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Comment by sailfast | Hacker News Reader

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 it to your EULA - lord knows they've done this for less worthwhile purposes before. In this case, this is about sharing competitive information with the city that others might see. This is not a choice. Any language of upset from the company seems like hyperbole and not to be taken seriously.

If you think this is crazy, I'd ask you to take a look at liquor boards throughout the US. This data sharing agreement seems paltry to comply with by comparison.

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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 PRISM level bad.

Agreed, and I don’t necessarily agree with the real-time requirement as the best way to regulate. That said, while the data providing burden is certainly more than the liquor store must provide, it doesn’t seem like they’ve delayed permitting for months, requiring public notice, checking to ensure named individuals are at work, etc (not to mention some of the graft that has been associated with liquor licenses in other cities).

They have a data requirement. It is not new, the company is not responding. Don’t they already do this with ride data from Uber?

EDIT: Looks like they don't do this for rides yet, and may be using this as a trial balloon for greater data access? (based on this article from May, if accurate?) https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/tech/uber-lyft-cities-data/in...

EDIT2: DC has been doing this with car / ride-sharing agencies for awhile but I don't believe it's published. Not sure of the status of SharedStreets: https://www.wired.com/story/uber-nacto-data-sharing/

Uber appears to be claiming some kind of procedural issues happened here. They mentioned an "eleventh-hour administrative review process" in the article, although I don't have time right now to dig in and find more details on what they're talking about.

Yeah - checking on the overall policies for LADOT as well and their data API but only so deep you can go when it’s not your day job haha. Appreciate the discussion!

Is Uber a Retail Store? Does the Store leave their merchandise all over the neighborhood with GPS micro controllers on them?

This analogy is absurd.

As municipalities get more technically advanced, why shouldn't they have access to the same type of data or where these scooters are? How hard is it to open up an API?

This seems to be, how dare citizens impose a cost of doing business in their neighborhoods!

Because a private company having access to GPS data and the government having access to GPS data are two different threat models with different concerns.

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?

> 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.

> why shouldn't they have access to the same type of data or where these scooters are? How hard is it to open up an API?

They don't have the right to know where I go.

You as an individual I agree; there should be no disclosure of customers themselves. However, I do think the city deserves to know in real time where all the 30 pound lithium ion battery and motor, pieces of litter are.

I think it's more complicated than that though.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-sco...

> The data would not include a rider’s name, but even in sprawling metropolitan areas, paths between home, work and school are typically unique, experts say. Someone with basic coding skills and access to the data could easily connect a trip to an individual person.

> “This data is incredibly, incredibly sensitive,” said Jeremy Gillula, the technology projects director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights group.

I suspect that part of Uber/Lime/et.al’s pitch to municipalities is to provide them greater visibility how people move through the city to help inform long-term planning.

Which would necessitate this data exchange is price they pay to operate in the city.

I also trust that cities are getting more sophisticated and if LA said that data exchange is their price for doing business, then good on LA for knowing how the dataset could benefit them.

Your analogy makes no sense.

Liquor stores don't physically move around and violate regulations on where they should operate.

That is why LA is asking for this information. To regulate them since Uber can't be trusted.

On where they should operate, maybe not. But liquor stores definitely do violate regulations on how they should operate, and a real-time feed of sales would surely help catch things like Amazon's clearly fake retail outlets (https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2019/11/amazon-still-mocking...).

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.

I'm very comfortable saying alcohol affects the world as much as Uber does. Liquor stores regularly use sketchy loopholes to dodge regulation, and the entire reason they're so tightly regulated is that we believe unrestricted liquor sales will kill people.

Liquor is tightly regulated for tax enforcement.

I'm very comfortable saying alcohol would never be approved/legal if it started being marketed 10 years ago.

Like cannabis?

You mean illegal in most places, barely tolerated for medical purposes in a few other and legal in a very few states/countries VS legal and abused almost universally in the world ? Yeah exactly.

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.

All of the powers that a municipality wields are limited in scope and specifically granted through the state charters and laws that actually created those cities. A city can’t usurp the power of the state that created it nor can it create new ones itself. Cities, especially compared to states and the federal government, are very limited and ephemeral legal entities that can be carved up, amalgamated, renamed, or dissolved at the pleasure of their state governments.

My question would be, does the city have the right to demand this information from Uber? I don’t think that they do. I’d like to see this decided in court.

This is true, but keep in mind the experience of many people is at odds with this. Municipalities de facto wield huge authority through their control of the police and tend to never be challenged. As an extreme but rather common example, there are still locales in the south US that couple religious functions with their public schools and other government offices. Sporadically someone with the knowledge and means will be able to challenge the local government up to the state level, but until that happens the local government can run roughshod over community members (if they don't just force them out).

