Leaked Uber files reveal history of law-breaking, lobbying, and violent exploitation of drivers – TechCrunch
Thousands are leaked Secret files reveal a trove of sketchy and illegal Uber practices. Uber files, originally shared with Guardians and International Association of Investigative Journalistsshows a company knowingly breaking the law, intentionally evading justice, secretly lobbying the government, receiving aid from top politicians, and using violence against motorists to promote business .
The leak of more than 124,000 documents, now known as the Uber Profile, spans a five-year period from 2013 to 2017. It covers Uber’s operations across 40 countries when Uber was still operating. by co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was aggressive. approach to bringing ride-hailing services into cities around the world, even if doing so would violate local laws and taxi regulations.
The documents, which include 83,000 emails and 1,000 other files including chats, reveal for the first time Uber’s $90 million-a-year public relations and lobbying campaigns to gain publicity. supported by world leaders, such as French President Emmanuel Macron, to disrupt Europe’s taxi industry.
In one statementUber spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker acknowledged many of Uber’s mistakes under Kalanick’s management, but his replacement, Dara Khosrowshahi, was “on a mission to change every aspect of how Uber works” and has “install the stringent controls and compliance necessary to operate as a public company. “
“We have not and will not justify past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values. Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we have done in the last 5 years and what we will do in the coming years,” she said.
Over the past five years, the company has continued to spend millions on lobbying and marketing campaigns so that it can continue to treat its drivers as independent contractors, rather than employees. The company also recently shot down a shareholder proposal to achieve transparency around Uber’s lobbying efforts.
Contrary to Hazelbaker’s claim that Uber is a reformed company since 2017 – that’s when Kalanick resigns as CEO amid storm of concerns about Uber’s workplace culture, including allegations of sexual harassment, racism and bullying – Uber will continue to operate its service, even if local law requires drivers to be treated like employees. And, despite violent protests and attacks on motorists since 2017, Uber has resumed operations in countries and cities where local regulators say drivers must have a license to operate taxi services.
Let’s analyze some of the content inside the Uber File.
‘Emmanuel’ and ‘Travis’ on the basis of name
Paris was the first European city Uber opened, and the city fought hard against the new tech company. French taxi drivers have staged protests that often turn violent. But Macron, who was just appointed economy minister in 2014, thinks Uber will help create new jobs and economic growth. After meeting with corporate lobbyists in October of that year, Macron became an advocate for Uber’s interests in government, who would work to rewrite the law in favor of Uber, the records show. shows.
Mark MacGann, an Uber lobbyist, described the meeting as “spectacular. Like I’ve never seen,” and said, “There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ll be hopping soon”.
According to the filing, Macron and Kalanick have met at least four times, including in Paris and at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“The openness and welcome we have received is unusual in the relationship between government and industry,” Uber wrote to Macron, noting it was “extremely grateful” for the kind treatment. mine.
During that year, Macron worked with Uber to rewrite the French law governing its services. Uber has launched UberPop, a service that allows unlicensed drivers to offer rides at a discounted price. The service was initially banned by the government, but in Uber’s way, it kept the service going when it challenged the law.
“Uber will provide an outline for a legal framework for shared sharing,” reads an email from Kalanick to Macron. “We will connect our respective teams to start working on a viable proposal that could become the official framework in France.”
In June 2015, taxi driver protests turned violent, and Macron texted Kalanick saying he would “gather everyone next week to prepare reforms and fix the law,” according to the filing. . On the same day, Uber suspended UberPop in France. Later that year, Macron signed a decree easing licensing requirements for Uber drivers.
Macron’s spokesman said in a send email to BBC: “His functions naturally brought him to meet and interact with many companies that were involved in the dramatic change that took place during those years in the service sector, which had to be facilitated. by widening administrative and regulatory barriers”.
In addition to Macron, the filings also reveal how Neelie Kroes, a former EU digital commissioner and one of Brussels’ top officials, talked to Uber about joining the company before her term ended. end. Kroes also apparently secretly lobbied for the company, which potentially violated EU ethics rules.
‘Violence guarantees success’
Leaked files reveal a cache of extremely frank and direct conversations between Kalanick and other top officials that reveal some unethical behavior and contempt for officials does not commit to supporting Uber. Perhaps the most jarring are those that seem to exploit violence against motorists.
