What is Uber Kill Switch? Company used it in India too
In a shocking revelation, a report says Uber top executives have asked its employees on various occasions to use what they have dubbed as 'Kill Switch' to prevent police and regulators from accessing sensitive data during raids on its offices. As reported by The Guardian, the officials have been instructed to block authorities from accessing its IT systems as part of a sophisticated global operation by the Silicon Valley company to thwart law enforcement officers who are looking for wrongdoing by the company. According to the report that is being referred to as Uber files, the company has deployed the Kill Switch at least 12 times in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary India and Romania.
In fact, even former CEO Travis Kalanick himself wanted the "kill switch" implemented to remotely cut off access to devices in an Amsterdam office to Uber's internal systems during a raid by authorities, Washington Post reported.
"Please hit the kill switch ASAP," he wrote in an email to an employee. "Access must be shut down in AMS (Amsterdam)."
Uber’s Kill Switch was introduced by the company to switch off certain parts of computer systems in the event of serious regulatory action, like a tax raid to block law enforcement agencies from accessing large amounts of company data from that particular office. The taxi service provider developed its kill switch systems to protect the company's interest if it was raided by police and enforcement officials to gather evidence. If found by authorities, this data could have led to shutting down of Uber’s unlicensed taxi service, impoundment of vehicles or prosecution of drivers. Earlier, the company used a software named ‘Casper’ and later ‘Ripley’.
Uber Manager, Rob van der Woude provided the
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