Uber Wants The Law On Its Side

With an IPO looming, the company that’s often clashed with authorities tries another approach.

- Dimitra Kessenides and Bret Begun

“We’re here to help you understand the data that Uber holds,” said Nick Pailthorpe, a former investigator for the U.K.’s Metropolitan Police who now works for the ride-sharing company. On a cold January morning he was addressing detectives at Dutch national police headquarters in Utrecht. He was invited to speak by one of their colleagues, who got help from Uber Technologies Inc. in identifying a suspect’s IP address.

The officers, department heads for cybersecurity teams across the Netherlands, meet monthly to discuss approaches to thwart cybercrime. Pailthorpe’s slideshow elicited little response until he explained how Uber tried to help authorities after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. An Uber driver, he said, thought that a rider was a terrorist involved in the incident. Another slide highlighted Uber’s ability to track a driver in Christchurch, New Zealand, who’d been accused of rape. The detectives started to see the potential. “You mean store addresses? And you can see how many people were dropped off-at one location?” one cop asked.

Pailthorpe responded carefully, “We have to understand the investigation and know everything we share is legal and proportionate.”

Uber isn’t exactly synonymous with law and order. It’s earned a rocky relationship with authorities in many global markets—including the Netherlands, where a series of fatal accidents involving its drivers led activists to demand a ban of the service—partly because of a history of refusing to disclose possible evidence of driver abuses and other crimes. At least two dozen times,