Security News > 2020 > September > MP promises to grill UK.gov over revelations that Uber handed '2,000 pieces' of user data to London cops a year
Conservative backbencher David Davis has vowed to ask questions in Parliament over Uber's seemingly unregulated sharing of data with police and transport regulators as it battled to save its London private hire operator's licence.
In November 2019, Uber was formally stripped of its licence after what Transport for London called a "Pattern of failures", including allowing random third parties to upload their mugshots to legitimate Uber driver accounts, bypassing background checks.
Last week Westminster Magistrates' Court heard the American ride-hailing app's latest appeal against its loss of licence - including revelations that the Metropolitan Police and TfL alike benefited from "Thousands of pieces of intelligence on drivers, passengers and journeys each year," as The Times reported.
Davis expressed the fear that in its desperation to keep its licence, Uber had formed a Faustian pact with police and TfL, silently surveilling its passengers and drivers alike in the hope of buying itself a licence renewal by greasing the deal with customers' data.
A police manager wrote to TfL in a letter shown to the court boasting that Uber had handed over user data more than 2,000 times per year.