Hacker News Reader

Comment by supercanuck | Hacker News Reader

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!

View on HN

> 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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com