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Comment by Dangeranger | Hacker News Reader

If the authorities had a warrant, why wouldn't they just take all the locked computers with them back for further investigation? Then they would have been able to have a judge order Uber to unlock the computers for forensics.

Uber's actions are similar to shredding evidence of tax evasion, which in the case of Arthur Anderson during the Enron scandal, resulted in federal obstruction of justice charges, and a strengthening of federal powers for charging of similar actions.[0]

Note: I am not a lawyer, nor a resident of Canada, so I am not sure if my proposal above is legal within that country. But it would seems to me that actions similar to the above have taken place in the USA in the case of tax evasion with probable cause.

[0] https://blj.ucdavis.edu/archives/vol-5-no-2/document-destruc...

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> If the authorities had a warrant, why wouldn't they just take all the locked computers with them back for further investigation? Then they would have been able to have a judge order Uber to unlock the computers for forensics.

If I had to guess: Very little data is stored on site.

If all of your local office computing platform is basically a thin client, confiscating the local equipment with a warrant doesn't do much. You can take it away to a forensics lab and image its disks, but you're not going to get any usable data off it without a network connection into the corporate WAN, crypto keys, sending subpoenas to specific people for their login credentials, etc.

I know nothing about Uber's internal software architecture and network topology. But I would be very surprised if most of their day-to-day operational systems like ticketing, customer service, recruiting, finances, were not operated through TLS1.2 connections in a web browser to a set of intranet servers, located thousands of km away from where the branch offices are located.

Wait. wait.. if everything is "remote" (on Uber's cloud) then why all this drama of shutting down/locking machines? Just log everyone out and deny login attempts.

My other question is, if all the data is in the cloud in SFO, wouldn't the data technically reside in the US?

Looks to me like the Canadian police were hoping to get lucky. That some user wouldn't have enough time to log out.

What is the difference between "locking" and "logging [someone] out"?

> "Uber's actions are similar to shredding evidence of tax evasion"

But Uber didn't delete or otherwise destroy the evidence. It locked the evidence while preserving it, so that it can provide the required amount of data if / when properly served with a warrant.

The whole point of the warrant was that the government suspected Uber of hiding evidence. Allowing them to pick and choose the data they unlocked from the servers would be counter-productive.

In Canada, like in the US, warrants have to be specific about what exactly the police are looking for. If the warrant really was "give us all your data so we can see if you're hiding something", that's not legally okay, and I can't blame them for trying to prevent the disclosure.

It seems unlikely that logging out doesn't destroy the data stored on that system. Of course, the data still exists somewhere, but that particular raid is likely thwarted. If it were any company other than Uber I'd say this would surprise me. Usually companies rely on a auto logoff timer, but this is an active method in response to a raid. It looks awfully like obstruction of justice to me. The digital equivalent of flushing your weed down the toilet.

When the police show up to my door with a search warrant, I tell them to wait outside while I gather the items they ask for. Oh look, no evidence of crimes.

> If the authorities had a warrant, why wouldn't they just take all the locked computers with them back for further investigation?

Don't mind. If the police has good evidence, they will show up later and take some of the Uber's servers that hold the relevant data.

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