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Government Transportation

'Hit the Kill Switch': How Uber Used Covert Tech to Thwart Government Raids (msn.com) 85

Posted by EditorDavid from the tricky-tech dept.
The Washington Post shares details from "a trove of more than 124,000 previously undisclosed Uber records." For example, in 2015 Uber CEO Travis Kalanick often pulled an emergency kill switch on its data — that is, "ordered the computer systems in Amsterdam cut off from Uber's internal network, making data inaccessible to authorities as they raided its European headquarters, documents show." "Please hit the kill switch ASAP," Kalanick had emailed, ordering a subordinate to block the office laptops and other devices from Uber's internal systems. "Access must be shut down in AMS," referring to Amsterdam. Uber's use of what insiders called the "kill switch" was a brazen example of how the company employed technological tools to prevent authorities from successfully investigating the company's business practices as it disrupted the global taxi industry, according to the documents.

During this era, as Uber's valuation was surging past $50 billion, government raids occurred with such frequency that the company distributed a Dawn Raid Manual to employees on how to respond. It ran more than 2,600 words with 66 bullet points. They included "Move the Regulators into a meeting room that does not contain any files" and "Never leave the Regulators alone."

That document, like the text and email exchanges related to the Amsterdam raid, are part of the Uber Files, an 18.7-gigabyte trove of data obtained by the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit newsroom in Washington that helped lead the project, and dozens of other news organizations, including The Washington Post. The files, spanning 2013 to 2017, include 83,000 emails and other communications, presentations and direct messages. They show that Uber developed extensive systems to confound official inquiries, going well past what has been known about its efforts to trip up regulators, government inspectors and police. Far from simply developing software to connect drivers and customers seeking rides, Uber leveraged its technological capabilities in many cases to gain a covert edge over authorities....

According to the documents and interviews with former employees, the company used a program called Greyball to keep authorities from hailing cars — and potentially impounding them and arresting their drivers. It used a technology called "geofencing" that, based on location data, blocked ordinary use of the app near police stations and other places where authorities might be working. And it used corporate networking management software to remotely cut computers' access to network files after they had been seized by authorities.... Greyball was created as a fraud-fighting tool to limit scammers' access to the app, a former executive said, and was at times used to frustrate violent Uber opponents hunting drivers. But Uber operations executives took control of the program and redeployed it against the government, former employees said.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists describes their trove of documents as "the secret story of how the tech giant won access to world leaders, cozied up to oligarchs and dodged taxes amid chaotic global expansion."
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'Hit the Kill Switch': How Uber Used Covert Tech to Thwart Government Raids More

'Hit the Kill Switch': How Uber Used Covert Tech to Thwart Government Raids

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  • What's bad about it? (Score:5, Informative)

    by rskbrkr ( 824653 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @01:30PM (#62690912)

    They included "Move the Regulators into a meeting room that does not contain any files" and "Never leave the Regulators alone."

    Not that I would ever let law enforcement into my house without a warrant, but this is sound advice for everyone including those not engaged in any type of illegal activity.

    • Re:What's bad about it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by magnetar513 ( 1384317 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @02:21PM (#62691030)
      When powerful, technologically sophisticated entities that are causing huge economic and social shifts are using covert measures to skirt regulations, and possibly undermine the ostensibly democratic governments under which they operate, well, it doesn't seem all that good.

    • Didn't read the actual article but there isn't anything new here that pretty much every well run global business hasn't done in the last... 100+ years? Most companies naturally do this because their ops are decoupled per legal jurisdiction. It's normally a lot of work to tie them beyond quarterly level reporting. We aren't talking about unofficial books or something illegal here.

      These are safe guards to keep regulators from getting more than they are asking for. It's not illegal nor immortal to provide

      • but there isn't anything new here that pretty much every well run global business hasn't done in the last... 100+ years?

        "Murders were happening centuries ago so they can't be *that* bad, right?"

        • You are missing the point. Murder was bad than too... so not the same thing.

          Example: If the IRS audits you for 2 specific years, don't be giving them the entire Tax document cabinet. Just because that later ended up on CDs or Tape doesn't mean you give them your entire archive... Just give them what they asked for.

          Just because your business is global and your accounting is centralized and interconnected... doesn't mean you give them access to your Australian accounts. Nor the Europeans access to your US

    • Yes, I'm sure Uber is not doing anything illegal.

    • Re:What's bad about it? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @04:16PM (#62691398)

      They included "Move the Regulators into a meeting room that does not contain any files" and "Never leave the Regulators alone."

      Not that I would ever let law enforcement into my house without a warrant, but this is sound advice for everyone including those not engaged in any type of illegal activity.

