Uber Tries to Remotely Encrypt Corporate Data During Government Raid

I wonder how many copycats will spring up in the future, and become Uber2, Uber3,and so on?

In Canada, Uber obviously made a serious mistake. They should not be physically present anywhere. Their strategy does not work, if governments can physically attack them. They are themselves missing the point about themselves.

I see governments everywhere seething and claiming that they want to shut down AirBnb, but where to do that? AirBnb does not have offices or staff over there, and therefore make it impossible for these governments to engage in their core business, that is, to use violence in order to impose their stupidity onto others.

Wouldnt it have made more sense to have all the devices already encrypted? Then if someone does a raid - simply turn off all the devices - and your protected?

Relying on remote encryption to protect the data could have been defeated by simply taking the network offline at the beginning of the raid.

Potentially a remote lock prevents employees of Uber Canada being ordered to decrypt the data as they lack the means, but presumably such a court order would lead to head office having to decrypt the data anyway.

For those who don't want to google translate. Further down it says that this is one of those things Uber doesn't think it has to do because it's an app, not an employer. Quebec seems to disagree and be willing to follow up.

I wonder if these actions could be legitimized by Uber claiming that they were merely trying to protect user data.

An attempted coverup is often punished harshly. Richard Nixon and Martha Stewart should have taught everyone that. How is this not obstruction of justice[1], or whatever Canada calls it?

   Obstruction charges can also be laid
   if a person alters, destroys, or conceals
   physical evidence

edit: obviously i'm not against data encryption it's just funny how encryption is used in this case to obstruct justice, article in French, obviously but the headings are saying something like this :

    SF Uber engineers attempted to remotely encrypt the 
    data of Uber Canada computers during a search at Uber 
    Canada headquarters led by the Québec IRS in Montréal
    last week.

    Search at Uber Canada's office

    Last May 14, dozens of investigators from "Revenue Québec"
    proceeded in searching computers at Uber Canadas's office, 
    on Notre-Dame street. Investigators were looking for evidence
    showing that Uber Canada is violating tax laws

    Around 10:40 am, one of the investigators noticed 
    that "some handsets, computers and tablets 
    were remotely turned on" during the search. Another 
    female investigator, who was performing a second  
    search warrant in another office, noticed the 
    same exact phenomenon, also at 10:40 am."computers      
    were being remotely accessed and manipulated, we took 
    control of them then turned them down given the    
    emergency and the high risk of remote data
    manipulation", can be read in the case made by judge   
    Jean-Pierre Braun