Mark MacGann is no stranger to the inner workings of power. As Uber’s chief lobbyist in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, he played a central role in the company’s aggressive global expansion, convincing governments and regulators that Uber’s gig-economy model was a force for good. But in 2022, MacGann was revealed as the whistleblower behind the Uber Files, a trove of over 100,000 documents and 18 gigabytes of data exposing the company’s ethically dubious practices, including misleading world leaders, bypassing local laws, and refusing to provide basic labor protections to its drivers.
The global investigation into Uber was led by The Guardian, which shared the data with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 42 partner media outlets.
MacGann says his decision to leak the files was motivated by his discomfort with Uber’s practices, which he believes unfairly harmed two groups: taxi drivers, who were driven out of local markets by Uber’s price-dumping tactics (offering rides far below standard local rates), and Uber’s gig workers, who were initially lured with the promise of high earnings but faced dwindling salaries as subsidies were reduced.
He spoke to this year’s Nieman Fellows and to Nieman Reports on the moral quandary that prompted him to blow the whistle, the process of working with The Guardian’s investigations unit, and the consequences of taking on one of the world’s most powerful tech companies. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I didn’t know in advance what to expect. I didn’t know how much media interest [there] would be, ultimately, in what I was revealing. I sort of agonized about it for quite a while. In 2021, I’d already come to the conclusion that Uber drivers and gig workers were really not getting a fair deal — not certainly the rosy picture that we had painted back when I was leading the company’s efforts across Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
They were not being given just the basic social protections that most other people benefit from and the social protections that they deserve. So I felt that they were being exploited. And since I had a pretty significant role in convincing governments, convincing regulators, convincing the media that Uber was a force for good, I felt that I had to correct the record.
I was standing up and owning what I had contributed to, albeit unwittingly. And I felt that if nobody else was going to speak up and try to support these people in fighting for the right to unionize and fighting for basic social protections … then it ultimately fell to me.
I read an op-ed in Le Monde newspaper by a very good lawyer in Paris. His name is Jérôme Giusti, and he then, and even today, represents many Uber drivers in their litigation, suing Uber for the right to be recognized as employees. He introduced me to a consortium of investigative journalists called EIC — European Investigative Collaboration. The coordinator of that entity got in touch with me and we came to an agreement that I would blow the whistle and work with them. But their French partner \sent a journalist down to me in my home in the south of France, and he just behaved very badly, and I didn’t feel safe. He expected to drive away with all of my computers, my hard drives, my documents, my notebooks. I really didn’t feel that this person had invested any time or consideration in advising me what to expect as a whistleblower, so I just immediately pulled the plug on that collaboration and canceled the agreement.
[A few days later,] a very close friend of mine — one of her sisters was a senior reporter for The Guardian newspaper in London. She and another one of the sisters happened to be visiting me. When I explained to her what was going on, she said to me, “Look, if you want to talk to somebody in the world of media who is massively experienced in working with whistleblowers, I [or another colleague] can set up that call.”
I got on a Zoom call with Nick Hopkins, who was then head of investigations for The Guardian newspapers. He had worked on Panama Papers. He had worked on and co-led the Edward Snowden revelations, so he knew what he was talking about when he explained to me what whistleblowing entailed, what I could expect on the positive side and on the negative side. Not once [did] he ask me what I thought I had or what revelations I might provide. He just really explained to me how things go for whistleblowers, and if I were to work with them, how they would treat me. That gave me really a sense of comfort, a sense of safety, and a sense that I was really working with a real team of professionals.
Over a six-month process of actively working with them, and assisting them in navigating huge amounts of data … they really took care of me in the sense that they were very respectful and transparent.
The Uber Files were made public beginning on the evening of the 10th of July. For the first 24 hours, the media decided to not reveal the name of the whistleblower. So I featured quite heavily in the first 24 hours of coverage, and people didn’t know I was a whistleblower, so it actually made me look bad, and my parents were super-stressed. They were calling me from Ireland saying, “What have you done? Have you done something wrong?” and “Are you in trouble? Are you safe?” I was fine. Really, right up to the end, [some of] the team from The Guardian, they came and stayed with me, to be with me when everything went live. … That was something which I think we should have figured out differently; there’s a balance between avoiding leaks and causing a lot of distress to the family or the friends of the whistleblower.
