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Comment by the_mitsuhiko | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

I fail to understand why it's an issue if the government has this data but people are okay with Uber having it. Surely trusting the government is a more reasonable policy?

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Uber doesn’t have a gigantic State apparatus with both a vested interest in and the ability to use violence to enforce it’s will on me.

By your logic, it would be more reasonable to require that Google be barred from all data sent over email, but require that copies get sent to the NSA. Similarly, AT&T should be required to not collect any phone records, but also be mandated to provide a copy of every single call to the FBI.

> Uber doesn’t have a gigantic State apparatus with both a vested interest in and the ability to use violence to enforce it’s will on me.

Uber falls under the jurisdiction of a gigantic State apparatus with both a vested interest in and the ability to use violence to enforce it’s will on you. Being a good corporate citizen, Uber would dutifully hand over your data to said government when asked. This is a distinction without a difference.

Explain how it is legal for Uber to send a team of armed men to kick down my door at 3am and forcibly confine me to a cell.

Before you worry about the legality of Uber's Maximum Customer Satisfaction Response Team, you'll have to provide evidence that something being against the law has ever stopped Uber from attempting it.

This weird paranoia about the government acting with no consequence seems to never extend to 2nd or 3rd layer thinking. If the government could send a team of armed me to kick down your door at 3am and forcibly confine you to a cell with no due process, they could do the same to the CEO of Uber to get your information in the first place. Having a layer of indirection in the form of a private company is little-to-no protection against a despotic regime. It only works if the government is still following the rule of law themselves.

the point is: - the government would be knocking down the door of a CEO who may not necessarily have the type of data they're looking for. - the government would have to go through a ton of effort to get anything they needed, rather than having it all up front to begin with. - no data should be given up freely without direct, fair consent (no matter who demands it)

It makes perfect sense in a cynical way - the government would face way more backlash if they went after the CEO of Uber as opposed to a probable nobody like you in the sense that "you are unlikely to cause major consequences which threaten their aparatus of power".

If they made a habit of doing that without a serious trail of justification under the law capital flight would be historic - damaging their income and GDP/the source of economic power, and damaging stability. It isn't even anything overtly sinister - just sensing that given the peril it is time to get the hell out of there.

And that is without lobbying and soft power aren't available.

Also, the above article itself shows some empirical data that Uber will not, in fact, just hand over my data when asked.

Note that I don’t think they do this out of the goodness of the hearts or altruism, but rather that they’ve done the calculus and determined that giving this data to the government would cost them enough ill will and loss of revenue to make it not worthwhile. Uber, unlike a government, has to answer to the market, and thus its every consumer’s duty to punish those who would sell our liberties.

> Also, the above article itself shows some empirical data that Uber will not, in fact, just hand over my data when asked.

And even when they are threatened with (and now ultimately face) a shutdown that will cost them downtime in presumably a very profitable market.

This should be the top comment. Well said.

That's because the US government is still fundamentally democratic and follows the rule of law. Such a government might also treat your data with some due process. A government that's willing to use force to arbitrarily enforce its will is also one that would do the same to Uber and its executives. In that environment Uber would not resist.

But right now, Uber is resisting, right?

And at the same time, the government is doing bad things with your data.

> Surely trusting the government is a more reasonable policy?

Looks like you have not really read about what governments do to their people when it's convenient for them to do so. Current examples: check China. Of course the US is not China, but that should be an ample warning enough that trusting government with data + power is a bad combination.

"China" (as in the CCP) does not, in fact, have the data. They're leveraging a network of mostly-private companies to do the dirty work for them. So there's really no difference. If the US government became a dictatorship tomorrow, all the data collected by US private companies would end up in the government's hands. Neither private companies nor government entities can be trusted, and the only right answer is to demand that the data is not collected in the first place.

> "China" (as in the CCP) does not, in fact, have the data. They're leveraging a network of mostly-private companies to do the dirty work for them

The difference is that the CCP has every right to shut down businesses and they make the Law directly. No provisions can be made by external parties, there is no separation of power. So in practice all companies work in accordance with the CCP and will bend to their requests. In the US there are still companies which can and do refuse the federal government's requests to provide data without sufficient reason.

Your point seems to hinge on: IF the US became as bad as the CCP, it would force companies to hand over all their data anyways.

But a government like the US isn't a singular entity. There are all sorts of good, bad, and neutral actors within it. If you hand the government your data now those bad actors can abuse it now, rather than some hypothetical future where the US becomes an extreme authoritarian dictatorship.

>Surely trusting the government is a more reasonable policy?

Somebody clearly didn't learn anything about history..

History tells us that large corporations are not actually any better (and in many ways are worse) than governments when it comes to this sort of stuff.

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