An Official’s Removal Is Sought After He Throws Cat During Zoom Meeting

The city Planning Commission meeting in Vallejo, Calif., last week followed the same humdrum pattern of so many municipal meetings: There was the Pledge of Allegiance and a roll call, followed by various reports.That posed the usual challenges: Commissioners with microphones muted when they were trying to be heard, some of them appearing half offscreen at times or talking over one another.But things took an unexpected turn about 2 hours and 24 minutes into the session after one of the commissioners, Chris Platzer, was asked if he had any comments after reviewing a project application.“Yes, this is the section where you can, Commissioner Platzer,” the commission’s chairman said.The cat meowed loudly again. “OK, first, I’d like to introduce my cat,” Mr. Platzer said, lifting it close to the camera and then, with two hands, tossing it off screen.The cat squeaked as it was being thrown, and a thud could be heard.One commissioner on the videoconference put his hands to his forehead and covered his eyes in response.The meeting concluded 26 minutes later, but that was hardly the end of it.Bob Sampayan, the mayor of Vallejo, which is about 30 miles north of San Francisco, and Robert McConnell, a City Council member and the liaison to the commission, have asked for the council to consider Mr. Platzer’s immediate removal at a meeting on Tuesday, a city spokeswoman, Christina Lee, said on Monday.“The city does not condone the behavior that Vallejo Planning Commissioner Chris Platzer exhibited during the April 20th Planning Commission meeting,” she said. “This type of behavior does not model the core values of the City of Vallejo.”After the planning meeting adjourned, Mr. Platzer was heard using expletives, she said, adding that the mayor and Mr. McConnell discussed his behavior immediately after the episode and called for his removal within 48 hours.Stephanie Bell, senior director of cruelty casework for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the group was prepared to place the cat “in an understanding, loving home” if Mr. Platzer’s “lack of patience or understanding” made cat guardianship inappropriate.“The cats in our care rely on us for everything, including food, respect and affection, and no one should ever punish them for seeking our attention,” she said. “While cats are known for agility, this cat was thrown and could have slammed into furniture, the wall or the ground.”As of Monday morning, the city had not received a formal resignation from Mr. Platzer, Ms. Lee said; however, The Times-Herald of Vallejo reported on Saturday that it had received an email from him suggesting that he was stepping down.Mr. Platzer, who could not be reached on Monday, was appointed to the volunteer position in August 2016 and his term was set to expire in June.“I did not conduct myself in the Zoom meeting in a manner befitting of a planning commissioner and apologize for any harm I may have inflicted,” he wrote in the email, The Times-Herald reported. “I serve at the pleasure of the council and no longer have that trust and backing.”He added, “We are all living in uncertain times and I certainly, like many of you, am adjusting to a new normalcy.”The Zoom episode was one of the latest to surface as officials adjust to remote working. In Florida, a judge this month admonished lawyers for getting too lax in their dress during their videoconference court appearances. Read the full article