In an exchange, Uber executives warned against sending drivers to a protest in France that could lead to violence from angry taxi drivers.
“I think it’s worth it,” Kalanick wrote. “Violence Guaranteed[s] successful.”
In a statementA spokesman for Kalanick said he “never suggested that Uber use violence to compromise driver safety… Any allegations that Mr. Kalanick directed, participated in or was involved in any of these activities are completely untrue.”
A former senior executive told the Guardian that Uber’s decision to send drivers to participate in potentially dangerous protests, knowing the risks, aligns with its strategy of “weaponizing” drivers and exploiting corporate violence to “keep the controversy burning.”
Leaked emails show that such a strategy has been repeated in Belgium, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. For example, when masked men, believed to be angry taxi drivers, attacked an Uber driver with a handkerchief and a hammer in Amsterdam in March 2015, Uber used violence to try to win. concessions from the Dutch government, records show.
Uber is encouraging driver victims to file a police report, which was shared with leading Dutch daily De Telegraaf.
“[They] will be published without our fingerprints on the front page tomorrow,” one manager wrote. “We continued to report on the violence for several days, before coming up with a resolution.”
Hazelbaker admits that the company has abused drivers in the past, but that doesn’t mean anyone wants to be violent with them.
“There are a lot of things that our former CEO said almost a decade ago that we certainly wouldn’t forgive today,” she said. “But one thing that we know and feel strongly about is that no one at Uber has ever been pleased about violent behavior against a driver.”
‘Destroy Switch’
Despite Uber’s cover-up of innocence and attempts to define angry taxi drivers and the regulated taxi market as “cartels,” the company seems to have learned that it is operating illegally in many parts of the world. city.
Internal emails reveal employee mentions of “non-judgmental” Uber and other forms of service that operate contrary to regulations in countries including the Czech Republic, France, Germany, and Spain. Japan, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and Russia.
“We are not legal in many countries, we should avoid making objectionable statements,” one senior executive wrote in an email. “We are officially pirates,” wrote another executive, in response to the strategies Uber deployed to “avoid coercion.”
A message sent to a colleague in 2014 by Nairi Hourdaijan, Uber’s head of global communications, even went so far as to say, “Sometimes we have problems because we just breaking the law.”
Regulators, police and transportation officials around the world have worked to rein in Uber. Some officials will download the app and ride so they can do the hard work on unlicensed taxi journeys and Uber fines or the driver’s car in custody. Offices in dozens of countries have been raided by authorities.
That’s where the “kill switch” comes in. If law enforcement gets access to the company’s computers, Uber will activate a “kill switch” that restricts officers’ access to sensitive company data such as driver lists, which Uber thinks will harm its growth.
The filings reveal that Kalanick asked employees to hit the kill switch “ASAP” in Amsterdam at least once, according to an email from his account. They also revealed that the technique, which Uber’s lawyers and management has checked and signed, has been used at least 12 times in raids in Belgium, France, India, Hungary, Netherlands and Romania.
A Kalanick spokesperson said in a statement that such protocols are “common business practice to protect customers’ intellectual property rights and privacy, and are not designed to obstruct justice.” . She also noted that Kalanick “has never been charged in any jurisdiction with obstruction of justice or any related offense.”
(Kalanick yes have in the past been accused of allegations that he paid the hacker $100,000 to cover up a theft that stole the personal information of some 57 million Uber users and drivers in 2016.)
Text messages and emails between executives detail many other instances where Uber has used a kill switch. For example, in March 2015 at Uber’s Paris office, a “large force (about 25)” of police officers showed up and “tried to break into a laptop computer,” according to one report. email from then-lobbyist MacGann to David Plouffe, former Obama. an aide joined Uber as head of global brand, communications and policy last year.
MacGann told Plouffe: “Access to IT tools was cut off immediately, so the police wouldn’t be able to access much if anything.
In July of that year, messages between MacGann and Thibaud Simphal, a manager then in France and now head of Uber’s global sustainability, yielded a particularly revealing exchange.
“Using the play ‘Zachary De Kievit’:” he wrote, referencing an Uber attorney. SF and is fast asleep, and this is controlled by UberBV anyway so they should write to Uber BV with their request. Zac can give a signed copy of his book.”
Simphal’s answer: “Oh yeah, we’ve used that book so many times by now, the hardest part is continuing to act surprised!”
This story is evolving. Check back for updates.