I agree Uber should try to find a way to satisfy the intent of the law, but you're basically saying that everyone should blindly obey every law or not operate. That's way too strong a principle to lean on. I could do a word swap on your very comment and turn it into a defense of e.g. Jim Crow laws.

HN, where Uber not being able to run their scooters is equal to Jim Crow because “word swap”

It is more like a reductio ad absurdum. It is showing that you would not support the position you are arguing for by taking it to the extreme.

I wasn't comparing

a) LA demanding scooter data

b) LA demanding businesses segregate customers.

I was comparing:

c) Uber should share scooter data with LA (or shut down) because The Law

d) Uber should segregate customers (or shut down) because The Law.

Do you agree that c) and d) are poorly justified, and that if you believe one you should believe the other?

I agree that there are reasons why the data-sharing requirement is a much more defensible law than Jim Crow [1]. But sailfast wasn't making those arguments, s/he was just saying Uber should share that data simply because it's the law. That's not a good reason, and as well justified as saying they should comply with Jim Crow because it's the law.

[1] Hence why I said Uber should look for a middle ground that satisfies the nobler intents of the law.

Municipalities need to comply with state law. In this case, CalECPA gives California residents a number of protections with respect to location data collection by government agencies. Generally speaking, collection is allowed when either a warrant is used or a user explicitly consents. Trip data reveals information about your relationships, life style, and medical status, so getting this right is an important issue for user privacy and safety.

To read more about this, the nonpartisan CA Office of Legislative Counsel has published an analysis of how the law applies, which found that this type of collection does in fact violate CalECPA in its current form [1]. The debate will likely come down to what steps need to be taken to make the collection scheme compliant.

[1] https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/files/calecpa_dockl...

> The letter also questioned the validity of the “eleventh-hour administrative review process” that the city created last month.

It is apt to review the due process before complying.

If you're lucky you can get a judge to get the entire agency charter declared unconstitutional and your cost of business goes to zero.

There's good argument to be made a lot of restrictions on business are unconstitutional in various ways. It is not that any regulation on business or activity is absurd; it is more that in practice what the regulation says and what it does are not reconcilable.

E.g. many locations have pet registration fees but these fees may not entirely go towards the maintenance of a pet tracking system* or to retaining animal control. In some places none of the fees go towards those things. So it's just a tax that was never voted on.

* And do these things even lead to a safer public? In some cases outcome testing isn't required for a valid law, but if the law states desired outcome it can be.

I think the case here is more complex, since Uber uses existing city infrastructure, and therefore may be compelled to contribute to the "public good".

It is ironic that you bring up the law, because the law … which supersedes any law produced by a wannabe feudal fiefdom like LA, is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated". Please note the "shall not be violated", which is a critical point that is missed about the Bill of Rights in particular, that this right that is referenced in the 4th Amendment is a natural, God given right, which the 4th Amendment prohibits the government from, in this case, violating, or, in other amendments infringing on.

It is seemingly often if not always overlooked that the Bill of Rights it not actually a bill of rights at all, it is a bill of prohibitions on the government, or a bill of rights by negation of offenses against them. From what I can tell, that notion of negative rights, i.e., open ended rights bound by the prohibition of government from violating them, is singularly unique in the whole world.

I would appreciate if someone could point out an example of them same, especially as part of the most fundamental law that governs a state, which even supersede the Constitution itself, a kind of meta-Constitution; natural, God given law that supersedes all Constitutional rights and all powers of government.

In practice, courts have said that if you give your papers to a third-party (in this case, Uber), you have no expectation of privacy and a warrant isn't needed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

You do realize the massive amount of abuse that opens up, right? So because you have ever given your "papers" to anyone in your whole life, therefore you have not expectation of privacy?

Seriously, I would love to know why you find that to be a perfectly fine thing, especially today when current abuses are built on presumptions based on a totally different world where "giving your papers" literally meant giving your unique paper to someone and it then would not simply be reproduced billions of times and spread all throughout the world for anyone and everyone's use against you.

I really hope that since you are here, it is not a challenge for you to realize the massive issues here at stake.

Think about what that means in practice … it's literally a mass surveillance state that violates every single tenet and even essentially every clause of the Constitution when, e.g., courts of uninformed and uneducated judges rule that "no, the real time constant surveillance and tracking of you through your devices is actually NOT a violation of the letter and, more importantly, the spirit of the 4th Amendment." How are you secure when you are literally under constant surveillance by a surveillance state, my friend.

I don't know why you types tend to have this kind of submissive and supplicant attitude towards the massive surveillance state, if it's not some sick self-hatred and self-punishment complex, but it is not a healthy mentality to have to make excuses for the mass surveillance and control by a minority of tyrants that lord over you as unaccountable demigods. How does that make any sense. I would love if you could try to explain that to me.

I'm telling you what the courts consider. I have no idea why you think I find it fine.

The fact is that the 4th amendment is only a protection insofar as you can get it enforced by those with power to do so, and that's the courts.

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