> Companies are required to transmit real-time data on all trips made within the city, including the start point, end point and travel time.
This is not "real-time rider information" as mentioned by many comments, this is 'real-time scooter information'.
> Uber has resisted the rule for months, arguing, with the backing of several data privacy organizations, that the city’s policy constitutes government surveillance. With minimal analysis, they say, the information could easily reveal where people live, work, socialize or worship.
I don't understand. The city should know where you live, you pay taxes and utilities and I'm sure there is a whole mess of bureaucracy that knows where individual names live for different reasons. Are we worried about specific elements within the bureaucracy knowing certain information? Is this information only accessible by monitoring scooters and not available to said entity by getting it through other means (school district zoning and so on)?
> Los Angeles officials have said the data are necessary to figure out which companies are flouting the permit program’s rules, including caps on the number of vehicles and bans on riding in certain areas. They have also argued that the companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.
This makes sense, no one would expect a regulation with no ability for the enforcing agent to monitor to be followed.
> Companies such as Uber “generate and collect massive amounts of personal and financial data,” while the city “does not collect information specific to individual riders beyond trip information,” said Marcel Porras, the Transportation Department’s chief sustainability officer, in a letter to Uber last week.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I expect from this situation, the whole dog and pony show that these rideshare companies put on seems like a farce.
I'm not happy with municipalities for a whole load of reasons, LA especially has an awful history in many domains. But there is no world in which I trust these rideshare companies MORE than I trust municipalities.
EDIT: I should add I'm sad that Uber(Jump) get to redefine the data privacy debate via their spokesperson and this journalist. I don't blame the writer, but it is absurd to validate claims like my second except above. I think this is gaslighting? If not, then related. Some PR moves to seed public expectation in this matter. They are implicitly defining this issue as something that is fundamentally different when the data is stored and collected by a corporation (them) to be sold and used however they desire vs utilization by entities in the public sector. I am happy to point people to a fantastic conversation on the "two" definitions of data privacy here:
https://idlewords.com/talks/senate_testimony.2019.5.htm#two_...