It’s not about the general principle here. If Uber’s claim about deanonymization is accurate, this specific policy is PRISM level bad.
They have a data requirement. It is not new, the company is not responding. Don’t they already do this with ride data from Uber?
EDIT: Looks like they don't do this for rides yet, and may be using this as a trial balloon for greater data access? (based on this article from May, if accurate?) https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/tech/uber-lyft-cities-data/in...
EDIT2: DC has been doing this with car / ride-sharing agencies for awhile but I don't believe it's published. Not sure of the status of SharedStreets: https://www.wired.com/story/uber-nacto-data-sharing/
This analogy is absurd.
As municipalities get more technically advanced, why shouldn't they have access to the same type of data or where these scooters are? How hard is it to open up an API?
This seems to be, how dare citizens impose a cost of doing business in their neighborhoods!
They don't have the right to know where I go.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-sco...
> The data would not include a rider’s name, but even in sprawling metropolitan areas, paths between home, work and school are typically unique, experts say. Someone with basic coding skills and access to the data could easily connect a trip to an individual person.
> “This data is incredibly, incredibly sensitive,” said Jeremy Gillula, the technology projects director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights group.
Which would necessitate this data exchange is price they pay to operate in the city.
I also trust that cities are getting more sophisticated and if LA said that data exchange is their price for doing business, then good on LA for knowing how the dataset could benefit them.
This is where citizens need to advocate in their own neighborhoods and get involved and vote if that is what they want.
If you have an issue with how theses companies operate, stop theses ways of operating, that's all. The solution isn't to deanonymize the userbase.
Users relinquished that control in your TOS.
What the user wants has no bearing in this whatsoever. Uber is simply using you as a tool to get around the laws in the regions it operates in.
How would you feel that instead of demanding the data , they simply purchased it?
I'm not arguing who is owning that data, I'm arguing about what happens to that data and whether that's right or wrong. The fact that it's legal or not doesn't change anything.
Would you be fine with a genocide if the ones comitting them made sure it was ratified as a law first?
> Uber is simply using you as a tool to get around the laws in the regions it operates in.
If they didn't use that reason and simply shared it, I would still be arguing the same point...
> How would you feel that instead of demanding the data , they simply purchased it?
It would be just as bad.
edit: *while using every loopholes, sketchy and sometimes straight up illegal ways to do it and killing someone as a result.
While a good process is important, I was holding up that often times in local regulation there are all kinds of really terrible flaws and gotchas - you have to know people to get a license or permit, etc.
In this case, it seems like a pretty straightforward compliance request, using an API whose code is publicly available, in a process that has been in-progress for at least six months, which, for local regulation, is pretty good!
I was not comparing the industries, or the materials requested.
Liquor stores don't physically move around and violate regulations on where they should operate.
That is why LA is asking for this information. To regulate them since Uber can't be trusted.
My question would be, does the city have the right to demand this information from Uber? I don’t think that they do. I’d like to see this decided in court.
a) LA demanding scooter data
to
b) LA demanding businesses segregate customers.
I was comparing:
c) Uber should share scooter data with LA (or shut down) because The Law
to
d) Uber should segregate customers (or shut down) because The Law.
Do you agree that c) and d) are poorly justified, and that if you believe one you should believe the other?
I agree that there are reasons why the data-sharing requirement is a much more defensible law than Jim Crow [1]. But sailfast wasn't making those arguments, s/he was just saying Uber should share that data simply because it's the law. That's not a good reason, and as well justified as saying they should comply with Jim Crow because it's the law.
[1] Hence why I said Uber should look for a middle ground that satisfies the nobler intents of the law.
To read more about this, the nonpartisan CA Office of Legislative Counsel has published an analysis of how the law applies, which found that this type of collection does in fact violate CalECPA in its current form [1]. The debate will likely come down to what steps need to be taken to make the collection scheme compliant.
[1] https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/files/calecpa_dockl...
It is apt to review the due process before complying.
If you're lucky you can get a judge to get the entire agency charter declared unconstitutional and your cost of business goes to zero.
E.g. many locations have pet registration fees but these fees may not entirely go towards the maintenance of a pet tracking system* or to retaining animal control. In some places none of the fees go towards those things. So it's just a tax that was never voted on.
* And do these things even lead to a safer public? In some cases outcome testing isn't required for a valid law, but if the law states desired outcome it can be.
