When authorities raided Uber’s European headquarters in 2015, then-CEO Travis Kalanick wrote in an email: “Please hit the shutdown switch as soon as possible,” ordering subordinates to prevent office laptops and other devices from using Uber’s internal systems. “AMS access must be closed”, AMS referring to Amsterdam. Authorities are investigating the company for its disruption of the global taxi industry, and the documents show that Uber, using a so-called “off switch”, used technological tools to thwart the probe. In this day and age, with Uber’s valuation soaring to more than $50 billion, the frequency of government raids is so frequent that the company sent employees a dawn raid manual on how to deal with the situation. The manual is over 2600 words long and contains 66 bullet points. These included “schedule supervisors into conference rooms without any documents” and “never leave supervisors alone”.
Like the texts and emails related to the Amsterdam raid, the document is part of the Uber Files — a treasure trove of 18.7 GB of data obtained by The Guardian and in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and data from The Washington Post. Ten other news organizations shared, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit news center in Washington that helped lead the project. The files spanned from 2013 to 2017 and contained 83,000 emails and other communications, presentations and direct messages. Uber is known to try to thwart investigations by regulators, government inspectors and police, but the documents show that Uber developed multiple systems to obfuscate official investigations far beyond what is known to the public. Uber isn’t just developing software to connect drivers with customers who want a ride, it’s also using its technological capabilities in many cases to fool the authorities.
According to the documents and interviews with former employees of the company, the company used a program called Greyball to prevent authorities from calling cars — potentially impounding them and arresting drivers. It also uses a technology called “geofencing,” which, based on location data, prevents normal use of the app near where police stations and other authorities may work. It also uses enterprise network management software to remotely cut off access to network files after computers are confiscated by authorities. Greyball was created as a fraud-fighting tool to limit fraudsters’ use of the app, and it was sometimes used to stop Uber’s rivals from “hunting” drivers, a former executive said. But former employees of the company say Uber’s operational executives took control of the program and used it against the government.
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