Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government
Leaders at Uber encouraged its staff to use a “kill switch” to prevent law enforcement and regulators from accessing sensitive data.
The “kill switch” was one of several details revealed in a trove of 124,000 documents leaked to the Guardian and shared with dozens of newsrooms by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. This leak, which dealt with the company’s conduct between 2013 and 2017, offered an insight into the decisions that company leadership made to expand on a global scale outside Silicon Valley and that lead to one of the “most infamous reckonings in the history of corporate America.”
This kill switch was reportedly used in several countries. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick ordered computers in Amsterdam cut off from the company’s internal network after learning that authorities had raided the offices there in 2015. “Please hit the kill switch ASAP,” Kalanick said in an email, making the devices inaccessible for staff and authorities alike.