Data of All 6.5 Million Israeli Voters Is Leaked

Israel’s Privacy Protection Authority said it was looking into what it called a “grave” security lapse by the maker of an app promoted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party that led to the exposure of personal data of all 6.5 million eligible voters in Israel, including full names and identity card numbers.The flawed website for the app, called Elector, failed to secure personal details in the voter registry, which also included the address and gender of each voter, even those who did not use it, and in some case phone numbers as well, the Haaretz newspaper first reported on Sunday, raising concerns about identity theft and foreign interference.The maker of Elector did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, but in a statement issued to the Israeli news media, it sought to play down the potential consequences, describing the leak as a “one-off incident that was immediately dealt with” and saying it had since bolstered the site’s security.The data required essentially no hacking skills to access, and it was unknown how many people had downloaded the registry.Mr. Netanyahu had encouraged supporters to download the app, which offers news and information related to the March 2 election, the third in less than a year after the first two failed to provide an outright winner and efforts to form a coalition came up short.In a statement issued in response to the reports on Sunday, the Privacy Protection Authority, a unit of the Justice Ministry, said that responsibility for complying with Israeli privacy law involving use of the voter registry “lies with the parties themselves.”It stopped short of announcing a full-fledged investigation, however, and said it could not give further details at this stage. Ran Bar-Zik, a developer for Verizon Media who wrote the story the Haaretz published on Sunday, was alerted to the breach over the weekend.In an interview on Monday, he said he had received a tipoff about the Elector website breach on Friday night. The message was sent in English to Cybercyber, a Hebrew podcast that he runs that he hosts with two colleagues. As evidence, the tipster included Mr. Bar-Zik’s own details and those of his wife and son.“It was spooky,” Mr. Bar-Zik said.Explaining the ease with which the voter information could be accessed, Mr. Bar-Zik wrote in a blog post that visitors to the app’s website could right-click to “view source,” an action that reveals the code behind a web page.The code revealed the user names and passwords of site administrators, and using those credentials would allow anyone to log in and download the voter information.Mr. Bar-Zik said he chose the Likud administrator and “Jackpot! Everything was in front of me!”“When we talk about hacking, we imagine people in hoodies doing technical stuff,” Mr. Bar-Zik said. But in the Elector case, he added, no hacking technique was necessary.One Israeli website said it had been able to access the personal information of, among others, Mr. Netanyahu; his wife, Sara; the chief of staff for the Israeli military, Aviv Kochavi; and Nadav Argaman, the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency.The leak was believed to be the largest disclosure of Israeli voter information since 2006, when an employee of the Interior Ministry stole the population registry and then published it.The exposure of the database of Israeli voters could have significant consequences. Databases listing personal information of private citizens can be exploited for a number of purposes, including by criminals looking to make money through identity theft, or by foreign state-backed hackers looking to spy on Israeli voters ahead of a critical election.“This is a treasure for foreign countries with geostrategic interests in Israel,” Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, head of the Media Reform Project at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Jerusalem, told Channel 12 news.Massive voter databases are one more reason that cybersecurity officials across the world have warned that new technology is best kept out of the hands of election officials and political parties.Most recommend that new technology, including voting machines and apps used by political parties, be tested for months, or even years before it is deployed to the general public.Cybersecurity experts specializing in election technology have begun holding specialized sessions at the world’s largest annual conference for hackers, DefCon. During the sessions they hack into voting machines and other technology used during elections around the world in an effort to lay their vulnerabilities bare.Last week, an app introduced by the Iowa Democratic Party to help tally votes during the Iowa caucus failed on the day of the vote, throwing the first-in-the-nation contest into chaos.The app, which had been privately developed for the party and had not been tested by independent cybersecurity experts, had been kept a secret by the party until the weeks leading up to the vote.When it was eventually unveiled, many had trouble downloading and using it. Cybersecurity experts quickly found the app was riddled with bugs and potential vulnerabilities. Read the full article