      Having worked as a regulator, that is good advice. If I wanted a file I'd simply ask for. If they refused, I assumed they are hiding something which just meant I had to dig deeper. Except for our own internal deliberations, I welcomed plant staff to follow me around. It gave me a chance to ask them questions, get their input on what they saw, and once they were used to me being around they would fall back into their work habits and I could see what actually was how they worked, not the dog and pony show they would put on at first.

      • I'm genuinely curious, have you in your time come across a company that let you just run around unsupervised or didn't direct you to a meeting room while they got their lawyers on the phone?

        I'm asking because this was the SOP at every company I've ever worked for. > Direct regulators to a meeting room, get legal on the phone. Ideally have two different people do that so legal can get out even faster.

        • I'm genuinely curious, have you in your time come across a company that let you just run around unsupervised or didn't direct you to a meeting room while they got their lawyers on the phone?

          Actually, yes. But it was different than say teh SEC coming to crack down on you. We worked in an industrial setting where plants ran 24x7. We'd show up unannounced at 2 am, for example, to observe the mid shift. We had free run of the facility.

          I'm asking because this was the SOP at every company I've ever worked for. > Direct regulators to a meeting room, get legal on the phone. Ideally have two different people do that so legal can get out even faster.

          When we came, it was for inspection, not enforcement. That was a different dynamic.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • because it is against the law most of the time (Score:4, Insightful)

      by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @01:26AM (#62692152)
      If law enforcement has no warrant, then you don't need a kill switch you tell them to come back with a warrant. And if they are here with a warrant then having a kill switch to stop or slow down law enforcement is illegal.
    • Depending on the country, it's also a good recipe for a boot to the head followed by cuffs.

      We now need: The Google Files The Tesla / Boring Company / SpaceX Files The Amazon Files The JP Morgan Chase Files

  • And it looks like solid ground for a RICO case

    • Re: Looks like evidence to me (Score:4, Funny)

      by Brownstar ( 139242 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @01:56PM (#62690980)

      Yes because RICO is a Dutch law.

      • Re: Looks like evidence to me (Score:5, Informative)

        by bferrell ( 253291 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @02:58PM (#62691120) Homepage Journal

        Yes, RICO is a US law. And can be prosecuted in the US for actions undertaken in a foreign country especially if directed/operated on from the US. From TFA:

        “The procedure was, if you have law enforcement, you try to buy time by greeting them, and call San Francisco,” said one of Uber’s former lawyers in Europe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the tactics. “Even if it was 2 a.m. in San Francisco, there were people who were supposed to react.”

        It's a DIRECT violation of US anti-corruption law to obstruct foreign law enforcement.

        • “The procedure was, if you have law enforcement, you try to buy time by greeting them, and call San Francisco,” said one of Uber’s former lawyers in Europe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the tactics. “Even if it was 2 a.m. in San Francisco, there were people who were supposed to react.”

          Errr no. This is standard operating practice at any company in the world. If you experience a dawn raid, direct the regulators to a meeting room and contact legal who will almost certainly have people on call 24/7 back in the home country.

          I've worked for many companies over the years, and the only difference between them is to what level they spelled this process out specifically in internal training. It's also not against the law to get lawyers involved in any raids, it's a minimum expectation.

          • Get lawyers involved, sure. Knowingly request data access be cut off... No. Not SOP.

            I just finished yet another tedious corporate anti-corruption annual training (most companies have them done by a third party).
            The cutoff, as outlined in the article, IS specifically called out as a romper-room no-no and a violation of US anti-corruption law.

            Since Uber seems to think it's A-OK and has done it multiple times, they definitely look to be a corrupt organization... And given other practices, like racketeers henc

  • This isn't surprising given Travis Kalanick's history.

  • They continue to violate labor law (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @02:39PM (#62691066)
    And we continue to not enforce it. Eventually this is going to bite us all in the ass as we continue to lose hard fought labor rights. I suppose if you're retired or if you own a business that actively exploits labor. I see a lot of posts over on the Reddit anti-work form of these dumb little businesses like cupcakes and cookies, usually some chicks hobby business that isn't profitable unless she can pay people so little money they can't survive. They tend to be the ones who post about how nobody wants to work anymore.

    Still even if you're retired I would worry about it unless you're on your deathbed. We are really screwing over Gen M and Z. They're increasingly turning the violence. There were a couple of mass shootings during the 4th of July but these days there are so many mass shootings that people putting off fireworks was enough to cause crowds to stampede.

