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