But the chutzpah to implement something so blatantly designed to aide in breaking the law is still surprising. It reminds me of Zenefits in a way.
It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device". The future of technology will probably include ever more shady uses of programming to mislead regulators and the like.
"This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers."
It's rather blatant. I assume they think that last part makes them look good and "officials" look bad, but to me it just says "we built this to avoid getting caught breaking the law."
"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
In this case, the drivers were already breaking the law (opinions on the righteousness of the law notwithstanding), and law enforcement was seeking to apprehend, not entrap.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
>> If a law is unjust
To me those seem like very different things. I'd bet Jefferson was talking about laws that severely impact people's lives (slavery, torture, things we would consider human rights breaches) and not pretty innocuous things like taxi regulations.
As a FOSS enthusiast, I hope this becomes a good push to require those types of software to become FOSS.
I see this as the market routing around the defect that is regulation.