That's what happened to the NY taxi drivers of the time, who won their rules by rioting and setting other people's property on fire.
> During the Great Depression, New York had as many as 30,000 cab drivers. With more drivers than passengers, cab drivers were working longer hours, which led to growing public concern over the maintenance and mechanical integrity of taxi vehicles.
Have you re-written history to support Uber's lawlessness?
If the reality is the law was created to protect passengers, then Uber is actually repeating the same mistakes of history. People are hurt. Laws are passed. People are less hurt. People forget why the law was passed. People break the law. People get hurt again. Same thing as the great depression itself, which caused a glut of cabs and then after the 2008 crash, Uber saves the day by doing exactly the same thing: Creating too many cabs such that each cab doesn't make enough money anymore and consumers are at risk and if cars weren't built so much better now than the 1930's perhaps even more so.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#1930...
Edit: I see arby's link below. I can see how violence contributed to the medallion system. I still think the use of law in that case is justified to quell the unrest. Yes, perhaps we could have put the violent cabbies in jail too, but would that be better for society than regulation designed to balance the supply / demand curve?
Uber has upset that balance and now we have to write a bunch more laws to regulate Uber, which just seems like a step backwards for those doomed to repeat history.
Of course, because breaking laws isn't respectable and those cabbies were just lawless crooks who weren't playing by the same rules everyone else had to.
> regulation designed to balance the supply / demand curve
Yeah, except that for the last decades that "balance" meant drivers (who for the most part did not own medallions) had to pay to work, by renting a medallion from actual crooks like Gene Freidman (aka Taxi King), who made millions from it.
This is the balance that those rules were defending: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/nyregion/driving-a-taxi-d...
Maybe some non-violent law breaking is needed to escape that shitty local maximum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwZcR0q6VE
It's not a tech company, even if it uses tech. It's about legal subterfuge, lack of responsibility, lack of safety, destroying the idea of employment, and turning the screws to make a fast buck until sued out of oblivion.
> Why have we lauded this company as a darling? Breaking laws isn't respectable. Call it fighting rent seekers if you want, pretty it up how you like, but they are lawless crooks.
It's because they popped up with the idea of "ignore sections of law", "destroy the idea of employment", and move faster than cities can sue, and you get a pretty penny. And they're public, so lots of people get rich over lots of others getting poorer.
It is seemingly often if not always overlooked that the Bill of Rights it not actually a bill of rights at all, it is a bill of prohibitions on the government, or a bill of rights by negation of offenses against them. From what I can tell, that notion of negative rights, i.e., open ended rights bound by the prohibition of government from violating them, is singularly unique in the whole world.
I would appreciate if someone could point out an example of them same, especially as part of the most fundamental law that governs a state, which even supersede the Constitution itself, a kind of meta-Constitution; natural, God given law that supersedes all Constitutional rights and all powers of government.
Seriously, I would love to know why you find that to be a perfectly fine thing, especially today when current abuses are built on presumptions based on a totally different world where "giving your papers" literally meant giving your unique paper to someone and it then would not simply be reproduced billions of times and spread all throughout the world for anyone and everyone's use against you.
I really hope that since you are here, it is not a challenge for you to realize the massive issues here at stake.
Think about what that means in practice … it's literally a mass surveillance state that violates every single tenet and even essentially every clause of the Constitution when, e.g., courts of uninformed and uneducated judges rule that "no, the real time constant surveillance and tracking of you through your devices is actually NOT a violation of the letter and, more importantly, the spirit of the 4th Amendment." How are you secure when you are literally under constant surveillance by a surveillance state, my friend.
I don't know why you types tend to have this kind of submissive and supplicant attitude towards the massive surveillance state, if it's not some sick self-hatred and self-punishment complex, but it is not a healthy mentality to have to make excuses for the mass surveillance and control by a minority of tyrants that lord over you as unaccountable demigods. How does that make any sense. I would love if you could try to explain that to me.
The fact is that the 4th amendment is only a protection insofar as you can get it enforced by those with power to do so, and that's the courts.
Figure out a privacy notice for your LA Riders and add it to your EULA - lord knows they've done this for less worthwhile purposes before. In this case, this is about sharing competitive information with the city that others might see. This is not a choice. Any language of upset from the company seems like hyperbole and not to be taken seriously.
If you think this is crazy, I'd ask you to take a look at liquor boards throughout the US. This data sharing agreement seems paltry to comply with by comparison.