Locking your computers that are no longer in company possession is a common Enterprise control. They take protecting your data seriously!
If the authorities need the data on the computers the will surely present a properly scoped warrant!
In weaker, but likely relatively accurate words: They're logging all of their remote users out of Google Drive so the authorities can't access the spreadsheets there. In essence. That's what I'm reading.
Point being, Uber could still be compelled to present the evidence in court, and Uber may comply with that compulsion. Does a Canadian warrant give the Canadian government the right to access information stored on a server in the United States? The answer to that is an emphatic No. Does it give them the right to possess an API key which would allow them to access information stored on a server in the United States? Does this change if it could be reasonably expected that the information was, at some point, in the ephemeral memory, not even a hard disk as far as we know, of a computer on Canadian soil?
I really don't know. We all knew the global power of the internet would begin to raise questions like this, and our legal framework simply hasn't dealt with them yet.
That seems like it would fit the definition of “destroy” to me.
Once the warrant is served, anything done to delete anything off that computer is obstruction of justice, it doesn't matter what the mechanism of storage is- whether it's RAM, Hard Disk or floppy disk.
Secondly, the warrant is what compels uber to give access to the evidence, there's no 'We don't feel like it right now, go to the courts to try something else'. The ability of the authorities to gain evidence through other legal avenues provides literally no defence for uber in failing to comply with a warrant.
Gosh, I first read this as "a poorly scoped warrant" and didn't think twice about it.
The person who first see the police is likely a receptionist or similar who does not have access to the information specified by the warrant. That person, quite reasonably makes the local management aware the police are present immediately.
Management hasn't encountered the police or seen the warrant yet. They don't know the nature of the encounter, but they know they're supposed to tell corporate immediately. They do so, and make no attempt to prevent the execution of the warrant once they have received it.
Corporate, located in another country doesn't know what's going on except that people claiming to be police showed up at a foreign office. They initiate a lockdown of the local computers until legal can sort it out.
Now if management read a warrant demanding access to something on local computers, then made a call to corporate they knew would cause those computers to be remotely locked, they could be in trouble. I make no comment here about whether Uber is good, but Uber is definitely smart.
Someone in Canada just paged a number they'd been trained to when cops show up. That could easily be no more obstructing that calling your lawyer immediately (depending on what you could prove they knew about what'd happen then).
Some team in San Francisco remotely shut down (and possibly deleted data/evidence from) company machines. Anybody on that team might want to forgo any planned trips to Canada, but it'd be a long stretch to think Canada would try to extradite them to face contempt of court charges.
"Uber", the legal person is who. Why does HN think the law is a series of fixed instructions rigidly executed by a computer and can be easily hacked by overly clever constructs? "Well, I didn't shoot my wife, I just set-off the first domino on this rube goldburg machine - the hamster pulled the trigger - gotcha! ha ha ha".
This will be put in front of a judge, and they will see through this for what it is.
It's pretty clear "Uber the legal person" is pretty happy breaking laws and has a long history of not suffering any real personal consequences. I'm reasonably sure a Canadian judge doesn't even have an existentially dangerous penalty they could apply to Uber-the-legal-person. Worst case seems to be they could shut Uber down in Canada and jail some local senior management. Uber-the-global-corporation probably has contingency plans and has determined and budgeted for that risk. That's their "business as usual".
"The law", while generally robust locally against clever constructs, is probably not as effective a tool against globally distributed corporations - at least not in a very satisfying "Yeah, someone's gonna pay for that" kind of way...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-tax/apple-plans-new...
At least they're choosing to pay - at least in the US - and only after the Trump administration cut the tax rates, but still...
When someone else in the chain has agency, the argument for it being a rube goldberg machine gets a lot weaker. While some would argue that what the husband did here is bad, it certainly wasn't murder - not unless a lot of other factors come into play.
1. Both sub-entities are part of the same company
2. One is acting on instructions from the other
So how about this:
"As a Corleone, have a very tight-knit family, and the senior members are afforded a great deal of respect. My uncle the gun enthusiast firmly instructed me that if I were to ever discover my wife in bed with the mailman, I should immediately leave him a message, unlock the doors and windows, and leave the house until he calls me back with additional advice."
It says, in about as many words, "FOAD until our counsel green lights unlocking, potentially before or after some housecleaning".
Correct, Uber's lawyers will be able to review and perhaps fight the warrant in courts. Uber's sysadmins will have time to figure out how to reveal the required data in a clean way that does not compromise the rest of Uber's data which includes but is not limited to data about where private citizens travel from time to time.
>"FOAD until our counsel green lights unlocking
Perfect, yes it does say this. We should all say this. Would you like Google or Facebook or whatever other service you use to reveal your private information if the government does not provide a proper warrant?
>potentially before or after some housecleaning".
Okay, well in this imaginary scenario Uber would be guilty of tampering with evidence and I'm confident Canada has relevant laws.
How or in what way was this warrant deemed to be improper? There was zero consideration of that, instead it was "nuke from orbit" at first sight.
You are suggesting that the authorities should always be granted arbitrary access to a random amount of data, which is almost certainly not relevant to their case, any time they get a warrant for any data at all.
Further, you are acting as if that article is the end of the story, but it's not. There will be legal review by relevant professionals and Uber will provide whatever it is legally required to provide.
Locking down the computers until Uber's lawyers have had a chance to verify what the warrant covers and what access the investigators are entitled to seems like a fairly prudent security measure.
If somebody showed up at your office with a piece of paper saying they were allowed access to everything on your computer, would you unquestioningly give them that access? Personally, I'd hope any services that I trust my data to wouldn't give up access without some verification that it's a legitimate request.