SpaceX’s Explosive Test May Launch Year of Renewed Human Spaceflight

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The rocket launched. It exploded.SpaceX and NASA declared the blast a success.Usually the destruction of a rocket means a failed mission. But on Sunday, SpaceX was demonstrating a crucial safety system of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, a capsule that is to carry astronauts for NASA to the International Space Station.There was no one on board during Sunday’s flight. The passengers this time were two test dummies with sensors to measure the forces that real astronauts would experience if the capsule’s escape system were ever needed. The system proved itself, even during a phase of the flight when atmospheric forces on the spacecraft are most severe. About nine minutes after the test, the intact capsule landed in the Atlantic Ocean.“Overall, as far we can tell thus far, it was a picture-perfect mission,” said Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive of SpaceX, during a news conference after the test.This accomplishment may set the stage for opening a new era in spaceflight. For more than eight years since the last space shuttle flight, no person has launched to orbit from the United States. Instead, NASA has had to rely on Russia for the transportation of its astronauts.Now SpaceX and Boeing, the companies hired by NASA, are nearly ready for their first crewed flights, and probably not just of NASA astronauts.“We’re on the cusp of commercializing low-Earth orbit,” said Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator. “I want to see large amounts of capital flowing into activities that include humans in space. And those activities could be industrialized biomedicine. It could be advanced materials, and it could be people that want to go to space for tourism purposes.”Boeing and SpaceX may not be the only companies taking people to space from the United States. Two companies, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, seem to be on track to carry their first customers on expensive, short-hop space tourism flights soon. The number of people heading toward space could surge, even if most experience weightlessness for just a few minutes.The abort test was postponed one day because of rough seas and gusty winds on Saturday at the planned splashdown site. On Sunday, the waves were beginning to calm, but a storm was moving toward the launchpad.At 10:30 a.m., conditions on both land and sea were good enough to allow the Falcon 9 rocket to blast off into the sky.At 84 seconds after liftoff, powerful thrusters on the Crew Dragon pushed the spacecraft away from the rocket quickly, reaching a speed of more than twice that of sound. The rocket then exploded.Mr. Musk said the capsule, with its heat shield, should be able to survive fiery conditions that erupted before the capsule made its escape.“It could quite literally look like something out of Star Wars, fly right out of a fireball,” he said. “We want to avoid doing that.”Coasting to an altitude of more than 130,000 feet, the capsule then performed a carefully designed choreography — jettisoning the bottom of the spacecraft, firing small thrusters and deploying its parachutes — before it splashed into the ocean about 20 miles from where it started.The next Crew Dragon mission is to take two NASA astronauts, Douglas G. Hurley and Robert L. Behnken, to the space station.Mr. Musk said that flight would likely occur in the second quarter of the year, between April and June. The Falcon 9 rocket and a new Crew Dragon capsule for that flight will be ready in Florida by the end of February, he said, but safety reviews will take some time.The crew on the space station is to drop to three in April when three astronauts currently there return to Earth on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.The mission for Mr. Hurley and Mr. Behnken is currently scheduled to last two weeks, but could be extended, which would prevent a drop-off in scientific research at the station. For a longer stay, the astronauts would need additional training.“So far on space station, our responsibility is to take care of ourselves while we’re there, not make a mess,” Mr. Behnken said.Mr. Bridenstine said that a decision on whether Mr. Hurley and Mr. Behnken would stay longer would be made in a few weeks. He also said that NASA was still negotiating to buy an additional seat on a Soyuz.“I think it’s important we have options,” Mr. Bridenstine said.

A slow trek back to orbit

The last time NASA astronauts launched from the United States was July 8, 2011, when the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on its last flight from Florida.Thirteen days later, it glided to a landing back at the Kennedy Space Center, where it is now a museum piece. Since then, astronauts from NASA and other nations flying to the space station have been hitching rides on Russian Soyuz rockets, at a current price of more than $80 million each.From Alan Shepard’s first flight in 1961 through the Apollo moon landings to the space shuttles, NASA was in charge of designing, building and operating its rockets and spacecraft.After the retirement of the shuttles, NASA planned to continue that approach with the Constellation program started under President George W. Bush. NASA aimed to develop the Ares 1 rocket to take astronauts to the space station.But costs for Ares 1 and the accompanying Orion capsule kept rising and the schedule slipped repeatedly. The Obama administration canceled the program.To replace Ares 1, NASA turned to commercial companies, the approach it uses for launches of satellites, cargo to the space station and robotic planetary probes. But relinquishing the transportation of astronauts was a bigger shift for the space agency.When NASA awarded the commercial crew contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014, the hope was that the flights carrying astronauts would begin by the end of 2017. The contracts set fixed prices, unlike earlier big NASA contracts where contractors were reimbursed for costs with an additional fee.Watchdogs in government have questioned the management and costs of the program, and both Boeing and SpaceX have suffered technological setbacks along the way. SpaceX successfully sent an uncrewed Crew Dragon to the space station a year ago, and the company was gearing up to conduct the in-flight abort test.But in April, during a ground test, the capsule that was to be used for the abort test — the same one that had gone to orbit — exploded. No one was injured, but that pushed back SpaceX’s schedule as it figured out what happened and how to fix it.In December, Boeing launched one of its Starliner capsules without crew, but the mission ended early, without going to the space station, because of a problem with the spacecraft’s clock.

