Latest Discovery Of Uber's Illegal Activity Is Breathtaking

Uber used a sophisticated tool called Greyball that identified individuals in government who were tasked with monitoring the company in order to evade detection by authorities in cities where they were working illegally. The program was worldwide, stretching from Boston to China to Paris.

If a government employee or investigator hailed a car using Uber in a city in which the company was operating in illegally, the Uber app would show a map with fake Uber cars and any cars the investigator was able to hail ended up cancelling the ride. The Times describes an example in Portland, Oregon where Uber began operating illegally. Investigating “officers like Mr. England posed as riders, opening the Uber app to hail a car and watching as the miniature vehicles on the screen made their way toward the potential fares. But unknown to Mr. England and other authorities, some of the digital cars they saw in the app did not represent actual vehicles. And the Uber drivers they were able to hail also quickly canceled. That was because Uber had tagged Mr. England and his colleagues — essentially Greyballing them as city officials — based on data collected from the app and in other ways. The company then served up a fake version of the app populated with ghost cars, to evade capture.”