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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

#181

Post by robomartin »

x220 wrote: post #151
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.

Corporations don't ride scooters, at least not in Los Angeles.

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

#182

Post by zachkatz »

thanatos_dem wrote: post #172
zachkatz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do cars.

Cars aren’t allowed to drive down sidewalks in any jurisdictions I’m aware of.

Also, cars (illegally) driving and parking on the sidewalk is a huge problem in NYC: https://mobile.twitter.com/davecoion/status/1118969565449469...

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

#183

Post by Mikeb85 »

Uber doesn't really have a leg to stand on. Cities use traffic data to determine things like traffic light synchronisation, where to build or expand roads, speed limits, etc...

In this case, they're allowing electric personal vehicles on city sidewalks, information would be useful to determine if they should create bike lanes, change traffic signal patterns, etc... Not to mention, at the end of the day, cities do have control over what drives where, how fast, etc...

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

#184

Post by Someone1234 »

testfoobar wrote: post #92
Someone1234 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Runners and scooter riders are not the same thing at all. Runners, and specifically regular runners, are by definition self-trained to hit both higher speeds and frequency of runs. The average adult just can't get up and run at 10mph for 10 minutes without training. The average adult probably couldn't do 6mph for 2 minutes. Yet this same average adult, without training, can get on a scooter and move at 5-10mph down a…

> Runners and scooter riders are not the same thing at all.

Wasn't something that was claimed. It was an analogy to show the absurdity of your argument.

> Second, runners do not run everyday, multiple times for every trip and errand. You can grab a scooter for lunch, for an errand, etc multiple times a day.

Above you argued speed was the core problem, now it is frequency? You said a post ago that anything on the footpath going "5 to 10mph" is dangerous due to "the kinetic energy and momentum at 10mph of an adult is considerable." Why is that suddenly safer when it is less frequent? You said it could "lead to bone fractures." Bone fractures are fine when runners do it but not scooter users..? Seems like you've forgotten the argument you were making above.

> Lastly, it is not the job of pedestrians to accommodate scooters

Wasn't something that was claimed.

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

#185

Post by stefan_ »

tyxodiwktis wrote: post #64

The core issue is that ridership data is a key piece the cities need to craft a tax on ride-sharing, and to tailor the tax to help their financially challenged public transit entities. Uber knows that if they give up scooter use data the city will immediately request it for ride sharing as well. The privacy question conveniently aligns with Uber’s position, but I doubt that this is Uber’s core concern vs avoiding eve…

You are talking about the city that has half its space dedicated to free street parking and a bunch of highways cutting through it as if it's some sort of modern mobility policy paragon just trying to correctly price out externalities.

No, whatever Ubers goal in not doing this, I'm sure the motivations of local L.A. politicians are forever more twisted. These people wouldn't know public transport if a bus ran them over. Which is unlikely to happen, given their average speed of 9 mph.

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

#186

Post by alistairSH »

samatman wrote: post #176
scelerat wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one wants to go there because freedom but I (reluctantly) agree. There might be safety considerations, too, but I'm guessing they are mostly edge case type issues

There are massive safety implications. We expect pressing the gas pedal to have a predictable outcome. Subverting this expectation is potentially quite dangerous. Consider that someone might temporarily exceed the speed limit while passing, legally, in the oncoming traffic lane. Then this system kicks in, they can't pass, and get hit by oncoming traffic because they're pinned by the car they tried to pass.

Can you legally exceed the speed limit to pass? I don't believe you can (at least not in most locales).

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

#187

Post by RandallBrown »

reaperducer wrote: post #146
Someone1234 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has there been a rash of scooter riders running into people?

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

#188

Post by testfoobar »

zachkatz wrote: post #134
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:/…

Now do cars.

Cars are already banned on sidewalks.

But seriously, I think modern car culture is deeply flawed on multiple dimensions. I would personally love to live in a car-free city with dedicated lanes for bikes, scooters and pedestrians along with their commensurate safety rules and regulations.

Currently, we're rapidly adding motorized vehicles where pedestrians have a historical expectation of safety. There are no lanes on a sidewalk. There are no passing zones. There are no turn signals. You can back up and reverse and will. You can cluster. You can linger. You can photograph buildings. You can walk briskly. You can stop suddenly realizing you left your phone at home, do a 180 and walk-run home. It would be impossible to enumerate all the ways sidewalks are used.

It is fundamentally impossible to resolve the safety expectations of pedestrians with scooters. Pedestrians were there first and will always be there.

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

#189

Post by snagglegaggle »

reaperducer wrote: post #141
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.

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.

No, GPS trackers on cars have in some cases been ruled a search.

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

#190

Post by morganherlocker »

setr wrote: post #60
TrueDuality wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is not quite incorrect. Some of the NYC taxi re-id demonstrations relied on reversing the hash for medallions, but most have not. In particular, the celebrity tracking did not require the medallion, since each record contains an origin and a destination. The identity of the driver across trips is irrelevant, since it is the passenger who is being tracked. The way this attack worked was to match an origin in the trip dataset to the timestamp on the celebrity photo. This revealed the destination of the trip.

In other cases, no photo is necessary (trips originating or ending at a residential address, linked to another sensitive location such as an abortion clinic).

There is a lot of research available on this topic. "Unique in the Crowd"[1], published in 2013, found that it takes only 4 GPS locations/timestamps to de-anonymize 95% of the population, with no other metadata. With 2 GPS pings, 50% of trips can be de-anonymized.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01376

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