Daily Briefing: After Delhi rape, panic in Uber HQ; steep rise in legal demands to remove content from Twitter

In today's edition: Delhi rape rang alarm bells in Uber HQ, Indian Express investigation finds; Goa Congress accuses Micheal Lobo and Digambar Kamat of 'hobnobbing' with the BJP; and more

The Uber Files

In its eighth collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), The Indian Express spent four months investigating The Uber Files, a cache of 124,000 internal emails, text messages and documents from inside Uber. These records pertaining to 2013-2017, the period when the company was led by its flamboyant and brash co-founder, Travis Kalanick, tell the untold story of how a shaky Silicon Valley start-up became a $44-billion global transportation giant with operations today in 72 countries — and counting.

🔴 Significantly, the documents reveal that India was among the countries where Uber deployed its unique blocking software which company insiders refer to as ‘Kill Switch’ in internal emails. It essentially shuts down local systems in the event of serious regulatory action, like a tax raid. In fact, in six cases, the records reveal, the ‘Kill Switch’ was used even as raids by regulators were in progress at Uber offices.

🔴 The documents also point to a worldwide damage-control exercise by Uber and the panic inside the company’s headquarters in San Francisco after a woman passenger was raped in an Uber cab by its driver in New Delhi on December 5, 2014.

🔴 Following the New Delhi rape, the government had mandated that all commercial passenger vehicles — taxis and buses — should install a panic button to alert police in event of an emergency. But nearly eight years after the rape, these panic buttons may not be of much use, at least in the national capital where about 11,000 vehicles have them. The Indian Express took 50 Uber rides in Delhi over a month and did not find a functioning panic button in 48 of them.

Only in The Express

Consider this: in June last year, a flash flood near the Amarnath cave occurred at the same place where a cloudburst triggered heavy flooding on Friday, killing at least 16 people. Yet, as The Indian Express has reported, this year, the tents for pilgrims were set up on the flood channel, also known as the dry river bed. A langar was also permitted to operate from here.

In this edition of the Idea Exchange, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd talks about the potential for a conflict between the US and China, Xi Jinping, and the Quad’s relationship.

From the front page

In its first reaction to the developments in Sri Lanka — a day after thousands of protesters stormed Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence Saturday — India on Sunday said that it “stands with the people of Sri Lanka” as they seek to realise their aspirations for prosperity and progress through “democratic means and values, established institutions and constitutional framework.” This underlining of democratic processes, institutions and Constitution was in reference to the popular anger that had exploded on the streets on Saturday. Sunday was calmer in Colombo, according to Sri Lankan media reports.

Amid high drama on Sunday, the Congress in Goa accused two of its senior leaders, Micheal Lobo and Digambar Kamat, of allegedly hobnobbing with the BJP and being part of a “conspiracy” hatched with the ruling party to engineer defections. Towards the end of a day marked by intense speculation and meetings with the MLAs, AICC Goa desk in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao announced that Lobo had been removed from the position of the leader of the Congress legislature party and that action for anti-party activities would follow against him, Kamat and three other MLAs.

Must Read

The present prolonged bout of global food inflation from around end-2020 began with edible oils. In today’s explained, we explore if it could end with edible oils. As far as overall food inflation goes, these are still early days. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food price index hit an all-time high of 159.7 points in March, the month immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the index — a weighted average of world prices of a basket of food commodities over a base period value, taken at 100 for 2014-15 — has eased a tad, by 3.4%, to 154.2 points in June.

There has been a rise of more than 48,000 per cent in legal demands being made by India — from various courts and the government — to remove content from Twitter between 2014 and 2020, an analysis of Twitter’s global transparency reports show. Incidentally, in the same time period, the number of content blocking orders issued to social media companies by the government has also increased by almost 2,000 per cent, data shared with Parliament showed, highlighting the growing trend of online censorship in India.

A 38-year-old man was detained for allegedly “hurting religious sentiments” when he dressed up as Lord Shiva in a street play about price rise in Assam’s Nagaon district. He was released on Sunday, the police said. Birinchi Bora, a social worker from Nagaon’s Nonoi village was detained based on police complaints filed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), among other groups, officers said. Following this, an FIR was registered at Nagaon’s Sadar police station and he was booked under section 295A (deliberate and malicious intention of outraging religious feelings), among other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

And Finally

The fear over the monkey pox threat in San Francisco has caused disruptions in the proposed official visit of Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology. Chandrasekhar was expected to visit the city during the SEMICON West 2022, which is to be held from July 12-14. But he had to postpone the visit after a number of top management executives of Asian semiconductor companies deferred their travel to the US to August due to worries over monkey pox and a fresh wave of Covid.

In today’s episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we talk about what the latest developments in Sri Lanka mean for the country, how Indo-Japan ties grew stronger under Shinzo Abe’s tenure, and how some diabetic medicines will soon become cheaper.

Until next time,

Leela Prasad and Srishti Kapoor