Uber vows to stop using secret tool

Officials in Oregon call for investigation

SAN FRANCISCO: The ride-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc said on Wednesday that it would prohibit employees from using a programme called Greyball to thwart regulators.

Uber’s new policy pertaining to the use of Greyball, a tool the company developed to show individual riders different versions of its app, comes in the aftermath of a New York Times article that outlined how the company had used the tool to identify and avoid local regulators who were investigating the service.

The article, which cited four former and current Uber employees, said the company had used Greyball to thwart authorities in various cities in the United States and other countries.

In a statement on Wednesday, Joe Sullivan, Uber’s chief security officer, said the company was conducting a review of how the technology had been used.

“We are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward,” he said. “Given the way our systems are configured, it will take some time to ensure this prohibition is fully enforced.”

A company spokesman, asked why Uber could not fully enforce the prohibition immediately, declined to elaborate further.

Uber said that a number of organisations had inquired about the programme and that the company planned to respond once it finished its review.

Last week, Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Democratic Party in the Netherlands, wrote to the European Commission asking if it planned to investigate the company’s use of Greyball.

In addition, officials in Portland, Oregon, called for an investigation into Uber’s use of Greyball there.

In 2014, Uber started offering its lowcost, ride-hailing service in Portland without getting permission. The city later declared it illegal. Law enforcement officers posed as riders during their investigation of the service but were unable to catch Uber drivers in the act.

It appeared as though Uber was using Greyball to avoid the officers. In one instance, a code enforcement officer in Portland who opened the Uber app would see representations of cars on the app’s map. But the cars themselves never materialised. And the cars they were able to hail would cancel the ride before they arrived.

The revelation about Uber’s use of Greyball added to the company’s recent stream of bad news.

In January, Uber contended with a #deleteUber campaign by riders who thought the company was trying to take advantage of a taxi strike at Kennedy International Airport in New York. (Local taxi drivers were protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration ban.)

Last month, Uber faced increasing criticism of its workplace culture and was embroiled in a lawsuit over its self-driving cars. And last week, the company dealt with concerns regarding the temperament of its chief executive, Travis Kalanick, after a video of him berating an Uber driver became public.

Uber did not say, however, that it planned to prohibit the use of Greyball in all instances. The company said it used the technology for many purposes, including the testing of new features by employees, marketing promotions, and the deterring of riders using the app in violation of its terms of services.

Greyball came out of an Uber programme called VTOS, short for “violation of terms of service,” which the company says it created in part to identify people it thought were using its service improperly.

The programme began as early as 2014 and remains in use, mostly outside the United States. Uber’s legal team approved the use of Greyball.

Uber employees said the practices and tools came about partly because of a need to protect drivers who had been the target of violence in a number of countries. In France, India and Kenya, for instance, taxi companies and workers attacked new Uber drivers.