Uber accused of using secret mes

A former Uber manager has made damaging accusations against the company.

These include that Uber deliberately destroyed sensitive communications.

San Francisco | A criminal probe of Uber Technologies has turned up revelations that the ride-hailing company used encrypted messaging to hide its tracks while spying on rivals, evading authorities and fighting off lawsuits.

Richard Jacobs, who was a manager on a corporate surveillance team at Uber, privately told federal prosecutors about the secret messaging system and publicly testified about it on Wednesday (AEDT).

He provided details on how Uber employees were trained to ‘‘destroy communications that might be considered sensitive’’.

His allegations reveal yet another dimension of Uber’s renegade corporate ethos, which has landed the San Francisco-based company in multiple scandals. As of October, Uber was facing at least five criminal probes by the US Justice Department, Bloomberg News reported.

The revelations stem from and further complicate an already labyrinthine plot in car development company Waymo’s lawsuit accusing Uber of trade-secret theft. Mr Jacobs was put on the witness stand after US District Judge William Alsup learned from prosecutors last week that Mr Jacobs had communicated with them.

Mr Jacobs became the star attraction at a hearing that was meant to cover final preparations for a muchanticipated trial over allegations that Uber stole self-driving technology from Waymo.

The trial, which was set to begin on Thursday (AEDT) with jury selection, was indefinitely postponed over the judge’s concern that relevant information that Mr Jacobs shared with prosecutors may have been withheld from Waymo.

‘‘I would look like a fool if Uber were to fool me,’’ Judge Alsup said, rejecting an Uber lawyer’s attempt to push forward with trial. The judge said he’d been burned enough times by Uber’s promises that it had scoured its servers for key evidence it was required to turn over.

Judge Alsup said that he took Mr Jacobs’s allegations seriously because prosecutors found the ex-employee to be credible in his account of Uber relying on non-traceable devices and automatically deleting messaging systems.

‘‘It turns out the server is only for the dummies. The stuff that does matter goes on this shadow system,’’ Judge Alsup said. ‘‘You should’ve come clean on this a long time ago.’’

The Waymo trial already has been delayed once, from October 10, when the judge agreed to give Waymo more time to evaluate a 2016 report commissioned by Uber to vet its hire of the engineer at the centre of the dispute, Anthony Levandowski.

Mr Jacobs testified that Uber’s Strategic Services Group, which since has been renamed, was focused mostly on gaining an edge on overseas rivals. The group was led by Joe Sullivan, who had been Uber’s chief security officer. He was ousted as the company announced last week that it had concealed a data breach that compromised information on 57 million riders and drivers. Mr Sullivan and his team had been at the centre of an internal inquiry led by the company’s board of directors.

Judge Alsup said there was a 50-50 chance the information revealed by Mr Jacobs would prove damaging to Uber or a ‘‘dry hole’’.

‘‘We need to get to the bottom of this,’’ he said.

BLOOMBERG

Uber accused of using secret messaging