Ex-employee accuses secret unit at Uber of multiple unlawful actions
At first glance, the Jacobs letter [is] (sic) an incredibly detailed accounting of multiple unlawful actions by the ride-hail company. He alleges that Uberâs secretive Strategic Services Group (SSG) âfrequently engaged in fraud and theft, and employed third-party vendors to obtain unauthorized data or information.â He also accuses Uber security officers of âhackingâ and âdestruction of evidence related to eavesdropping against opposition groups.â And he says Uberâs ex-CEO Travis Kalanick knew about a lot of it.
Another Uber employee, Nicholas Gicinto, along with SSG, conducted âvirtual operations impersonating protesters, Uber partner-drivers, and taxi operators.â These Uber security employees went to great lengths to hide their surveillance activities from the authorities, Jacobs says. They used computers not purchased by Uber that ran on Mi-Fi devices, so the traffic wouldnât appear on Uberâs network. They also used virtual public networks and ânon-attributable architecture of contracted Amazon Web Servicesâ to further conceal their efforts, Jacobs alleges. Who were they surveilling? Jacobs says SSGâs targets included âpoliticians, regulators, law enforcement, taxi organizations, and labor unions in, at a minimum, the US.â
And then there was Uberâs innocuously named Marketplace Analytics team. Jacobs says this group was responsible for âacquiring trade secrets, codebase, and competitive intelligence⌠from major ridesharing competitors globally.â According to Jacobs, Marketplace Analytics impersonated riders and drivers on competitor platforms, hacked into competitor networks, and conducted unlawful wiretapping.
In one of the weirder sections, Jacobs alleges that Uberâs surveillance team infiltrated a private event space at a hotel and spied on the executives of a rival company so they could observe, in real time, their reactions to the news that Uber had received a massive $3.5 billion investment from Saudi Arabia. That eavesdropping was directed by ex-Uber security chief Joe Sullivan at the behest of Kalanick, Jacobs says.