    We're going to have more and more violence. And yeah when they come to crack your skull in you'll probably shoot the first couple batches of them but the third or fourth batch is going to put a slug in your arm and you won't be able to hold your rifle. and the fifth or six batch is going to be the one that gets you. Doesn't seem like the way I'd want to go. Never mind what they're going to do to your family. Plus eventually the public at large will demand a dictator like Joseph Stalin or Vladimir Putin take charge and deal with the crime. And that never ends well

  • No good guys here (Score:3)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @02:59PM (#62691124)
    Uber is plenty sketchy. But I believe the part about them needing to develop software tools to frustrate uber opponents trying to hail uber drivers so they can do violence. The cabbie driver medallion system needs disruption badly. And why the hell were regulators raiding them daily and trying to hail uber drivers to impound their cars? That sounds like a case of city hall and the medallion owners being in bed together. Screw them. I wish that Uber would have been slightly less grimy but maybe it takes a grey-area group like that to fight the cabbies, city hall, and whatever organized crime was involved.
    • Uber may be slimy, but at least they didn't organize violence against a rival business. The cabbies are vile.

    • Re:No good guys here (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @07:50PM (#62691726)
      The Uber service amounted to an illegal, unlicensed taxi service. The penalty for operating an illegal taxi service, in some jurisdictions, includes impounding of your car. This is no different than an undercover cop engaging in a drug sting. Now maybe you think Uber should be legal and so should drugs. But thinking the law should change does not mean that laws in general shouldn't be enforced. Uber always claimed that they were just an app provider and the drivers were independent. The only thing the app did was facilitate illegal transportation services. If I wrote an app that all it did was facilitate trading large quantities of cocaine, I wouldn't last a day. But somehow Uber managed this. So then the only tool law enforcement had was to arrest individual drivers. In the end, the service got legalized and maybe that's a good outcome since many people like it. Or maybe it's terrible policy. That the VCS and founders got rich so openly flouting the law should be a source of outrage.

    • Let's just prosecute each as evidence appears.
      "But everybody does it" isn't a great excuse.

    • The cabbie driver medallion system needs disruption badly.

      The famous cabbie driver medallion system of Amsterdam?

  • ... catch me, I may faint.

  • Kill switch (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @03:40PM (#62691278)

    They implemented a kill switch to evade authorities and then invoked it by e-mail?

  • Every headline I see is about how they are bad people, doing bad things that bigger corporations do, but Uber does it because it's evil.

    Maybe they just don't like German words and that's why they attack them.

  • Anyone that thinks this is slimy, well, it is, but why should anyone help get themselves in trouble?

  • The traditional regulatory approach is to go to a court and obtain a subpoena for content you want. This would give the entity the chance to contest parts of it before a neutral judge.

    A physical raid doesn't have that procedural nicety, which is why regulators that don't have a strong claim to all the data they want prefer it -- they can get a raid signed off for data set X and then seize X & Y that they wouldn't be entitled to ahead of time.

    • However the subject doesn't get to contest a warrant.
      The article is unclear, but these appear to be raids with warrant in hand.

      • The point he's making, is that raids like this are abused. You have someone on your staff who has been viewing child porn via the work office. I get a warrant for that individual. We do a raid. Arrest him. And we seize every single computer in your office, so we can take all the info we wanted that we could not get a warrant for.

        This is par for the course, sadly....

  • "Kill Switch" was not in Super Pumped! (Score:3)

    by atrimtab ( 247656 ) on Sunday July 10, 2022 @05:54PM (#62691564)

    But Greyball etc. were.

    You can watch the first episode online:

    https://www.sho.com/super-pump... [sho.com]

    There are a total of seven episodes, though you only need the first episode to understand Uber.

    Uber's market cap in July 2022 is: $44.65 Billion.

    Which is quite a fall from the $500 billion valuation they had in 2015. But don't feel sorry for the VCs, founders and some early employees, they did just fine....

  • If anything they did was illegal and they are covering it up, then that's a conspiracy.

    Clock is ticking. 4 years from the last date of damages or illegal actions I think.

  • , and never leave them alone. ... I have another name for this process: "Standard Operating Practice At Every Company"

  • I like this, more please. Anytime tech, especially encryption is used to thwart the government or supposed "authorities with small penises".

    More of this asap. Weaponize computers, after all we can still write our own code so they belong to us.

  • Taxi's were a corrupt cartel model that many governments benefited from at the suffrage of the citizenry.

    Uber leveraged technology to upturn that dynamic, providing better service at cheaper prices with greater ease and availability. Of course, this hurt the wallets of many cities. Should an Uber-driver require a million dollar limited token?

    No, it should not. Uber was hit with tons of crappy BS investigations. Oh, they're treating their employees as contractors. Um, they are....
    - User their own equipme

  • I mean, supporting a company that LIES about whether it's a taxi company, that LIES about its employees not being employees, that LIES about how much they're getting paid, and deliberately hides information from the authorities?

    If you're not getting paid by them, you're pro-crime idiots.

    But then, you probably think someone who's had SEVEN bankruptcies is a "great businessman".

  • Uber and Lyft revolutionized the taxi business while governments used to expensive licenses for taxis tried to protect this enormous source of income. The consumer is better off and now governments will have to look elsewhere to suck taxpayer money into their coffers.

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