A: Obstruction may consist of any attempt to hinder the discovery, apprehension, conviction or punishment of anyone who has committed a crime.
Q: Does obstruction of justice always involve bribery or physical force?
A: No. One particularly murky category of obstruction is the use of "misleading conduct" toward another person for the purpose of obstructing justice. "Misleading conduct" may consist of deliberate lies or "material omissions" (leaving out facts which are crucial to a case). It may also include knowingly submitting or inviting a judge or jury to rely on false or misleading physical evidence, such as documents, maps, photographs or other objects. Any other "trick, scheme, or device with intent to mislead" may constitute a "misleading conduct" form of obstruction. "
If the city has made it actually illegal to drive uber vehicles, this is pretty much textbook obstruction on the part of uber, ....
Similarly if Uber is operating illegally in a city and they use software to avoid picking up a city official in a sting operation that doesn't sound like obstruction.
I'm no lawyer though.
A crime has been committed, even if they don't pick up the officials. If uber is operating illegally, the drivers that have picked anyone up have committed a crime.
Keeping the cars away from the officials trying to ticket and prosecute those drivers is the obstruction.
That is, it's not the "avoiding sting" that causes it to be obstruction, because the crime was committed the second a driver picked someone up. Instead, the obstruction is "helping drivers who have committed crimes not be noticed, ticketed, or prosecuted"
That's definitely obstruction in jurisdictions that have this form of obstruction.
To use another analogy, if I'm a drug dealer and the cops try to buy drugs from me in a sting operation and I somehow figure out that they're cops and walk away before doing a deal is that obstruction of justice? Because I think that's basically what is (was?) happening here.
Errr, sure it is. Their investigatory mechanism happen to be to try catch them on a trip they could prove originated in the city, giving them probable cause to stop them and ticket them.
This just happens to be easier to do as a sting.
"It was to catch them in the act for a single trip and prosecute them for that."
That is just the method, not the purpose of the investigation.
Your argument is what would be called "a distinction without a difference"
If the FBI is looking for illegal uranium sellers, and they try to buy/bust a low level guy as part of the investigation, it does not make the investigation about the buy/bust, it's still to catch and prosecute illegal uranium sellers.
Here, the investigation's goal was to catch and prosecute uber drivers driving illegally. In any case, it doesn't matter.
Remember "Obstruction may consist of any attempt to hinder the discovery, apprehension, conviction or punishment of anyone who has committed a crime. "
Not "the crime you are currently investigating", but any crime.
For example, oneo the the federal statute says: "(a) Whoever willfully endeavors by means of bribery to obstruct, delay, or prevent the communication of information relating to a violation of any criminal statute of the United States by any person to a criminal investigator shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."
(emph mine)
(Ignore the bribery part, there's a ton of these statutes,i'm just pulling out one)
"To use another analogy, if I'm a drug dealer and the cops try to buy drugs from me in a sting operation and I somehow figure out that they're cops and walk away before doing a deal is that obstruction of justice? Because I think that's basically what is (was?) happening here. "
This isn't obstruction, but it's not what is happening here.
Imagine if the cops were investigating you for dealing drugs. They already had evidence you deal drugs. They ask your friend where you are, even just to talk to you, to try to get cleaner evidence, and he deliberately lies about where you are to protect you. Congrats, that's obstruction in a lot of jurisdictions. No sting reuired.
Here, the cops are asking the uber app where the drivers are. They know or have probable cause to believe the drivers have committed crimes (again, the sting part is just about having a very clean prosecution, it's not required or necessary here). Uber deliberately lies about where the drivers are, with the purpose of protecting them from this investigation.
You can ignore the sting they were doing completely. The crime was complete the second a law enforcement officer, trying to investigate the crimes of an uber driver, opened the app in an attempt to find a driver (even just to talk to!) and got fake results.
Others often can say "i'm not getting involved" or something not misleading or deliberately intended to help you avoid prosecution[1]
But note: Outside of privileges, others often do not have that right to say nothing, it's just not forced in a lot of cases because it's pointless.
[1] they can also often be forced to get involved as a material witness, blah blah blah, in a lot of cases. You just wouldn't put them on the stand anyway because they're not going to be helpful.
You have a point here. Though I don't think they were lying about the locations of actual drivers when inserting ghost cars.
But before you were saying that merely refusing to send drivers to cops is obstruction. Why is that obstruction, but refusing to sell drugs to the cops is not obstruction? Picture an alternate version of the app that wouldn't schedule pickups on those phones, but never lied.
It might be relevant if the person allegedly committing a crime and the person making the supposed crime harder to discover are the same person. In your case they are, in Uber's case they aren't (AFAIK).
(1) a false statement of a material fact, (2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result.
1-4 seem obvious enough, but I'm not sure about #5. Would wasting their time or interfering with their enforcement job be enough to qualify as "injury"? Or, since they're acting on behalf of the local government, would it count as injury against that government due to not being able to prosecute crimes and apply fines that they would have been able to if Uber hadn't lied?
"A material fact is an occurrence, event, or information that is sufficiently significant to influence an individual into acting in a certain way, such as entering into a contract. In formal court procedures, a material fact is anything needed to prove one party's case, or tending to establish a point that is crucial to a person's position."
The location of cars will influence the user's actions, and false cancellations definitely will.
I'm not sure what wouldn't be material in this case, but maybe it would exclude things that are unrelated to Uber? Like if Uber told you that Wal-Mart was selling weed whackers for $5, that wouldn't be fraud because it's not material to your relationship with Uber.
Ahh, but Uber themselves say you ARE!
"By accessing or using the Services, you confirm your agreement to be bound by these Terms..."
It'd be incredibly amusing to watch their lawyers try to argue it both ways though. They'd have to either admit that they did have a contract, or they'd have to completely tear up their terms-of-service.