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L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

latimes.com

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Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#41

Post by bransonf »

The thing is, these scooter APIs are getting reverse engineered pretty often. (I contribute to a github repo[0])

So Uber can’t really hide the data if they’re in noncompliance.

St Louis has this clause written in their scooter legislation that a certain number of scooters must be in certain regions for the purpose of equity. I’ll tell you it’s a damn lie as far as the data is concerned. No one seems to care though. It was written in so politicians could advertise it as a good thing, but they refuse to enforce it because of the little revenue or attention the scooters bring. I don’t really care where they put the scooters, but it still pisses me off both that scooter companies are seemingly above the law and that some politicians are lazy cheats.

[0] https://github.com/ubahnverleih/WoBike

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#42

Post by TrueDuality »

Angostura wrote: post #33
michaelt wrote: post #3

I guess I don't see any way a dockless bike/scooter rental scheme can be compatible with privacy. Their need to know where available bikes are, and to be able to detect thefts makes it hard to imagine they could work without GPS tracking. And as soon as you know who rented what bike when, and where each bike went, you're going to start knowing customers' homes, workplaces and places of worship. Although the governmen…

> as soon as you know who rented what bike Except, as far as I can see, according to the article, the only required info is start and finish point and journey length.

That's basically all it took to de-anonymise trips for celebrities using the NYC taxi data[1]. There was some poorly anonymized driver information in there but that wasn't used for tracking the celebrities themselves.

[1]: https://gawker.com/the-public-nyc-taxicab-database-that-acci...

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#43

Post by ekianjo »

AlexandrB wrote: post #16
ekianjo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely trusting the government is a more reasonable policy? Looks like you have not really read about what governments do to their people when it's convenient for them to do so. Current examples: check China. Of course the US is not China, but that should be an ample warning enough that trusting government with data + power is a bad combination.

"China" (as in the CCP) does not, in fact, have the data. They're leveraging a network of mostly-private companies to do the dirty work for them. So there's really no difference. If the US government became a dictatorship tomorrow, all the data collected by US private companies would end up in the government's hands. Neither private companies nor government entities can be trusted, and the only right answer is to dem…

> "China" (as in the CCP) does not, in fact, have the data. They're leveraging a network of mostly-private companies to do the dirty work for them

The difference is that the CCP has every right to shut down businesses and they make the Law directly. No provisions can be made by external parties, there is no separation of power. So in practice all companies work in accordance with the CCP and will bend to their requests. In the US there are still companies which can and do refuse the federal government's requests to provide data without sufficient reason.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#44

Post by Jakob »

michaelt wrote: post #9
Jakob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without GPS or internet: put the bike at a cross road and tell the app (or call center) at which cross road you put it. Every now and then they get serviced, if the bike is not where you put it as the last owner, you pay a fine. That’s how it worked for years in Munich, Germany. That way the bike doesn’t even need internet. To unlock the bike it generates a code with a key which is on the bike. I don’t see how GPS pr…

> if the bike is not where you put it as the last owner, you pay a fine How do they tell the difference between the last user not returning it, and the bike being stolen with bolt cutters after the last user returned it properly?

The bikes are built in a way that you don’t want to steal them. They drive down that probability in at least two ways:

Quite heavy and their specific number highly visible.

The lock is nearly unbreakable, a bolt which is locked inside the bike frame. I wouldn’t know of a way to crack this physically without demolishing the bike.

It’s much easier to steal any other bike instead.

