The legal battle between Uber the ride-hailing behemoth and Waymo the self-driving unit of Alphabet reached a pivotal point this week as the Judge presiding over the case released a letter based on the account of a former employee at Uber.
The letter alleged that a division with Uber has been responsible for carrying out acts such as theft of trade secrets, corporate espionage, bribery of officials in foreign countries, and different types of unlawful surveillance.
The letter, given the name “Jacobs Letter,” was authored by an attorney who represents Richard Jacobs, a former employee at Uber who held the position of global intelligence manager prior to his firing last April.
In the highly detailed account accusations are leveled of systematic illegal activities inside the Strategic Services Group (SSG) of Uber, which allegedly sought out the trade secrets of other companies through data collection and eavesdropping. more
Quote from the letter...
Uber’s Marketplace Analytics team…fraudulently impersonates riders and
drivers on competitor platforms, hacks into competitor networks, and
conducts unlawful wiretapping. more
Another version of the story...
Uber illegally recorded phone calls and wiretapped the phones of
executives at rival companies in a global “intelligence gathering”
operation that went on for years, a former employee has alleged.
In a
37-page letter made public in federal court on Friday, Richard Jacobs, a
former security employee with the ride-hailing service, alleges Uber
set up internal teams whose sole purpose was to spy on competitors.
“Uber has engaged, and continues to engage, in illegal intelligence
gathering on a global scale,” Jacobs wrote, according to The New York Times.
The teams allegedly infiltrated chat rooms, impersonated drivers of
rival companies, and placed surveillance on executives of those
companies, including by illegally recording phone calls, the letter
claims.
Jacobs’ allegations stem from a trade secrets case against Uber
filed by Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving unit, which says Uber stole
information about autonomous driving technology. more
