Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 208 posts

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

#101

Post by threeseed »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #67
sailfast wrote: post #57

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…

I’ve never heard of a liquor board that required stores to deliver to the government a real time feed of who’s buying what liquor. If such a policy were created, and BevMo announced they refuse to comply, I’d be fully in support of that despite my normal concerns about companies ignoring regulations. It’s not about the general principle here. If Uber’s claim about deanonymization is accurate, this specific policy is…

Your analogy makes no sense.

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.

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

#102

Post by Karunamon »

supercanuck wrote: post #98
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard of a liquor board that required stores to deliver to the government a real time feed of who’s buying what liquor. If such a policy were created, and BevMo announced they refuse to comply, I’d be fully in support of that despite my normal concerns about companies ignoring regulations. It’s not about the general principle here. If Uber’s claim about deanonymization is accurate, this specific policy is…

Is Uber a Retail Store? Does the Store leave their merchandise all over the neighborhood with GPS micro controllers on them? 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!

Because a private company having access to GPS data and the government having access to GPS data are two different threat models with different concerns.

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

#103

Post by wonnage »

SilasX wrote: post #81
sailfast wrote: post #57

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…

I agree Uber should try to find a way to satisfy the intent of the law, but you're basically saying that everyone should blindly obey every law or not operate. That's way too strong a principle to lean on. I could do a word swap on your very comment and turn it into a defense of e.g. Jim Crow laws.

HN, where Uber not being able to run their scooters is equal to Jim Crow because “word swap”

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

#104

Post by lone_haxx0r »

supercanuck wrote: post #98
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard of a liquor board that required stores to deliver to the government a real time feed of who’s buying what liquor. If such a policy were created, and BevMo announced they refuse to comply, I’d be fully in support of that despite my normal concerns about companies ignoring regulations. It’s not about the general principle here. If Uber’s claim about deanonymization is accurate, this specific policy is…

Is Uber a Retail Store? Does the Store leave their merchandise all over the neighborhood with GPS micro controllers on them? 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!

> 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?

They don't have the right to know where I go.

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

#105

Post by indue »

wonnage wrote: post #103
SilasX wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree Uber should try to find a way to satisfy the intent of the law, but you're basically saying that everyone should blindly obey every law or not operate. That's way too strong a principle to lean on. I could do a word swap on your very comment and turn it into a defense of e.g. Jim Crow laws.

HN, where Uber not being able to run their scooters is equal to Jim Crow because “word swap”

It is more like a reductio ad absurdum. It is showing that you would not support the position you are arguing for by taking it to the extreme.

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

#106

Post by dschep »

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…

WoBike is great, and I've contributed to that repo too, but that data is quite different from data in question in this article. Unless I'm mistaken, most of the reverse engineered APIs (and public ones in municipalities that mandate them) are for _available_ scooters. This article is about scooter location while it's being ridden around by a renter.

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

#107

Post by icebraining »

chimi wrote: post #85
sailfast wrote: post #57

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…

But Uber is above the law. That's not a glib statement. They really are. They don't get taxi medallions. They don't follow employment law. Why would they follow this law? They are a corporation. They can break laws with impunity. If it's in their self interest, they will. They've shown themselves to us. They don't care about the law. End of story. Why have we lauded this company as a darling? Breaking laws isn't resp…

Don't worry; in a few decades their position will be established and rules changed to accommodate them, and some other user will be here defending those changed rules against some new newcomers which think themselves above the law.

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.

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

#108

Post by lm28469 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #67
sailfast wrote: post #57

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…

I’ve never heard of a liquor board that required stores to deliver to the government a real time feed of who’s buying what liquor. If such a policy were created, and BevMo announced they refuse to comply, I’d be fully in support of that despite my normal concerns about companies ignoring regulations. It’s not about the general principle here. If Uber’s claim about deanonymization is accurate, this specific policy is…

If you honestly can't see the difference between a liquor store and a company that changed the face of every major cities in the world and how their inhabitants move around in less than 10 years* I don't think anyone can argue against your point.

edit: *while using every loopholes, sketchy and sometimes straight up illegal ways to do it and killing someone as a result.

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

#109

Post by icebraining »

sokamyung wrote: post #83
sailfast wrote: post #57

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 is ironic that you bring up the law, because the law … which supersedes any law produced by a wannabe feudal fiefdom like LA, is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated". Please note the "shall not be violated", which is a critical point that is misse…

In practice, courts have said that if you give your papers to a third-party (in this case, Uber), you have no expectation of privacy and a warrant isn't needed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

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

#110

Post by salawat »

Don't taxi, bus, and trucking companies do this? I always thought any public transit actor had to do this to provide data to be used by DoT for traffic engineering. Like I know that traffic engineers tweak limits of public transport asset density as part of planning traffic flows.

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is just Uber getting rolled into the infrastructure they should have been participating in anyway.

I'm not terribly thrilled about the implications; but it's also not surprising at all that a transit service provider would have to guarantee to a locality that they can locate their assets.

Post reply on HN