Uber faces DOJ criminal investigation over creating evasive Greyball software

Why it matters to you

It’s possible Uber could lose approval to operate in some cities if DOJ probe uncovers more evidence of evading regulators.

Looking into Uber’s attempt to evade government regulators in Portland, the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a criminal probe into the development and use of Uber’s Greyball software. Detailed by Reuters, a subpoena from a Northern California grand jury was received by Uber recently. That subpoena specifically requests information on where Greyball was deployed and how the software functions.

In cities where rideshare services like Lyft and Uber are illegal, government officials will occasionally launch sting operations to bust drivers. Basically, a police officer will hail an Uber car in order to ticket the driver and potentially impound the vehicle. Obviously, this dissuades drivers from operating Uber vehicles within the city and increases the number of residents using licensed taxi services.

Enter Grayball, a piece of software that analyzes information like credit card data or social media profiles in order to filter out unwanted users. For instance, the software may identify a police officer that operates these type of stings and hides all nearby drivers within the app. Basically, the software would either show fake drivers on the app screen or simply show zero cars available in the area. Those fake cars would never respond to the officer’s requests.

While Uber claims that the software is designed to identify and filter out taxi union protesters that could potentially harm their drivers, the company announced that Greyball would no longer be used for filtering out government officials after the New York Times exposed Greyball’s existence during March 2017.

According to sources knowledgeable of the probe, the federal investigation is currently in the early stages. At this time, the U.S. Department of Justice and Uber haven’t released an official comment on the status of the investigation. However, Uber has retained the services of the third party law firm to investigate usage of Greyball software within the company.