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

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

#141

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

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.

Anyone can watch you ride a shared scooter up to your house. That's public information. Privacy only comes into play if the scooter is taken inside your house. You have no legal expectation of privacy on a public street or sidewalk.

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

#142

Post by supercanuck » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #126

supercanuck wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "elected representatives by the citizens of Los Angeles" (Government) are accessing GPS Data about a companies property in its jurisdiction because the companies are not regulating their own behavior and property. This is where citizens need to advocate in their own neighborhoods and get involved and vote if that is what they want.

Thus you are agreeing that the government should get access to every phone calls, because some people may use it for illegal purpose and phone company doesn't regulate their behavior? 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.

Uber is a corporation and the property is the corporations. The data is the corporations too, and not the property of the individual.

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?

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

#143

Post by ysavir » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #89

ysavir wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Uber's ride hailing service, sure. But the same is not true for the scooter and bike services, which have no need for such information.

Huh? They have to know where the scooters and bikes are so they can be collected to be recharged.

Do they need to know where they are at every given moment, and collect data on each customer in association with where they're coming from and where they're going?

No, they just need to know where they are when:

1. They run a collection routine 2. The bike/scooter is low on battery.

There is no info they need in association with the rider's trip. Or at least not, as the GP states, info required "by nature". That perspective is true of ride sharing (the driver needs to know where to pick up and drop off) but false in relation to bikes/scooters (no need to know start/end points, just need to know where the bike is during collection or low battery, and not in association with a rider).

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

#144

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

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…

No one seems to care though

Strange that Saint Louis chooses not to enforce these equity rules. Chicago fined seven companies for not spreading their scooters around properly.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-issu...

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

#145

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #124

LA should focus on its massive homeless problem. 50,000 people sleep on the streets every night in LA.

Remarkably, a government of the size and complexity of Los Angeles is able to do more than one thing at a time.

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

#146

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #90

testfoobar wrote: post #88

Of all the public-goods usurped for private profit companies recently, I find the scooters to be the most intrusive. Scooters on sidewalks are dangerous and should be banned. We have explicit laws against skateboarding and riding bicycles on sidewalks in most communities. For bicyclists in San Francisco: "It’s illegal to ride on the sidewalk if you are over the age of 13. (SF Transportation Code Sec. 7.2.12)" https:/…

A similar argument could be made for banning running on sidewalks. In fact a runner could exceed the maximum electric speed of these scooters. It is ultimately up to the rider to assure safe operating regardless of mode of transport (feed, skateboard, scooter, etc). The fact that skateboards were widely banned due to a moral panic (largely around culture, not safety), isn't in itself a very strong argument since I'd…

A similar argument could be made for banning running on sidewalks

When there's a rash of people being hurt by inattentive runners smacking into them, that will be addressed, too.

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

#147

Post by x220 » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

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…

Real talk: you do not and are never going to have privacy if you have a mobile phone. You are carrying a tracking device and feeding data to at least a dozen different companies and government agencies. No mobile app is compatible with privacy because the phone itself disintegrates privacy.

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

#148

Post by bransonf » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

dschep wrote: post #106

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.

In the linked article, which I'm assuming this refers to:

> The city will require companies to share information on the start point, end point and travel time of each bike or scooter trip within 24 hours after it ends, and whether the vehicle entered zones where riding or parking are restricted.

I know for at least all of the scooters I've tracked, you can identify each scooter by a unique ID. Assuming you pull your data on a minute-by-minute basis, you can retrace the start and end of a scooter ride.

For example, Scooter 123 is available at x,y at 12:05, It's not available from 12:06 to 12:15. It becomes available at 12:16 at x,y. The ride was approximately 11 minutes and started and ended at those two points.

I don't think the city wants real-time data, and frankly I don't think these companies would be willing or even capable of producing it.

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

#149

Post by angleofrepose » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

The general conversation of the comments here is confusing.

> Companies are required to transmit real-time data on all trips made within the city, including the start point, end point and travel time.

This is not "real-time rider information" as mentioned by many comments, this is 'real-time scooter information'.

> Uber has resisted the rule for months, arguing, with the backing of several data privacy organizations, that the city’s policy constitutes government surveillance. With minimal analysis, they say, the information could easily reveal where people live, work, socialize or worship.

I don't understand. The city should know where you live, you pay taxes and utilities and I'm sure there is a whole mess of bureaucracy that knows where individual names live for different reasons. Are we worried about specific elements within the bureaucracy knowing certain information? Is this information only accessible by monitoring scooters and not available to said entity by getting it through other means (school district zoning and so on)?

> Los Angeles officials have said the data are necessary to figure out which companies are flouting the permit program’s rules, including caps on the number of vehicles and bans on riding in certain areas. They have also argued that the companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.

This makes sense, no one would expect a regulation with no ability for the enforcing agent to monitor to be followed.

> Companies such as Uber “generate and collect massive amounts of personal and financial data,” while the city “does not collect information specific to individual riders beyond trip information,” said Marcel Porras, the Transportation Department’s chief sustainability officer, in a letter to Uber last week.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I expect from this situation, the whole dog and pony show that these rideshare companies put on seems like a farce.

I'm not happy with municipalities for a whole load of reasons, LA especially has an awful history in many domains. But there is no world in which I trust these rideshare companies MORE than I trust municipalities.

EDIT: I should add I'm sad that Uber(Jump) get to redefine the data privacy debate via their spokesperson and this journalist. I don't blame the writer, but it is absurd to validate claims like my second except above. I think this is gaslighting? If not, then related. Some PR moves to seed public expectation in this matter. They are implicitly defining this issue as something that is fundamentally different when the data is stored and collected by a corporation (them) to be sold and used however they desire vs utilization by entities in the public sector. I am happy to point people to a fantastic conversation on the "two" definitions of data privacy here:

https://idlewords.com/talks/senate_testimony.2019.5.htm#two_...

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

#150

Post by dwild » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

supercanuck wrote: post #142

dwild wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thus you are agreeing that the government should get access to every phone calls, because some people may use it for illegal purpose and phone company doesn't regulate their behavior? 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.

Uber is a corporation and the property is the corporations. The data is the corporations too, and not the property of the individual. 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?

> Uber is a corporation and the property is the corporations. The data is the corporations too, and not the property of the individual.

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.