Uber has hired spies and hackers to conduct intelligence-gathering operations targeting competing ride-hailing companies, one of its former security officials alleged in a court filing Friday.
Richard Jacobs, Uber’s manager of global intelligence until earlier this year, claims his former employer used illegal tactics against competitors and their employees in order to maintain its advantage in the ride-sharing market, his attorney wrote in a letter made public Friday as part of the federal trade secrets case between Uber and Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Waymo sued Uber in February for allegedly stealing its self-driving car technology, but a federal court judge put the trial on hold last month after learning about the existence of a May 5 letter penned by Mr. Jacobs’ attorneys as part of a settlement they successfully pursued following his firing weeks earlier.
While some details concerning the so-called “Jacobs letter” emerged in earlier court proceedings, the 37-page copy unsealed Friday by U.S. District Judge William Alsup offers the best insight yet into the former security specialist’s allegations against Uber.
“Uber has engaged, and continues to engage, in illegal intelligence gathering on a global scale,” attorney Clayton Halunen wrote on behalf of Mr. Jacobs.
According to the Jacobs letter, Uber has created specialized units tasked with conducting corporate espionage against competing companies, the likes of which allegedly ranged from recording on their employees’ private conversations, to hacking computer systems.
One of the units, Uber’s Strategic Services Group (SSG), “frequently engaged in fraud and theft, and employed third-party vendors to obtain unauthorized data or information,” attorney Clayton Halunen wrote on behalf of Mr. Jacobs.
Another group, Marketplace Analytics (MA), “exists expressly for the purpose of acquiring trade secrets, codebase and competitive intelligence… from major ride-sharing competitors globally,” according to the Jacobs letter.
Uber “used undercover agents to collect intelligence against the taxi groups and local political figures. The agents took rides in local taxis, loitered around locations where taxi drivers congregated and leveraged a local network of contacts with connections to police and regulatory authorities,” the letter alleged.
“Jacobs is aware that the MA team fraudulently impersonates riders and drivers on competitor platforms, hacks into competitor platforms, hacks into competitor networks and conducts unlawful wiretapping,” his attorney wrote.
Judge Alsup ruled last month to delay Waymo’s case against Uber while its attorneys investigate Mr. Jacobs’ claims.
“While we haven’t substantiated all the claims in this letter — and, importantly, any related to Waymo — our new leadership has made clear that going forward we will compete honestly and fairly, on the strength of our ideas and technology,” Uber responded Friday.
Uber settled earlier this year with Mr. Jacobs for $4.5 million, The New York Times reported previously.
The release of the Jacobs letter Friday came as Uber continues to come under fire for an array of missteps, including the October 2016 data breach that went undisclosed for 13 months before Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi came clean on Nov. 21.
Hackers stole the personal information including names and email addresses of 57 million Uber users but deleted the data after alerting Uber, Mr. Khosrowshahi announced last month.
Mr. Khosrowshahi became Uber’s chief executive this past August and has since terminated at least two former security officials involved in the security incident and the company’s response. Both the data breach and Uber’s reaction are currently under review by regulators throughout the U.S., as well as by federal watchdogs in the U.K, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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