But there was one crucial difference: these cars were fake. Uber had built a virtual version of its own app, a secret tool known as Greyball, designed to throw regulators off the scent and help unlicensed taxi drivers evade the law. While the tool’s existence was later revealed amid much controversy, the exact way it was used and the list of countries where Uber used it to fool the authorities – along with other techniques – remained a closely guarded secret. Uber said it stopped using the tool in 2017. Now the Uber files, a cache of confidential documents leaked to the Guardian, can reveal how Uber tracked, tricked and evaded police and regulators across Europe – with the full knowledge of executives, including Pierre-Dimitri Gore- Coty, who now runs the company’s food delivery service, Uber Eats. Q&A
What are Uber records?
projection The Uber Files is a global investigation based on a trove of 124,000 documents leaked to the Guardian by Mark MacGann, Uber’s former chief lobbyist in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The data consists of emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the top executives of the Silicon Valley giant, as well as memos, presentations, notebooks, briefing documents and invoices. The leaked files cover 40 countries and span from 2013 to 2017, the period when Uber was aggressively expanding around the world. They reveal how the company broke the law, deceived police and regulators, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments around the world. To facilitate a global public interest investigation, the Guardian shared the data with 180 journalists in 29 countries through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The investigation was managed and led by the Guardian with the ICIJ. In a statement, Uber said: “We have not and will not condone past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values. Instead, we’re asking the public to judge us based on what we’ve done in the last five years and what we’ll do in the years to come.” Thanks for your response. Legal experts told the Guardian that the company’s actions are likely to have breached data protection laws. Uber’s rapid growth in Europe was helped by tools like Greyball, which revealed it was being used in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Denmark. Instructions for using Greyball appeared in an internal Uber presentation in 2015 documenting the company’s experience in Brussels, where authorities had impounded cars, costing the company €6,000 per incident. The slideshow, labeled “war stories,” was a blueprint for how Uber could prevent authorities from identifying its cars. The playbook advised staff to check “eyes”, the code for people viewing the app, and to cross-reference user details with locations such as police stations. Staff were also advised to smoke out “suspected users” by other means. In an October 2014 email, Gore-Coty, then Uber’s head of Western Europe, said then-CEO Travis Kalanick wanted staff to “have access to cardholder information,” apparently to identify users involved in enforcement. A spokesman for Kalanick said he had never approved the use of Greyball for any “illegal purpose”. Photo: VCG/Visual China Group/Getty Images They could then be “greyed out,” or added to a list of potential regulators trying to order cabs to gather evidence or impound vehicles. Uber would make sure to show those people a “fake view” of the app, with ghost cars that never arrived. In addition to singling out individuals, Uber could digitally remove entire locations, a tactic known as “geofencing,” ensuring that everyone in that zone will be shown the fake view. After Danish transport authorities launched an investigation into Uber in January 2015, Uber’s European legal director, Zac de Kievit, suggested that the company could avoid enforcement by “managing our technology … to prevent police/taxis from they order rides.” The next day, a Danish employee emailed Jo Bertram, then the company’s British head of northern Europe, outlining a plan to erect “geographical breaches around the main police stations”. The use of Greyball in the Netherlands received Kalanick’s personal stamp of approval. In December 2014, after a senior executive in Amsterdam outlined plans to combat law enforcement with “stricter” use of the software, Kalanick responded: “Great response and plan moving forward.” A spokesman for Kalanick said he had never authorized the use of Greyball for any “illegal purpose” and had not authorized “any actions or programs” that would obstruct justice in any country. Kalanick left the company in 2017, but Gore-Coty remains on its 11-member global executive team, overseeing Uber Eats, the food delivery business that is increasingly Uber’s profit engine. Gore-Coty discussed Greyball’s benefits in a 2014 email to colleagues, which included a section titled “Fighting Enforcement,” which he said was critical to Uber’s “ability to scale the business.” . Uber’s files also reveal how in 2015 staff in Brussels tried to get confidential information about sting operations from regulators by signing up relatives and friends, under fake names, as “mystery shoppers” for a recruitment service specially hired by the authorities to help catch unlicensed cars. . Uber’s Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty. Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images Gore-Coty, who via email indicates he was involved in the scheme, advised using another controversial Uber tracking tool, known as Heaven or God View, to prevent the sting. It allowed Uber to track any customer’s movements in real time. Gore-Coty told staff to “watch Heaven live whenever a raid is planned and sometimes make them feel like they’re getting somewhere (ie, if you see them ordering a driver, talk to the driver and ask them to circle , to call the rider saying he is stuck in traffic etc instead of canceling immediately)”. Uber promised to limit workers’ access to God View when the program came under fire in the US in 2014. The leaked data reveals that staff discussed using Greyball software to avoid enforcement in several other countries, including Russia and Bulgaria. It was also used to prevent the violence of its drivers by traditional taxi drivers in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Uber said it had cooperated with all known investigations into the use of Greyball and similar tools, and that all such investigations had been closed or no longer active, “with no findings of wrongdoing.” Uber’s use of Greyball was among the factors that led to the suspension of its license to operate in London in 2017. Its license was reinstated with conditions attached, including that it promised to notify Transport for London (TfL) of cases where staff in London The office knew Greyball was being used. Uber said it did that. An Uber spokesman said: “Greyball was considered in depth as part of our license appeal at the magistrates’ court in 2018. In that appeal, the court ultimately found Uber to be a fit and proper operator. Greyball has never been misused in the UK and external law firms have conducted investigations into possible misuse of Greyball in other countries as required by TfL. In 2022, TfL itself found Uber to be a ‘fit and proper’ operator and granted a 30-month license to operate in London.” They added: “We stopped using these tools in 2017 when Dara Khosrowshahi became CEO and, as we have said many times, they should never have been used. Today, we have strict privacy and security policies in place to protect user data and handle any and all regulatory requests appropriately.” He said he could find no evidence that staff were collecting users’ cardholder details to identify people in the gray area. A spokesman for Kalanick said Greyball was designed to protect Uber drivers from assault and harassment by taxi drivers, adding that he had never authorized or directed its use for any illegal purpose. “Notably, neither Mr. Kalanick nor anyone else at Uber has been accused or charged with any wrongdoing related to Greyball by any law enforcement agency,” he said. Contact integration Gore-Coty said that at the time Greyball was employed he was “young and inexperienced and very often instructed by superiors of questionable ethics”. He added: “While I believe just as deeply in Uber’s potential to create positive change as I did on day one, I regret some of the tactics used to achieve regulatory reform for ridesharing in the early days.” He said he had discussed getting the cardholder’s details, but didn’t know if the scheme had been implemented and wasn’t involved if it had. A Bertram spokesman said: “These allegations relate to global Uber policies that were discontinued five years ago or to interactions with the authorities that took place after Jo left the business. They were thoroughly scrutinized by regulators and in legal proceedings at the time.” De Kievit did not respond to requests for comment.