All aboard?

Many space enthusiasts hope that the commercial crew program will spur new business in space.Last June, NASA announced that it would allow space tourists to make trips to the space station, and one company, Axiom Space, says it has one passenger signed up already for a 10-day trip that will cost $55 million. An Axiom mission could launch as soon as summer 2021.However, another company, Bigelow Space Operations, which also said it planned to launch space tourists to the station, backed away a few months later.“NASA still has a substantial amount of work to do,” said Robert T. Bigelow, the founder and chief executive of the company. “We learned last year when we secured a SpaceX launch and options for three others that unfortunately it was premature. So, therefore, we had to cancel those agreements.”NASA is also expected to soon announce the winner of a competition to attach a commercial module to the International Space Station, providing more room for visitors.Still, putting people in orbit will most likely remain a small slice of the money invested on space ventures.“There’s certainly a business to made with human spaceflight,” said Chad Anderson, chief executive of Space Angels, an investment firm focused on start-up space companies. But, he added, his company saw human spaceflight more as a high-profile catalyst than a big business.The areas of major growth, he said, will be global positioning systems, earth observation and communications, none of which require astronauts.Closer to the ground, another pair of American companies could take passengers on brief trips to the edge of space.The spacecraft built by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic basically just go up and down like a big roller coaster and never accelerate to the speeds needed to reach orbit. Virgin’s officials are optimistically saying that commercial flights will begin this year. Blue Origin has not yet carried any passengers.Neither company’s trip to space will be in financial reach of the average person. Virgin Galactic charges $250,000 for a seat. Blue Origin has not yet said what it will charge.But the companies could greatly increase the number of people who travel to space. In the 58 years since Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, fewer than 600 people have followed him there. Read the full article

Why the Apple iPhone SE Doesn't Matter

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.Join us for a live conversation about tech and the coronavirus. Today at 4 p.m. Eastern time, my Times Opinion colleague Charlie Warzel and I are hosting a conference call to talk about the use of smartphone location data to fight the coronavirus and other aspects of using technology in this pandemic. Lend us your ears, and ask your burning questions. You can RSVP here.This sure feels like a strange time for Apple to release a new iPhone. But here’s a hard truth: Our habits show that new phones are irrelevant to most of us — in a pandemic or otherwise.Brian X. Chen, a New York Times personal technology writer, wrote about Apple’s plan to release a new version of the iPhone SE next week. That’s the four-year-old model with a relatively small screen and a relatively low price of $399 and up in the United States.This iPhone model hasn’t been a blockbuster, but it’s a nice option for some people. Apple and other companies are likely to keep releasing more fresh smartphone models this year, perhaps with some pandemic-related delays.Conditions aren’t ideal for selling stuff. American consumer spending in March fell at the fastest rate in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data. Many stores around the world, including Apple’s and other cellphone retailers’, are closed. Millions of newly unemployed people don’t have spare money, and Americans are shifting what they are buying. Groceries and streaming video, yes. Electronics, no.Apple probably had this latest model ready to go before the pandemic hit — and sure, why not give it a go? The honest truth is, it’s impossible to predict if and when our buying habits will return to normal.New smartphones have been a tough sell for some time. People in the United States and many other countries are waiting longer to replace their phones — for Americans, it’s more than three years on average.Pick your favorite explanation for this phenomenon. Many people don’t want to pay the going rate of $1,000 or more for phones with all the bells and whistles. To some people, even the features that are supposed to be exciting feel blah.The best explanation for the smartphone sales malaise is a simple one: This is what happens when products go from new and novel to normal.Products get more reliable and resilient as they become mass market, and new models don’t feel so different from the old. Apart from the die-hards, most people lose interest in the latest and greatest. The hot new thing feels…fine.In Brian’s assessment of last fall’s iPhone models, he said there was no rush to buy a new phone if your current one is less than a few years old. (Yes, a professional tech reviewer suggested you might NOT need to buy something.)The shift from wow to shrug happened with cars, personal computers and televisions. More than a decade after modern smartphones hit the market, we’ve lost our zing for those pocket computers, too. Until economic conditions stabilize, our zing will probably be even less zingy than normal.A smartphone is now a refrigerator. We need it, but we don’t replace our current model when a new ice-making feature comes out. This is not great for companies with shiny new phones to sell. For the rest of us, it’s fine.

