On May 13, 2015, they obtained a search warrant and the next day raided the company’s premises. But at 10:40 a.m., at two Uber offices in Montreal, investigators noticed that the company’s laptops, smartphones and tablets suddenly rebooted at exactly the same time.
Concerned that the devices’ data could be tampered with remotely, agents disabled them. They seized 14 computers, 74 phones and some documents, according to court records obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada.
Uber’s Quebec general manager at the time, Jean-Nicolas Guillemette, told investigators he had contacted engineers at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, who had remotely encrypted all data.
What happened in Montreal was far from an isolated incident, but a tactic used by Uber to try to thwart authorities in the cities where it was trying to establish its business, according to documents found in Uber files, a major new leak of internal files from the gig-economy company.
The leaked files show how the company launched as a luxury service in San Francisco in 2010 tried to overcome legal and political hurdles through a complex choreography of lobbying, cultivating influential allies, shunning principles and ignoring rules when they seemed inconvenient.
While Quebec tax authorities were executing a search warrant at Uber’s offices in Old Montreal on May 14, 2015, computers and electronic devices were remotely encrypted and rebooted by engineers at Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco. (Radio-Canada)
The leaked files contain 124,000 records, including 83,000 emails, iMessages and Whatsapp exchanges between senior Uber executives, as well as memos, presentations and invoices. The files, which span from 2013 to 2017, shed light on a period when Uber was aggressively expanding and operating illegally in disregard of taxi regulations in many cities around the world, including Canada.
The files were leaked to The guardian and shared with Washington International Consortium of Investigative Journalistsa not-for-profit newsroom and network of journalists whose media partners include CBC/Radio-Canada, the Toronto Star, the Washington Post, the BBC and Le Monde.
In a statement to the ICIJ, Uber spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker acknowledged “mistakes” and “mistakes” that culminated five years ago in “one of the most notorious miscalculations in the history of corporate America,” but that the company had changed practices of her since 2017.
Deterrent Principles
The leaked files reveal that a “kill switch”, as it was referred to internally, and encryption software were also deployed in France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania and India as government authorities raided the company’s offices to enforce taxes, transfers and others of the law.
The “kill switch” would remotely cut off access to the company’s servers located in San Francisco and prevent government authorities from obtaining company records, while local staff would still appear to be cooperating with investigators.
According to a leaked 2015 email from an Uber legal director in western Europe, the company was particularly concerned that authorities could gain access to its driver list, making it “much easier for tax authorities, regulators and police to terrify our offer’ and enforcement against him. “If we hand over the list of drivers, our goose might be cooked,” he added.
In one of the first such uses of the kill switch seen in the leak, when the French competition and consumer watchdog raided the company’s Paris offices in November 2014, Uber’s European legal director sent an email titled “Kill Paris access now at 3:14 p.m. local time Thirteen minutes later, an engineering manager wrote: “Done now.”
Internal text messages were leaked during a raid by French tax authorities at Uber’s Paris office in 2015. Employees are said to look stunned when their computers can no longer connect to a server as investigators search for clues. (Uber Files/The Guardian/ICIJ)
During a raid by French tax authorities in July 2015, Mark MacGann, Uber’s top lobbyist in Europe, advised Thibauld Simhal, then head of Uber France, that employees were playing dumb when the kill switch was activated, according to messages leaked text.
“Try a few laptops, look confused when you can’t get access, say the IT team is involved [San Francisco] and you sleep soundly.”
The French manager replied: “Oh yes, we have used this playbook so many times so far, the hardest part is to keep doing amazing!”
MacGann told the Guardian he was just following orders. “On every occasion that I personally engaged in kill switch activities, I was acting under express orders from my command in San Francisco,” he said.
Simhal, now Uber’s global head of sustainability, said all his interactions with public authorities were done in good faith.
During an April 2015 raid on its Amsterdam offices, Uber’s Western Europe manager emailed a company engineer: “Kill switch in [Amsterdam] as soon as possible.”
