http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2699
Here's one to Google from Markey:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/googles-pl...
Here's one to the FTC about Facebook from Warner:
http://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?...
Here's one from Schumer to Zuckerberg:
http://www.schumer.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=324221
Here's one from Blumenthal and Franken to Social Intelligence (never heard of them before):
http://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blum...
I found all these by Googling something like "senator letter [company name] privacy". Most don't get covered here because they are typically routine pandering by politicians that doesn't change anything. (As is this letter IMO.)
So while I agree with the spirit of what Frankin is saying, I'm just left with distaste for what obvious posturing and pandering it is.
First, Uber did this brazenly and, one could argue, openly. Their hubris needs to be curbed this way.
Second, Uber explicitly wanted to go after a member of the press. The press is our shield against all the evil that is done against the public by governments and corporations.
We need our journalists to feel absolutely safe in their chosen profession. We may disagree with or even hate some of them, but we have to show people considering such an important career that it won't put them at risk.
As far as I know, Google and other companies are using/gathering our information equally legally. They might be doing something nefarious with it, but at least they claim to be responsible and honorable. With the exception of their press releases, Uber seems proud of their ruthlessness and lack of integrity.
The reported quote was couched in the hypothetical; reported out of an 'off the record' private event; by a reporter that was the +1 of an invite.
Those are major caveats. While they don't excuse anything, they also (frankly) answer several of the senators questions.
I find it un-imaginable that Franken (or anyone) has never articulated views in the hypothetical, that may or may not have been in line with "corporate policy".
Imagine if the 405 freeway was mic'd during rush hour. We'd have prisons full of criminals charged with thought crimes.
All that being said, Uber needs to get its act together. Transportation is a heavily regulated industry for a variety of reasons. There are personal safety issues involved, interstate commerce, and all kinds of local issues.
Uber needs to get itself in a position where politicians and the public can trust the company to operate in a manner deserving of the public trust. And in that direction, it seems to me at least, that they are showing a pattern of behaviour that is more at issue than any single event.
It seems their general approach is open to question, on quite a few fronts. Wether or not rebellious, upstart brands are a problem, I don't think thats it. They seem to take on take on a air privledged 'bro's' who are untouchable and shady. And that is something that they don't want to be type-cast as, when ultimately their business relies on the public's trust.
"Off the record" isn't some magic phrase you can use to stop a journalist from reporting what you say.
It's a carefully constructed agreement between a source and a journalist. That agreement will cover what material is divulged and how it is sourced.
It is wrong to suggest that this meeting was "off the record".
The ethical nuances here are lost because you have a sketchy company and an ethically challenged publication.
But in the same vein as the Mozilla incident, freedom of the press, nor freedom of speech...does not protect a citizen from another citizen.
If a muck-raking journalist wants to hide behind ethics to keep citizens from muck-rakin them, that's simply not protected by law or frankly by any real ethical consideration, other than the sense of moral proportionality that reflects their own behaviour.
It is a bizzarre point, but unfortunately its fundamentally correct.
The only "new" ethical consideration in this flap has to do with using specific information (presumably confidential company information) to bolster an attack. From what i've read, nobody suggested that this type of attack was only possible using a certain set of information.
Notwithstanding the distastefullness here, this is simply nothing that is not done in every major national election. So in that regard, the senator could equally send such a complaint to the DNCC.
What is actually the legitimate issue here is something much narrower: whether or not a malicious person would have the potential to abuse information that is not publicly available to do this.
That is very much a legit issue, but I'd be interested to see if the actual discussion would have been so bizaerre as to require this formulation. That would bring the company and its policies into the actual discussion in a way which simply articulating that low ethical standards swing both ways does not.
For example, a malicious threat would be something along the lines of "I know where you were last weekend at xx:xx" where this information would be used to extort or blackmail someone (eg, an affair etc). This type of threat would specifically hinge on the abuse of private information. Whether or not this was somehow allowed under any user agreement or employee policy is beside the point--its blatantly an abuse of implicit trust.
That is an entirely different type of situation that saying if "reporter X" is unethica, someone might very well do the equivalent of a classified-security clearance review of "reporter X" and articulate the findings in public. [1]
Needless to say, most people that look at this cannot distinguish the two cases, or if they can they are happy to disregard the reality of how the world works already.
The second issue is the idea of proportionality. In that when faced with some level or argument or counter argument, you dis-repscet the process of discourse and engage in ad-hominem. That is to say, in this case, retaliation with character assasination.
Again, I think this cuts both ways here. Being tone deaf and lacking in porportionality is a problem for ethically challenged startups--not doubt--but its also a problem with tabloids (see: uk phone hacking) and social media lynch mobs.
[1] If it meets the test of being legal and proportionate, its not really unethical by default.
People need to realise that journalists will report everything. They will report as much as they possibly can. Unless you have a written agreement with a specific journalist that covers what is or isn't allowed to be printed you must assume that they will print everything.
The meeting was not private.
You keep saying things like "ethically challenged". That's wrong -- this is standard journalistic ethics.
That's a gutter dwelling argument that is bullshit on both-sides. Because it supports the idea that private citizens should also be free to trash journalists. After all, if they have no ethics, they have no moral high ground to use as a defense against their own tactics.
So you are arguing the point of the Uber-douche.