When old tech really is a problem

A three-year-old smartphone is great. Broken government technology that’s failing struggling people is not.My colleagues have written about the Small Business Administration’s online application system melting down with loan requests from businesses applying for help. A Lyft driver in New York was told to fax his pay stubs to the unemployment office. There are unprecedented demands right now. But, wow, this is a bad look for government technology when it’s needed most.The problem isn’t necessarily the age of the technology used by government organizations. It’s the upkeep.The hidden secret of the internet is that behind the scenes, there are Sputnik-era computers doing chores like handling your credit card payment on Amazon and filling your online travel reservations. That 60-year-old computer programming language that New Jersey’s governor talked about? It works, as long as there are people to keep it up-to-date.The problem with many government and even corporate technology is the lack of money and care for upkeep. Chris O’Malley, the chief executive of Compuware, which works on old tech, told me there’s a mentality that tech systems are something you set up once and they’re done. Nope. If it ain’t broke, it still needs fixing.

Before we go …

When “less bad” is good. Businesses are cutting back on advertisements. Others are nervous about their ads appearing in a Facebook feed next to grim news. That dynamic is likely to hurt Google and Facebook, which make most of their money from selling ads, my Times colleagues write. Still, the tech titans will probably hold up better than other companies reliant on advertising.We need baby ducks right now: In our doom times, people are gravitating to news websites and social media accounts featuring happy tales like a police officer guiding ducklings, the Times reporter Taylor Lorenz writes. (A shameless plug to stick around for the end of this newsletter.)Another idea to bridge America’s digital divide: Thomas L. Friedman, the Times Opinion columnist, talks up a proposal for federal loans and regulatory changes to help rural communities and cooperatives build fast internet networks. Expanding online access would encourage more inventions like the robotic poultry coop cleaners he found in Minnesota. Yesterday, I wrote about another plan to make fast internet available to more people.Stick to the basics. Brian, in another article, said the pandemic has made it clear what technology is essential in our personal lives, and what is neat but frivolous.Hugs to thisPete Wells, a restaurant critic for The Times, writes a lovely appreciation of this six-hour video of sheep at a California vineyard. They are mostly sitting, bleating or munching grass. The monotony is strangely soothing.You can reach us at [email protected] receive On Tech in your inbox each weekday, please sign up here. Read the full article

Why the Apple iPhone SE Doesn't Matter

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.Join us for a live conversation about tech and the coronavirus. Today at 4 p.m. Eastern time, my Times Opinion colleague Charlie Warzel and I are hosting a conference call to talk about the use of smartphone location data to fight the coronavirus and other aspects of using technology in this pandemic. Lend us your ears, and ask your burning questions. You can RSVP here.This sure feels like a strange time for Apple to release a new iPhone. But here’s a hard truth: Our habits show that new phones are irrelevant to most of us — in a pandemic or otherwise.Brian X. Chen, a New York Times personal technology writer, wrote about Apple’s plan to release a new version of the iPhone SE next week. That’s the four-year-old model with a relatively small screen and a relatively low price of $399 and up in the United States.This iPhone model hasn’t been a blockbuster, but it’s a nice option for some people. Apple and other companies are likely to keep releasing more fresh smartphone models this year, perhaps with some pandemic-related delays.Conditions aren’t ideal for selling stuff. American consumer spending in March fell at the fastest rate in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data. Many stores around the world, including Apple’s and other cellphone retailers’, are closed. Millions of newly unemployed people don’t have spare money, and Americans are shifting what they are buying. Groceries and streaming video, yes. Electronics, no.Apple probably had this latest model ready to go before the pandemic hit — and sure, why not give it a go? The honest truth is, it’s impossible to predict if and when our buying habits will return to normal.New smartphones have been a tough sell for some time. People in the United States and many other countries are waiting longer to replace their phones — for Americans, it’s more than three years on average.Pick your favorite explanation for this phenomenon. Many people don’t want to pay the going rate of $1,000 or more for phones with all the bells and whistles. To some people, even the features that are supposed to be exciting feel blah.The best explanation for the smartphone sales malaise is a simple one: This is what happens when products go from new and novel to normal.Products get more reliable and resilient as they become mass market, and new models don’t feel so different from the old. Apart from the die-hards, most people lose interest in the latest and greatest. The hot new thing feels…fine.In Brian’s assessment of last fall’s iPhone models, he said there was no rush to buy a new phone if your current one is less than a few years old. (Yes, a professional tech reviewer suggested you might NOT need to buy something.)The shift from wow to shrug happened with cars, personal computers and televisions. More than a decade after modern smartphones hit the market, we’ve lost our zing for those pocket computers, too. Until economic conditions stabilize, our zing will probably be even less zingy than normal.A smartphone is now a refrigerator. We need it, but we don’t replace our current model when a new ice-making feature comes out. This is not great for companies with shiny new phones to sell. For the rest of us, it’s fine.

