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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

#151

Post by x220 »

robomartin wrote: post #86

This is preposterous. Imagine government requiring any business to delivery real time data on customer behavior, from doctors to restaurants, Walmart to dispensaries. The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution is about privacy FROM GOVERNMENT INTRUSION, which is precisely what this is, an intrusive act on the part of government. Why don't they devote their time and effort to actually fixing the crumbling infrastruct…

Corporations and corporate properties are not people and do not have a right to privacy--that's for real people.

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

#152

Post by justinzollars »

reaperducer wrote: post #145
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.

ah right. They can simultaneously fail business and the homeless. #concurrency

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

#153

Post by malandrew »

SilasX wrote: post #72
sokoloff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the point of the suggestion.

The "point" was to ensure privacy while satisfying the other desiderata of the the system , which includes ability to find a distinct scooter. I was disputing that it met the latter criteria by grouping too many scooters together (Scylla) in its attempt to avoid privacy violation (Charybdis). After all, why not just lump scooters into the east vs west coast? Though I grant the general point that making the drop-off l…

> which includes ability to find a distinct scooter

I understand why a company needs to find a distinct schooter, but why does the city need the ability to find a distinct scooter?

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

#155

Post by sailfast »

lm28469 wrote: post #108
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…

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.

Yes, I see the difference. My purpose with this comment was to illustrate that Uber's primary complaints appear to be about the Process, and not the request. "Last minute X" etc.

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.

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

#156

Post by angleofrepose »

robomartin wrote: post #86

This is preposterous. Imagine government requiring any business to delivery real time data on customer behavior, from doctors to restaurants, Walmart to dispensaries. The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution is about privacy FROM GOVERNMENT INTRUSION, which is precisely what this is, an intrusive act on the part of government. Why don't they devote their time and effort to actually fixing the crumbling infrastruct…

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

From your comment: > real time data on customer behavior

If the article is to be trusted (I have no other sources) then this analogy is inaccurate. The city, by this reporting is not asking for customer behavior, its asking for scooter location, and for that matter, not even the route of the ride.

It's worth noting that each of your examples are of industries or professions that have large bureaucracies and are heavily regulated. I'm sure pharmacies share data about what's being bought and sold with regulatory agencies, and I don't think any of us would want that to not be the case. Otherwise how and why would you trust any drug to be what the label says it is.

How could the CDC identify causes of outbreaks if doctors didn't share health information with them? Of course privacy is a huge issue which is pervasive in all of this, but to consider a regulation of shady rideshare companies preposterous is missing a lot of the reality of government.

I'm not for any side in this story, but I am especially uncomfortable with the fierce defense of the rideshare companies in this thread.

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

#157

Post by icebraining »

chimi wrote: post #127
icebraining wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not what Wikipedia says [1]: > 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 ac…

> perhaps we could have put the violent cabbies in jail too, but would that be better for society

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.

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

#158

Post by JohnFen »

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.

Not the OP, but I would feel the same way, yes. My concern about my local government knowing my whereabouts is equal to my concern about the likes of Uber knowing my whereabouts, so if Uber shared this data, it wouldn't really change my behavior in any way.

But I avoid using Uber-anything, in part due to Uber's data collection, so my opinion on this data sharing is probably not that important.

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

#159

Post by ameister14 »

ysavir wrote: post #143
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pers…

The rider uses an app to find a bike/scooter near them. That requires real-time location data

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

#160

Post by malandrew »

dannyr wrote: post #27
karlerss wrote: post #18

> data are necessary to figure out which companies are flouting the permit program’s rules Sending all ride data seems excessive. A few photographs taken by city officials showing scooters in wrong places should do the trick.

There's a cap on number of scooters and bikes each company can deploy. That's what LA is trying to enforce by asking for data. FTA "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."

Require hard to counterfeit licensing stickers for each vehicle that need to be re-applied to each scooter yearly. Sell a limited number of numbered stickers. If you find a vehicle without a sticker, you know they aren't following the requirements.

To prevent sticker tampering, stickers can be placed behind a transparent piece of tempered glass or forego stickers entirely and use bolted on metal plaques.

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