Investigation reveals Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments
Thousands of leaked files have exposed how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police and secretly lobbied top politicians, during its aggressive global expansion.
The Uber Files are a trove of more than 124,000 records, including 83,000 emails and 1,000 other files involving conversations, spanning 2013 to 2017. More than 180 journalists at 40 media outlets including Le Monde, Washington Post and the BBC will be publishing a series of investigative reports in the coming days.
The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick. It also contains texts between Kalanick and French President Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was economy minister and appears to have gone to extraordinary lengths to help Uber expand.
The leaks also show that the former European Commission vice-president responsible for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, was trying to assist Uber by offering to arrange a series of meetings for Uber during her 18-month “cooling-off period” after leaving the commission.
Kill Switch
Uber developed sophisticated methods to block police from accessing its systems during office raids. One such system was known internally at Uber as a “kill switch”.
When an Uber office was raided, executives at the company sent out instructions to IT staff to cut off access to the company’s main data systems, preventing authorities from getting the data.
The leaked files suggest the technique was deployed at least 12 times during raids in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Hungary and Romania.
Kalanick personally ordered the use of the switch as police were descending on its Amsterdam headquarters, records show. “Please hit the kill switch ASAP,” Kalanick ordered. “Access must be shut down in AMS [Amsterdam].”
The kill switch wasn’t the only technological weapon Uber deployed to evade police and regulators. The company also identified police or government officials who it believed were ordering Uber cars to gather evidence and then showed them a fake version of the app with phantom cars that never arrived. The company did so in the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Spain and other countries.
Key Findings of Uber Files:
- The Uber Files investigation reveals how the company won access to political leaders, often in secret, duped investigators, upended workers’ rights and tried to hobble government probes as it barged into new markets in the face of fierce resistance.
- Leaked records reveal that Uber executives activated a so-called “kill switch” to cut access to company servers and prevent authorities from seizing evidence during raids on Uber offices in at least six countries.
- Uber made deals with oligarchs in a failed bid to enter the Russian market with Kremlin support.
- Uber executives discussed the public relations benefits of violence against its drivers as it tackled resistance to its expansion.
- The ride-hailing giant sought to deflect attention from its tax liabilities by helping authorities collect taxes from its drivers while routing profits through Bermuda and other tax havens.
Uber’s response
Responding to the leaks, Uber spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker, acknowledged “mistakes” and “missteps” that culminated five years ago in “one of the most infamous reckonings in the history of corporate America.” She said Uber completely changed how it operates in 2017 after facing high-profile lawsuits and government investigations that led to the ouster of Kalanick and other senior executives.