When old tech really is a problem

A three-year-old smartphone is great. Broken government technology that’s failing struggling people is not.My colleagues have written about the Small Business Administration’s online application system melting down with loan requests from businesses applying for help. A Lyft driver in New York was told to fax his pay stubs to the unemployment office. There are unprecedented demands right now. But, wow, this is a bad look for government technology when it’s needed most.The problem isn’t necessarily the age of the technology used by government organizations. It’s the upkeep.The hidden secret of the internet is that behind the scenes, there are Sputnik-era computers doing chores like handling your credit card payment on Amazon and filling your online travel reservations. That 60-year-old computer programming language that New Jersey’s governor talked about? It works, as long as there are people to keep it up-to-date.The problem with many government and even corporate technology is the lack of money and care for upkeep. Chris O’Malley, the chief executive of Compuware, which works on old tech, told me there’s a mentality that tech systems are something you set up once and they’re done. Nope. If it ain’t broke, it still needs fixing.

Before we go …

When “less bad” is good. Businesses are cutting back on advertisements. Others are nervous about their ads appearing in a Facebook feed next to grim news. That dynamic is likely to hurt Google and Facebook, which make most of their money from selling ads, my Times colleagues write. Still, the tech titans will probably hold up better than other companies reliant on advertising.We need baby ducks right now: In our doom times, people are gravitating to news websites and social media accounts featuring happy tales like a police officer guiding ducklings, the Times reporter Taylor Lorenz writes. (A shameless plug to stick around for the end of this newsletter.)Another idea to bridge America’s digital divide: Thomas L. Friedman, the Times Opinion columnist, talks up a proposal for federal loans and regulatory changes to help rural communities and cooperatives build fast internet networks. Expanding online access would encourage more inventions like the robotic poultry coop cleaners he found in Minnesota. Yesterday, I wrote about another plan to make fast internet available to more people.Stick to the basics. Brian, in another article, said the pandemic has made it clear what technology is essential in our personal lives, and what is neat but frivolous.Hugs to thisPete Wells, a restaurant critic for The Times, writes a lovely appreciation of this six-hour video of sheep at a California vineyard. They are mostly sitting, bleating or munching grass. The monotony is strangely soothing.You can reach us at [email protected] receive On Tech in your inbox each weekday, please sign up here. Read the full article

A Quarantined Uber Driver’s Quest for Paid Sick Leave

Zachary Frenette likes working as an Uber driver in Phoenix. He is a top-rated driver who often chats with his customers on their trips.During the outbreak of the coronavirus last month, business began to slow. Then, a possible exposure to the virus prompted Mr. Frenette, 29, to quarantine himself. Off the roads and worried about making his rent on time, he turned to Uber for help.He had heard that the ride-hailing app was one of several companies that announced policies to offer paid leave or other compensation to workers infected by the coronavirus or ordered quarantined by their companies, the government or health care providers.For several days, Mr. Frenette communicated with the company by telephone, email and the Uber app, but he kept getting the same feedback — always polite, probably scripted and sometimes maddeningly vague — that he did not meet the criteria.“I was just kind of like, OK, obviously I’m getting jerked around,” he said. “I don’t like having to wake up in the morning and feeling like I have to be ready for battle with major corporations.”Image

