The New York Times broke the biggest story about Uber yet. Since 2013, Uber has used a sophisticated tool to undermine local law enforcement at every turn.
The program is called Greyball and it works like this:
- In cities where Uber is illegal — of which there are still many — Greyball can identify undercover police who are trying hail Uber drivers, bust their drivers, and impound their vehicles.
- When these police open up the Uber app and try to hail a ride, they see phantom Uber cars driving around the city, but they’re never actually able to get a ride.
- Since the cars that show up in the app aren’t real, and the police can’t get a driver to pick them up, they can’t bust anyone.
The end result is that Uber can basically ignore the fact that a city hasn’t yet approved ride sharing, and start operating there anyway.
Take a moment to let that sink in. Uber is — thanks to its superior software — essentially above the law.
The way they identify these riders is actually quite genius. Based on the credit cards the police use, Uber can cross-check merchant databases against public servant databases, and figure out who’s likely a cop, then “hell-ban” them from being able to use Uber.
The police officers are never able to successfully hail a ride, but as far as they know, they’re just stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s how Uber was able to do perpetrate this scam for years, until a few Uber engineers with guilty consciouses came forward to blow the whistle.
Volkswagen used software to sell 10,000,000 ultra-polluting cars…
MORE: What do Uber, Volkswagen and Zenefits have in common? They all used hidden code to break the law.
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