Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

by Mike Isaac

Behind the scenes, Uber was hardly innocent. Recruiting ex-CIA, NSA, and FBI employees, the company had amassed a high-functioning corporate espionage force. Uber security personnel spied on government officials, looked deep into their digital lives, and at times followed them to their houses. After zeroing in on problematic individuals, the company would deploy one of its most effective weapons: Greyball. Greyball was a snippet of code affixed to a user’s Uber account, a tag that identified that person as a threat to the company. It could be a police officer, a legislative aide or, in England’s case, a transportation official. Having been Greyballed, England and his fellow officers were served up a fake version of the Uber app, populated with ghost cars. They had no chance of ever capturing the rogue drivers. They might not even know if drivers were operating at all. For the next three years, Uber operated with impunity in Portland. It wasn’t until 2017 when the New York Times broke the story of how Uber used Greyball to evade the authorities that Portland officials fully understood just how Uber had carried out its subterfuge. But by 2017 it was too late. Uber was up and running in Portland—legally, even—a fixture of the city, in regular use by citizens who praised its convenience. Kalanick and his team had violated local transportation laws, and instead of being exiled, they had found enormous, game-changing success.

Greyball