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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

#191

Post by morganherlocker »

steve_gh wrote: post #46
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…

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.

This would not provide very much privacy protection at all. Almost all trips will be unique with this level of granularity, so it will be easy to de-anonymize. I do privacy research with this type of data and have found numerous sources that used aggregation schemes with similar levels of granularity. In those public datasets, I was able to identify trips moving between a high school and a local planned parenthood, for example. 100m is far smaller than the size of school campus and most buildings.

To address privacy issues, data needs to be aggregated, with trip clusters with less than 5-10 trips dropped. Differential privacy strategies also exist, but dropping groups with low number of user contributions is the easiest solution to implement.

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

#192

Post by bsder »

justinzollars wrote: post #124

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

You say that like "homelessness" is some super easy problem to solve if we just wave our hands and throw money at it.

This isn't China. Governments in the US are not allowed to simply round up people and put them somewhere without permission and/or due process.

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

#193

Post by reaperducer »

RandallBrown wrote: post #187
reaperducer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can't speak for Los Angeles, but in some cities, yes.

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

#194

Post by dilap »

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:/…

Requiring scooters to ride in bike lanes seems an easy, obvious fix.

And, objectively, someone riding in a car is far more of a threat to pedestrian lives than someone riding on a scooter, even on the sidewalk. People traveling by scooters instead of cars is better in every way. Seems like a mistake to demonize scooters.

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

#195

Post by crankylinuxuser »

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…

I've been modded down before for posting this, but we've been on this road before. Richard D Wolff is right: Uber is an old scam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwZcR0q6VE

It's not a tech company, even if it uses tech. It's about legal subterfuge, lack of responsibility, lack of safety, destroying the idea of employment, and turning the screws to make a fast buck until sued out of oblivion.

> Why have we lauded this company as a darling? Breaking laws isn't respectable. Call it fighting rent seekers if you want, pretty it up how you like, but they are lawless crooks.

It's because they popped up with the idea of "ignore sections of law", "destroy the idea of employment", and move faster than cities can sue, and you get a pretty penny. And they're public, so lots of people get rich over lots of others getting poorer.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by habnds »

icebraining wrote: post #136
habnds wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like if Uber is going to use this data for their benefit society should be able to use it to ours as well for planning an infrastructure purposes for example. The way that society does stuff like this is through government bodies. The real problem here seems like a lack of trust or oversight of government bodies, which creates the impossible situation you identify.

> Seems like if Uber is going to use this data for their benefit society should be able to use it to ours as well for planning an infrastructure purposes for example. I don't necessarily disagree, but "data used for their benefit" covers all data used by all businesses, from your emails stored by your provider (assuming you don't self-host) to trade secrets, etc. So either we say the government should be able to acce…

Fair point, I think there's a fundamental difference between the data collection done by a company like Uber or the FANG or whatever and the data that other companies collect in the normal course of business but it's hard for me to think of a good definition for the difference.

There's also the idea that maybe we should have total access to a currently unthinkable amount of data [0]

[0] https://www.wired.com/1996/12/fftransparent/

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

#198

Post by bluehatchurn »

angleofrepose wrote: post #174
spenrose wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the dynamic correct but the values backwards. Cities are defined by their physical and social density and their long-term investments in physical capital. Uber lacks a sustainable business model. Transportation within a city features many "natural" monopolies (i.e. train tracks), and the promise of an emergent overarching monopoly: providing one-App entry into multi-modal transportation. If Uber can capture…

> Transportation within a city features many "natural" monopolies (i.e. train tracks), and the promise of an emergent overarching monopoly: providing one-App entry into multi-modal transportation. I don't understand what you are saying here, can you elaborate? What are you saying about Uber / monopolistic rideshare companies? Related, I don't understand why cities/governments allow Uber to exist considering the reali…

As I understand it they are predicting that a single app will come to be used for all public transit in a major city or on a larger level. If Uber is able to play a role in this project they can have a income stream that doesn't require heavy subsidization. Without that they will at some point fail as they require more input value then output value is produced.

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

#199

Post by jobigoud »

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.

They need to know where the scooters are but they don't really need to know where the customers are though.

Consider a similar system that would work with coin operated scooters. They can have GPS in the vehicle without constant association with users.

In any cases these two tracking databases, where is each scooter and who is on which scooter, should be separate so they can provide the former to law enforcement without disclosing citizens whereabouts.

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

#200

Post by asdff »

stefan_ wrote: post #185
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 o…

1.2 million ride LA metro a day.
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