I guess the main upside is vastly reduced technical infrastructure costs so you can get over a certain small percentage of stolen bikes after reducing this probability enough.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#45

Post by black_puppydog »

bransonf wrote: post #41

The thing is, these scooter APIs are getting reverse engineered pretty often. (I contribute to a github repo[0]) So Uber can’t really hide the data if they’re in noncompliance. St Louis has this clause written in their scooter legislation that a certain number of scooters must be in certain regions for the purpose of equity. I’ll tell you it’s a damn lie as far as the data is concerned. No one seems to care though. I…

Wanted to say thanks for WoBike. I use it in a crown job to monitor the local bike pool's (pityful) offering.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#46

Post by steve_gh »

michaelt wrote: post #3

I guess I don't see any way a dockless bike/scooter rental scheme can be compatible with privacy. Their need to know where available bikes are, and to be able to detect thefts makes it hard to imagine they could work without GPS tracking. And as soon as you know who rented what bike when, and where each bike went, you're going to start knowing customers' homes, workplaces and places of worship. Although the governmen…

Depends on the granularity of the data. What's wrong with (say) 100m square blocks as spatial granularity, with ride time to the nearest minute or even 5 minutes.

The city should be able to ensure regulatory compliance, while anonymity is preserved.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#47

Post by notyourwork »

Jakob wrote: post #44
michaelt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the bike is not where you put it as the last owner, you pay a fine How do they tell the difference between the last user not returning it, and the bike being stolen with bolt cutters after the last user returned it properly?

The bikes are built in a way that you don’t want to steal them. They drive down that probability in at least two ways: Quite heavy and their specific number highly visible. The lock is nearly unbreakable, a bolt which is locked inside the bike frame. I wouldn’t know of a way to crack this physically without demolishing the bike. It’s much easier to steal any other bike instead. I guess the main upside is vastly reduc…

I watched someone dismantle a jump bike lock last week outside my apartment while walking my dog. Considering that and how often I see homeless riding them in sf, I suspect they are more easily stolen than you suggest.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#48

Post by SilasX »

steve_gh wrote: post #46
michaelt wrote: post #3

I guess I don't see any way a dockless bike/scooter rental scheme can be compatible with privacy. Their need to know where available bikes are, and to be able to detect thefts makes it hard to imagine they could work without GPS tracking. And as soon as you know who rented what bike when, and where each bike went, you're going to start knowing customers' homes, workplaces and places of worship. Although the governmen…

Depends on the granularity of the data. What's wrong with (say) 100m square blocks as spatial granularity, with ride time to the nearest minute or even 5 minutes. The city should be able to ensure regulatory compliance, while anonymity is preserved.

In dense urban areas, there are probably a lot of scooters within a 100m x 100m block.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#49

Post by rhn_mk1 »

bko wrote: post #34
michaelt wrote: post #3

I guess I don't see any way a dockless bike/scooter rental scheme can be compatible with privacy. Their need to know where available bikes are, and to be able to detect thefts makes it hard to imagine they could work without GPS tracking. And as soon as you know who rented what bike when, and where each bike went, you're going to start knowing customers' homes, workplaces and places of worship. Although the governmen…

Would you feel the same way if Uber complied privately and the article read: "Uber shares real-time rider information with government agency"? It seems like Uber can't win. If they share information, they're violating the trust and privacy of their riders. If they don't they still don't care about privacy but they're now also flouting regulators.

> It seems like Uber can't win.

Which is fine. They chose to collect the information, and they are facing a bad look following that decision.

Of course, their business model might not work without the collection, but not every business model is guaranteed to look good.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#50

Post by epistasis »

mdorazio wrote: post #29
michaelt wrote: post #3

I guess I don't see any way a dockless bike/scooter rental scheme can be compatible with privacy. Their need to know where available bikes are, and to be able to detect thefts makes it hard to imagine they could work without GPS tracking. And as soon as you know who rented what bike when, and where each bike went, you're going to start knowing customers' homes, workplaces and places of worship. Although the governmen…

Do you worry about Google having that same data? If you use google maps on a regular basis they know where you live, work, eat, travel, hang out with friends, and which routes you take when.

I avoid using Google Maps for precisely this reason. I'm less concerned about Uber or a local government having that data, far far less concerned. Uber rates as slightly more concerning than a government, because Uber will likely try to monetize it when/if their current business model fails to deliver profits to Wall Street.
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