In a statement, Uber said, “This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically<br />harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers.”<br />The mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, said in a statement, “I am very concerned<br />that Uber may have purposefully worked to thwart the city’s job to protect the public.”<br />Uber, which lets people hail rides using a smartphone app, operates multiple types of services,<br />including a luxury Black Car offering in which drivers are commercially licensed.<br />And two weeks after Uber began dispatching drivers in Portland, the company reached an agreement with local officials<br />that said that after a three-month suspension, UberX would eventually be legally available in the city.<br />Greyball was part of a program called VTOS, short for “violation of terms of service,” which<br />Uber created to root out people it thought were using or targeting its service improperly.<br />The program, involving a tool called Greyball, uses data collected from the Uber app<br />and other techniques to identify and circumvent officials who were trying to clamp down on the ride-hailing service.<br />In all, there were at least a dozen or so signifiers in the VTOS program<br />that Uber employees could use to assess whether users were regular new riders or probably city officials.