Uber co-founder and then-CEO Travis Kalanick was on the email chain. Seven minutes later, he wrote: “Please hit the kill switch ASAP… Access must be closed [Amsterdam].”
In a statement sent to ICIJ, a spokesperson for Kalanick said the former CEO never approved actions or programs that would obstruct justice in any country.
He said Uber, like other businesses operating overseas, used tools to protect the intellectual property and privacy of its customers and ensure its rights in the event of an extrajudicial raid.
Kalanick’s spokesman also said the protocols do not delete data and that all decisions regarding their use have been reviewed and approved by Uber’s legal and regulatory departments.
After the Montreal raid, Uber went to court to challenge the validity of the search warrants obtained by Revenu Québec.
ONE The judge of the Superior Court of Quebec ruled that the warrants were valid. It also said that the remote shutdown and encryption of electronic devices “bears all the hallmarks of an attempt to obstruct justice” and that a judge could reasonably conclude that the company sought to hide evidence of illegal behavior from tax authorities.
It is unclear what happened next with the investigation. A spokesperson for Revenu Quebec told CBC/Radio-Canada that the agency cannot comment on current or past investigations.
Uber eventually reached an agreement with Revenu Québec, under which the company would collect the GST and QST on behalf of its drivers and remit the amounts to the tax authorities.
Uber today trades as a public company valued at US$42 billion — about as much as CIBC.
It says it operates in more than 10,000 cities and more than 70 countries. Its name has become a byword for the apps that dot the many markets it dominates, and it has branched out into food delivery.
But at eye level, the leaked files underscore that there was nothing inevitable about the company’s meteoric rise since launching in San Francisco in 2010.
Uber’s deliberate strategy to consolidate will also bring many headaches. In a leaked presentation in 2014, the company described these issues as “the pyramid of shit,” made up of layers of direct appeals, administrative proceedings, regulatory investigations and driver lawsuits.
A slide from a leaked 2014 presentation titled Europe: The Best Defense is Attack at Uber’s European headquarters in Amsterdam. (Uber Files/The Guardian/ICIJ)
Uber sought political allies to help it overcome these obstacles and continue to push forward.
“Back Channel Route Around Montreal”
When the UberX service launched in Montreal in 2014, mayor Denis Coderre immediately announced it publicly “Of course it’s illegal.”
Behind the scenes, Uber’s head of policy development sent an internal email saying, “This was fully expected and known, but we are working with the province and the city of Quebec as a route back from Montreal.”
When Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, asked the Ontario government to intervene after UberX launched in Ottawa in October 2014, the same policy director wrote: “We have met and continue to meet with relevant provincial ministers to address this issue .… We are meeting with relevant provincial ministers in all the provinces in Canada.”
The following month, the City of Toronto decided to seek an injunction against Uber for allegedly violating its taxi and limousine regulations.
On the same day, Mayor-elect John Tory issued a media release criticizing the city’s decisionsaying: “Uber is a technology whose time has come and it’s here to stay.”
A leaked internal memo suggested that Uber’s policy team had “worked to ensure [the] extremely positive response’ from the Tories.
Tory’s office did not respond to our inquiries.
Mayor-elect John Tory speaks to reporters outside Toronto city hall in late October 2014. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)
On October 4, 2014, John Baird, federal minister of foreign affairs in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet, complained on Twitter and Facebook waited 75 minutes for a taxi in Ottawa. He publicly called on the city to allow Uber, which had begun operating illegally in the capital.
A few days later, Uber’s policy team claimed it had “secured Canada’s foreign minister as a public advocate,” according to a leaked internal memo.
Baird’s spokesman, Michael Ceci, said the former minister “does not recall being contacted by Uber Canada staff.”
Uber has also tried to influence elected officials and public opinion in Alberta.
In Edmonton, when UberX launched in December 2014, a…
