A career lobbyist by the name of Mark MacGann, who drove Uber’s efforts to prevail upon states across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, has admitted to being the one who released thousands upon thousands of company files.
MacGann chose to stand up, he says, since he thinks that Uber purposely disregarded regulations and laws in many nations and misdirected individuals about the advantages of drivers of the organization’s gig-economy model.
“I am partly responsible,” the 52-year-old said. “I was the one talking to governments, I was the one pushing this with the media, I was the one telling people that they should change the rules because drivers were going to benefit, and people were going to get so much economic opportunity. When that turned out not to be the case – we had sold people a lie – how can you have a clear conscience if you don’t stand up and own your contribution to how people are being treated today?”
The senior job he held at Uber somewhere in the range of 2014 and 2016 put him at the core of many choices taken at the highest level of the organization during the period. This is when he started to see just how many laws were being broken and how things were working behind the scenes.
After MacGann came forward as the person who leaked the documents, Uber responded by saying: “We understand that Mark has personal regrets about his years of steadfast loyalty to our previous leadership, but he is in no position to speak credibly about Uber today.”
The leaked documents comprised of secret organization info that MacGann had access to because of his high position at Uber. It incorporates organization introductions, preparation notes, security reports, ‘speed dating for elites’, and thousands upon thousands of messages on apps such as iMessage, WhatsApp, and emails. We better keep this guy away from Biden’s son and Hillary!
He accuses Uber under Kalanick’s command of taking on a fierce confrontational strategy with rivals in the taxi enterprises, that left him by and by uncovered. As one of the public faces of Uber in Europe, MacGann endured the worst of the backlash that came against the organization in various countries.
He’s had many threats to his life and was eventually appointed a personal bodyguard, which, according to him, resulted in extreme PTSD.
The whistleblower objectively made the world worse by spearheading lobbying efforts to entrench Uber globally. No idea what he can do to make amends for it but this massive leak is a good first step. Maybe it will help lull regulators from their slumber https://t.co/k91RgOQgcv
— Edward Ongweso Jr (@bigblackjacobin) July 11, 2022
On just about everyone’s first day on the job we experience nervousness, feeling of being overwhelmed, and some experience anxiety, along with others. However, not a lot of us would add an invasion of privacy to that list. That’s what MacGann experienced on his first day when he emailed a senior executive to tell them he was in a high-traffic area, to which he got a response that said: “I’m watching you on Heaven – already saw the ETA!”
This brings us to the system that Uber used. “Heaven”, also known as “God View” was the codeword workers utilized back then that helped security keep an eye on everyone’s real-time movement anywhere in the world who was tied to this system. There are other systems like this, and it’s pretty standard within the traffic industry such as trucking companies, taxi services, and bus services.
MacGann said that the way it was being utilized made him feel as if children were playing with high tech that could see their every move. However, Uber as of 2017 said that it no longer utilizes God View or any tools like it. A representative with Kalanick said it “should never have been used,” and that it was never used for illegal or improper conduct.
With tons and tons of documents and first-hand experiences that MacGann is opening up about there is lots more to come as the story continues to develop. In January of 2022, MacGann ventured out to Geneva to meet with reporters. He opened up two large suitcases and pulled out hard drives, PCs, iPhones, and heaps of paper documents.
He said that it would take days to get through all the documentation and for him to tell all he knows – and that’s if they worked around the clock and fast. He concluded with “I’ve seen some really shady shit, to use one of the Silicon Valley expressions.”
This is one very curious story and one that has tons of content to it both already known and yet to see the day of light.
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News