The Uber Files revelations by a consortium of journalists have brought the term “kill switch” back into the spotlight, a kind of short-circuiting button that allowed the company to disable computers remotely in the event of a police search. . Planned and very supervised methods, for a start-up which has always said publicly that it wants to comply with the law.
The expression “kill switch” entered the news on July 11, 2022, backed by the name of Uber, the company that connects customers and VTC (transport car with driver). It is found in several investigations by French media, such as France Info, which is part of the consortium of journalists to whom the Guardian has shared a hundred thousand internal messages, which highlight controversial practices of Uber.
Among these revelations, we find the use of a “short-circuit button”, as one could translate it into French. It was used to prevent authorities from accessing company information during searches.
” Access to IT tools was cut off immediately. The police won’t be able to recover much, if anything at all “, for example, sent an executive of Uber to another, after a search of the Parisian premises of Uber in the spring of 2015, we learn at France Info.
What is meant by “kill switch”?
The kill switch “is in fact a series of computer manipulations to remotely deactivate the accounts of the raided employees and lock their computers, if they were still connected to the Internet or in communication” with central server “. Other instructions were also given to employees, such as reducing the time before standby devices to 60 seconds only. Order was also served from ” canned[r] a minimum of documents on [leur] computer locally, to favor remote storage.
We already knew, since 2016, that this emergency procedure existed at Uber, especially after a search in Montreal. But according to the Guardian, it would have been used at least twelve times, in six countries (France, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Hungary and Romania).
The exchanges revealed show that the most senior executives of Uber were talking about this “button”: ” Activate the kill switch immediately… Access to Amsterdam must be cut off “So sent Travis Kalanick at least once, as did Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, former director of Uber Europe. “ I joined Uber ten years ago, at the start of my career. I was young and inexperienced and too often took instructions from superiors with questionable ethics. “, has since commented to the World the one who is today director of Uber Eats.
Why was Uber locking computers remotely?
To understand the usefulness of this button (it’s actually more than just a button, the expression is metaphorical), you have to go back to the mid-2010s, when Uber was trying to impose itself in country where the legislation was not working in its favour. The start-up decided to move fast and break thingsand to launch its service before knowing if it was in conformity with the laws of each country.
Result: while the number of users of the application increased, the authorities of each country multiplied the searches to obtain information on Uber and their methods, and to verify its potential status as a disguised taxi company.
During a meeting with the police, some Uber executives allegedly pretended to look lost » whereas they knew very well that the recourse to the « short-circuit » had taken place. The legality of such a process is obviously debatable; it could be an obstruction of the law.
In an email exchange in February regarding a search in India, an executive explains that one of the reasons for the existence of this emergency short circuit is to prevent the police from having access to the list of Uber drivers : “If we provide our list of drivers, we lose our ‘reserve’. It’s much easier for taxes, regulators and the police to terrify [nos chauffeurs] and make them give in. Without them, we have no business. To be clear, I want to appear as cooperative as possible with the tax authorities. But if we send them the list of drivers, the carrots are cooked “Writes then Zac de Kievit, the legal director of Uber Europe.
Uber said it stopped using this system in 2017, when Travis Kalanick gave way to Dara Khosrowshahi. Through the voice of a spokesperson, Travis Kalanick replied on July 10, 2022 that the kill switch was “pdesigned to obstruct justice, nor integrated like that “, but for “ protect intellectual property and consumer privacy “.