I underestimated the speed at which Uber would come after me. The day I was revealed, their lawyers wrote to my lawyer, saying, “Okay, we are now intending to sue him based on the confidentiality clauses in his contract.” And that came as a shock to me, because the clause stipulates that for every day of breach of confidentiality, a judge should agree that I pay a fine of 30,000 euros, and that would be backdated to when I handed over the data in January of that year. So we were always already at something like, over 40 million euros, had that been implemented on the day of revelation. They’ve never withdrawn that [formal, written] threat. So that’s still pending. It could happen, [but] might not happen.
I knew as a professional that it would be a very bad look for Uber to be going after the whistleblower rather than addressing the substance of the allegations and the evidence. And it’s again thanks to the journalists, the senior reporter at The Guardian and at The Washington Post, who contacted Uber and [said] seriously, “You know that if you’re intending to do this, that’s going to be the front page of next week’s cycle.”
I confess I was not well-schooled on whistleblower protection in various countries. I possessed the data; I had not stolen the data. I owned the equipment on which most of the data was stored – [for example,] my own personal, many Moleskine notebooks with contemporaneous notes that were mine. … So it’s not as if I had left Uber surreptitiously with the data. It was legally mine. The European Union had only recently enacted a so-called Whistleblower Protection Directive, which applies to all European Union member states. It’s great that it exists — it’s extraordinarily weak, and I certainly look forward to playing an active role when that [gets revised, as] every new law in Europe is revised every five years, to see if it can be strengthened, improved upon. And of course, there’s so many countries around the world where there’s no such thing as any form of protection for whistleblowers, only retaliation and in some cases, prison or worse.
It’s fascinating now that I’ve moved to the U.S., the attitude towards whistleblowers here in the United States is very different. It’s very much more supportive compared to Europe. In essence, in the European Union, they’re viewed as turncoat — as, you know, as the French would say, “spitting in the soup” and not to be trusted. … I didn’t get any support in the administrative capital of Europe, which is Brussels, or in Paris — places where I’ve lived a long time.
In terms of the dos: treat the whistleblower as your partner, as part of the team, within limits, within boundaries, and also make it clear that no matter how well people get along, that this is not about making friends, and [the reporters] at some point will hitch up their wagons and move out of town and go on to the next case.
In terms of the don’ts, there’s nothing specifically The Guardian or ICIJ did that I would recommend against doing it. In hindsight, I would have brought on my own lawyer [despite the team’s concerns] about leaks. They, in turn, did very serious homework and research on the whistleblower support organizations that exist in the world, and also on various law firms, given that potentially there could be cases filed with the SEC or the Department of Justice, etc., by me or by other people.
The day that I was about to be revealed as a source, they had set up a series of Zoom calls introducing me to different support organizations and lawyers, and left it up to me to make my decision. I worked with an entity called The Signals Network, and it was primarily their legal director, who is a force of nature and really is a rock star in terms of representing and supporting whistleblowers. Her name is Jennifer Gibson, and she has actually since left and founded her own whistleblower support organization called psst.org [MacGann is a founding board member]. [The Signals Network] provided me with assistance to manage the incoming media, so to speak, so I didn’t have to deal with it directly.
[When trying to persuade a source to blow the whistle,] first of all, plot it out. Is it feasible for that person to remain anonymous? Can you report the facts without that person’s identity being revealed? In many cases, if that’s possible, the person should be allowed to choose to remain anonymous. And in some cases, — look at the example of Panama Papers — the story is very compelling, very strong, and John Doe’s identity has never been revealed.
If it’s impossible to keep that person anonymous because of the facts that you’re reporting, or if that person wants to stand up and own what they’re doing, great, but make sure it is incumbent upon you, the journalist or the media organization, to try and provide that person with ideas of how they can get support, either prior, during, or post.
