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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

#51

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

Your point seems to hinge on: IF the US became as bad as the CCP, it would force companies to hand over all their data anyways.

But a government like the US isn't a singular entity. There are all sorts of good, bad, and neutral actors within it. If you hand the government your data now those bad actors can abuse it now, rather than some hypothetical future where the US becomes an extreme authoritarian dictatorship.

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

#52

Post by Jakob »

notyourwork wrote: post #47
Jakob wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh sorry I didn’t mean the jump bikes but the aforementioned DB bikes in Munich: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=call+a+bike+munich

I would be very surprised if someone can dismantle them on the street. But nevertheless if you have another bike right next to it which is worth more, lighter, faster and easier to crack why even bother?

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

#53

Post by thumb »

AlexandrB wrote: post #37
dpratt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how it is legal for Uber to send a team of armed men to kick down my door at 3am and forcibly confine me to a cell.

This weird paranoia about the government acting with no consequence seems to never extend to 2nd or 3rd layer thinking. If the government could send a team of armed me to kick down your door at 3am and forcibly confine you to a cell with no due process, they could do the same to the CEO of Uber to get your information in the first place. Having a layer of indirection in the form of a private company is little-to-no p…

the point is: - the government would be knocking down the door of a CEO who may not necessarily have the type of data they're looking for. - the government would have to go through a ton of effort to get anything they needed, rather than having it all up front to begin with. - no data should be given up freely without direct, fair consent (no matter who demands it)

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

#54

Post by teslaberry »

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…

it cant. the company wants your information so the city cannot give it some other company.

it's just that your privacy is being fought over. is it going to be the right of a private company to gather than keep it to themselves ( private to them, but essentially public as they can and DO seell it) or is it going to be forcibly shared ( that is supposedly the govenrment plan for 'open data' and i expect they will be open as they plan. )

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

#55

Post by jonfw »

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 privacy issues are inherent to Uber's business model, and there is nothing they can really do to remedy that.

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

#56

Post by philipov »

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.

No one said Uber had to be able to win.

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

#57

Post by sailfast »

This article is positioned like Uber / Jump can argue the matter and/or have leverage. Additional comments here act like Uber should be able to operate as they want. They do not and cannot. In order to operate legally as a business in a locality, you have to obey the law. If that law is sharing your data, you've gotta figure out a way to do that, or not operate.

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.

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

#58

Post by sokoloff »

SilasX wrote: post #48
steve_gh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that's the point of the suggestion.

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

#59

Post by Spivak »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #49
bko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But Uber is offering a service that by its very nature requires that you expose the service provider to information you may wish to keep private. How is this the service provider's fault? It's not like they're going out of their way to add tracking into something that doesn't require it.

Like this is a little nuts, if you buy one of those GPS trackers for your kids you don't get to act shocked when you find out the company has their location records. You get to be angry if they use those records for anything other than providing you service but of course they have them.

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

#60

Post by setr »

TrueDuality wrote: post #42
Angostura wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Reading your article, that doesn't appear to be a very correct description; The de-anonymization seems to have occurred through two primary aspects:

1. The taxi medallions were extracted due to poor crypto choice (and simple structure of medallion IDs), so you can map from reality -> dataset

2. The celebrities were photographed entering/exiting the taxi, with the medallion captured.

If you broke the link -- the taxi medallion -- you wouldn't have de-anonymized trips. And NYC anonymization process clearly (and correctly) intended for that link to not exist.

That is, start, end and length was not the key motivators in de-anonymization in this case. However, you can still imagine this data is sufficient to de-anonymize when usage is rare (and you've captured either start or end destination), but otherwise, the taxi data is not indicative of anonymization futility but rather implementation failure.

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