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Comment by steelframe | Hacker News Reader

Cool. Can I take one without my identity and travel patterns being tracked? Like, suppose I want to get picked up from work and dropped off at my girlfriend's house in San Mateo. Something I might not want my soon-to-be-ex's lawyer to be able to subpoena. There's one of those machines onboard that are all over the place in supermarkets where I can feed bills right?

Or maybe not. Okay then, Luxor Cab it is. Cheaper, better conversation, more aggressive about squeezing through traffic, and doesn't violate my privacy.

I'm not against automated taxi services in principle. I'm just not interested if it's a package deal where I have to surrender my physical comings and goings to a scummy data broker like Google.

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interestingly the NYC yellow cabs were recording all this data for a while and released it in an "anonymized" dataset, which turned out to be pretty easy to deanonymize because people tend to be picked up or dropped off near their homes or workplaces.

https://agkn.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-...

i think the answer is just that you don't have much meaningful privacy when using a taxi service in a normal way.

My trick is to walk a block or two on either end of the trip.

In what was is Google a data broker? Where can you buy this data?

I do not know where/if the plebs can buy this data, but advertisers can:

https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/13381216?hl=en

"Waymo may disclose user personal information to third parties to tailor advertising and offers to your interests. Such disclosures may be considered “sales” or “sharing” of personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act."

It is rather surprising that so many here downvote the obvious, which even non-technical Guardian journalists have found out.

The phrasing here is due to the CPRA which specifically requires that the link be titled "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" even for ad targeting.

As far as I understand the advertising model is the same as with Google Ads - Google builds profiles and lets advertisers target users based on profiles. They do not sell user data, and I'm not personally aware of a case where Google has even been alleged to be selling user data.

You can buy it from Google by becoming an app developer.

https://www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/post/facebook-and-google-ar...

How would you design that system?

I can't imagine a self-driving car request via an app could be accomplished without _someone_ knowing / tracking your travel patterns. You can't do cash transactions because that would be rife for smash-n-grabs from others.

With a regular taxi I just call from a phone in a hotel lobby and ask to be picked up a block or so from my location. No reason there can't be a dispatch service you can call for self-driving taxis too.

Crime happens, but that's why there's insurance. It's not like cab drivers don't get robbed too. It doesn't (and shouldn't) stop cash commerce.

Obviously you do surrender all of your travel privacy to the data broker. That's why they are making self-driving cars in the first place. But you're already doing all of that by carrying an Android phone.

Strange this is downvoted no ?

I also found it strange. The parent comment has some amount of hyperbole, but it does not detract from the point they are conveying.

> That's why they are making self-driving cars in the first place

It is?

I thought they wanted to disrupt transportation.

I mean the most obvious reason is making money.

But other things like making the roads safer is a nice side effect.

> But you're already doing all of that by carrying an Android phone.

I'm not.

My boy. Now, when a self-driving car drives past you, make sure you show them that sweet middle finger of yours.

Actually whenever I give one my sweet middle finger it's stuck in SF traffic and I'm zipping around it on my bike.

Google fanboys entered the chat room. Care to explain what is it that you dislike about my comment? Was any of it non-factual?

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