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Comment by alphonsegaston | Hacker News Reader

What if local law enforcement officer was posing undercover as an Uber customer as part of a sexual assault investigation or trying to track down all drivers in relation to a recent crime?

This is framed as getting around restrictions on taxi services, but any time you proactively thwart law enforcement, you're inviting a lot of dangerous unintended consequences. None of which I'm sure Uber is concerned about.

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> any time you proactively thwart law enforcement, you're inviting a lot of dangerous unintended consequences.

I'm curious, what do you think about Google's "State-sponsored attackers are trying to compromise your account" warning? [1] Maybe it's police officers trying to break into the Gmail account of a pedophile or a terrorist, and Google is thwarting these efforts by warning the suspect.

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[1] https://arstechnica.com/security/2012/06/google-state-sponso...

That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that set of circumstances. It would take me more time/length than a message board comment to work through the ethics of that, but point well taken.

> What if local law enforcement officer was posing undercover as an Uber customer as part of a sexual assault investigation or trying to track down all drivers in relation to a recent crime?

If they were, then I suspect that Uber would go out of their way to cooperate, using the detailed information they have on ride histories. Get a warrant, serve it to Uber, and get the data needed for the investigation.

This ignores the question of whether Uber should gather and keep that much information, but given that they do, using it seems far more useful than anything this mechanism would have thwarted.

They're pre-emptively choosing to obstruct enforcement of whatever laws they deem unacceptable. So that's quite a rosy expectation about their willingness to cooperate.

The US has a pretty robust system for dealing with this. Get a warrant.

I don't think you could consider this obstruction. It's their service, it's private, they can serve data to users the way they wish. There is a method and a system in place if law enforcement can prove they need unfettered access – a warrant issued by a judge.

If you want a company to cooperate, you give them a subpoena, and order them to keep quiet until arrests have been made.

When you try to play things on the sly, it's your fault if some third party thinks you're a rat.

A sideways thought: this could be a good way for a criminal to vet someone before a meeting. "Take an Uber and meet me at 1st and Green."

Facebook is already better, with number of mutual friends. It does require having a social circle that's relatively immune from law enforcement coercion.

I'm not on facebook. Does that make me trustworthy or untrustworthy to a potential criminal employer? :)

Taking this further, it could be a useful way for larger criminal organizations to identify potential undercover officers that have infiltrated them. I'm sure now that this information is public it will make it easier for drug cartels and the like to isolate and "remove" certain individuals.

Maybe get a court order?

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