Zachary Frenette has been under quarantine for about two weeks with his dog, Teddy.He got a payment of $1,565 on Thursday — after he had gotten the news media involved.Mr. Frenette is only one of many gig economy workers who are struggling to adapt while claims for unemployment insurance surge, health care workers are overwhelmed, testing for the virus is difficult to access and companies are scrambling to adapt. “This is an unprecedented time, so it’s been a challenge for everyone, including us,” said Kayla Whaling, an Uber spokeswoman. “So we’ve been taking the feedback from drivers and learning from some of the mistakes that we’ve made along the way.”She said the company was among the first to implement a paid leave policy related to the virus for contract workers. Uber dedicated a team of support staff to prioritize the processing of sick leave payments on March 15.Mr. Frenette, an entrepreneur who relies on Uber as his primary source of income, typically works for the company at least 40 hours a week. Passengers regularly leave him compliments about his friendliness, his cleanliness and his white Chevrolet.About two weeks ago, he picked up a man and a woman who said that they had just visited someone with the coronavirus. He also heard hints of possible illness from his two passengers — a cough and a sneeze.That was enough to worry him. He said he visited his doctor the next day and got a letter recommending that he isolate himself.Mr. Frenette has H.I.V., which means his immune system is compromised. The doctor’s letter noted that he was “immune suppressed” and expressed concerns that his job involved close interactions with customers.So Mr. Frenette has hunkered down since March 20 in isolation with his dog, Teddy. He alerted Uber, which suspended his account to keep him off the roads.Mr. Frenette provided screenshots of his chats in the Uber app that showed days of messages between him and a series of agents.They told him repeatedly that to qualify for assistance, he needed either a diagnosis of Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, or an order from a licensed medical provider asking him to self-isolate “due to your risk of spreading Covid-19 to others.”According to one message, Mr. Frenette did not provide documents that he was “suffering from Covid-like symptoms, currently diagnosed with Covid, or at risk of spreading Covid.”“Are you kidding me?” he wrote in response.Days into his quarantine, one of his many calls to the company led him to an agent who seemed willing to help. She told him to try sending a letter through a different portal on the website — one dedicated not to drivers, but to law enforcement and public health officials.That seemed to get some gears turning, but the financial assistance still did not come.When Mr. Frenette complained that he had no way to make money and was still not getting help, the company reactivated his account, essentially allowing him to drive.“Reactivating someone’s account when a medical professional has stated that they might have been exposed to coronavirus and is under self-quarantine is a careless way to avoid taking responsibility for the financial assistance I’m supposed to receive,” Mr. Frenette wrote to Uber on March 28. “That doesn’t look so great.”His account has since been suspended again. Ms. Whaling confirmed that his account had been briefly activated, adding that the mistake was quickly “rectified and resolved.”Mr. Frenette said he started to think about how other drivers in similar situations might be faring under the new policy, and what he could do to help.He contacted news reporters. Business Insider first reported on Mr. Frenette’s case, among others, in an article published on Wednesday.On Thursday, Mr. Frenette got a phone call from a woman at Uber who told him that he was getting an assistance payment. Ms. Whaling said that Mr. Frenette’s payment was processed as part of the normal review process.“We did become aware of this driver’s situation through the Business Insider reporter, but his claim was already under review and we were taking action on it,” Ms. Whaling said. Uber did not immediately respond to a question about how much it has spent on coronavirus payment assistance so far.Mr. Frenette’s account is scheduled to become active again on Monday, which will allow him to drive, but he has heard that demand for ride-hailing apps has dropped precipitously since his quarantine.He is keenly aware that not all drivers would have the time and energy to pursue the help as doggedly as he did.“Because I’m annoying and I create a big firestorm, I’m getting my money and all these other people aren’t,” he said. “Given the amount of absolute hell I went through, I’m sure everyone else went through it too.” Read the full article