On Friday, the New York Times reported that programmers and management at Uber have been carefully protecting against would-be regulatory interference around the world with a software-enhanced system for blacklisting city officials posing as riders. Called Greyball, the internal company program mines user credit-card information, usage habits, geolocation data, social-media profiles, and even disposable-phone batch numbers to identify and shut out agents of government or, perhaps, potential competitors.