are a mafia. The global one is even worse. I'm
afraid about what would happen when they became a de facto monopoly.

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ams6110
Did anyone go to jail? No? Well then... it'll happen again.

~~~
ctvo
I was going to type a reply about how I'll never take another Uber (not only
due to this, but everything else associated with that brand too), but I
realized I'd be lying. It's too convenient and available in locations lacking
alternatives. My moral outrage won't stop me drunk and wanting to get home to
give them more money.

~~~
pjlegato
If it makes you feel any better, most taxi companies are even more
reprehensible than Uber. They just operate at much smaller scale, so nobody
notices.

~~~
rhizome
The reprehensibility of taxi companies is a big reason why Uber was invented.
That said, as with their drivers and corporate practices, Uber and taxi
companies are converging on a mean behavior level that in my case has rendered
Uber expendable.

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yladiz
I really wonder if Uber will stop doing these shady shenanigans before their
business runs into the ground. I guess they'll be around for a long time with
the enormous amounts of money they're been given through investments, but I
feel like, at least in the US, where consumers prefer companies that aren't
blatantly distasteful, people will start switching to other companies that
have better PR or go back to the traditional taxi services. If what was said
in February was true, that they're profitable in the US (which is difficult to
believe because I doubt Uber uses GAAP), then they will eventually find
themselves in a difficult position with one of their primary markets losing
interest in their product. But, on the bright side, at least they're unlikely
to have to worry about losing billions of dollars in China as much considering
the new law that passed about ride hailing since they won't be providing the
same incentive for drivers anymore[1].

1: [http://qz.com/745337/china-finally-made-ride-hailing-
legal-i...](http://qz.com/745337/china-finally-made-ride-hailing-legal-in-a-
way-that-could-destroy-ubers-business-model/)

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serge2k
> Jed Rakoff, has now, in a 31-page order, called “blatantly fraudulent and
> arguably criminal.”

So? It's Uber, they are above the law. Silly judge.

or is this finally the line? Ignoring regulations all over the place, fine.
Questionable "Contractor" status for employees? That's cool. Sharing economy
man.