Nice one.
You've twisted that to suggest that journalists are the same as an Uber executive digging dirt. The difference is that the journalist publishes under their name, via an editor and publisher, and is prepared to go to jail to protect their source.
As someone else has written, if you think you need a (written) contract to enforce ethics, you don't understand the concept of 'ethics'. Contracts are useful because they create legal -- not simply ethical -- obligations.
In any event, if you don't appreaciate any of this, we can agree to disagree.
The man laid out a detailed plan to harm reporters while talking to reporters. That it's hypothetical doesn't matter. If a mob boss told journalists about how easy it would be to make journalists disappear, that it was hypothetical and off the record wouldn't matter.
Senior executives of zillion-dollar companies do not accidentally talk to journalists. It could be that the guy is just a total idiot. But when otherwise smart people do something apparently stupid that just happens to serve their interests, it's reasonable to think that it was entirely intentional.
ftfy
If we want to make hyperbolic analogies, the closest one might be a mob boss suggesting hiring hit men to kill other hit men while talking to a hit man.
This seems incredibly naive to me. It's certainly idealistic, and it's extremely difficult to believe that the media, at least the American media, isn't heavily biased by capitalism. Sensationalism does more harm than good, and it's trivial to "buy" press coverage. The New York Times may very well have enough integrity to refuse to be bought, but it's a common practice to solicit journalists to write articles about new products and such. If you have an agenda, there are journalists ready to be paid to support it. Not only is the press sometimes not our shield, sometimes they're actually a sword against us.
While Travis' comments were certainly regrettable, there's an important distinction between talking about doing something and actually doing it. Almost anytime someone is called out for something they've said, the comments are taken out of context. It's easy for me to imagine that what was said was a reaction to a journalist behaving badly, writing an article with an agenda. It seems likely that the suggestion to use trip data was a suggestion to stoop to the same level, rather than simply to be evil towards someone who was noble and with unquestionable integrity. Uber gets a lot of press, and while some fair points are made, the press I've seen tends to be overly aggressive, misinformed, and usually displaying a clear agenda. What Uber is doing is revolutionary, disrupting well entrenched business models. When you disrupt an industry, you make enemies of the people who were lazily profiting from it. That doesn't mean Uber is good and their opponents are evil. But make no mistake that there is a battle going on, and ugly things are being said on both sides. We're all a bunch of idiots if we waste time letting ourselves be drawn in by someone else's agenda rather than assessing the merits of each side independently and voting with our wallets.
But there are many idealistic journalists (look at ProPublica, for many examples) who are doing important work, exposing things that aren't always sexy, but are definitely in the public's interest.
Again, we're talking about journalists who have _acted_ with agenda against a company, and we're up in arms over off-hand _comments_ about retaliation. Neither party is altruistic and both are financially motivated. If the press acts with agenda and now reports on the retaliatory comments that were made, they can no longer be regarded as unbiased and fair. I'm not going to take their side, and I'm certainly not going to defend them when they appear to be the real bully. Nor am I going to support Al Franken as he attempts to exploit the situation for his own benefit. We've got bigger problems to deal with than who's more butt-hurt about what someone else said.
"Dear Mr. Kalanick - how dare you allow your staff to announce an idea to spy on the American people and use the information you learn against them? Didn't you know that privilege is exclusively for the US government?
You know we will partner with you to abuse the vast information available on the habits of Americans through your service when the time is right - no need to get people riled up more than they already are.
Best Regards, Uncle Sam."
Uncle Sam is _people_. Good people, bad people, influential people, less influential people.
[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-franken-nsa_n_34...
So all federal government is responsible for all other arms of federal government, Al Franken is a member of the federal government, therefore guilt by association?
Just a question, but are you ok with your movements being tracked by Uber? Are you ok with any corporation spying on your movements and potentially using that information against you? So because the NSA spies on you, it's not ok for Al Franken to stand up to corporate privacy issues? Just saying ...
Yes, I would like to see anyone stand up for privacy issues, corporate or federal. As has been pointed out in other threads on this post, Al Franken actually does stand against both.
So let's agree that "the pot calling the kettle black" is a bad analogy because not all federal government necessarily agrees with other arms of the federal governments' actions. Yeah?
At least someone is speaking up. You criticize Al Franken for not going after everyone else as well, but why not criticize the other 99 senators who haven't done anything. I apologize in advance if I'm missing another senator that has done anything like this about privacy.
This is nearly meaningless political grandstanding because Uber happens to be both well-known as well as currently in the headlines.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-nsa-has-at-least...
And here's Rand Paul proposing a bill to end warrantless NSA wiretaps. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-bill-would-curb-nsa...
Complaining about gov't behaviour compared to private enterprise is like complaining about how kernel-level processes can do so much more than userland processes.
You voted for them, which is their way of saying "see, it's in the fine print, hahaha"
Where is the outrage over Target, Home Depot, et al carelessly storing and allowing credit card information for hundreds of millions of customers to be compromised?
Where is the outrage over my landloard losing my sensitive information and having no liability if/when my identity is stolen?
Use/abuse of data by companies is nothing compared to the damage that is done when data is stored improperly. How are we allowing companies to hold so much information that is so potentially damaging to us yet not able to hold them legally/financially accountable when our data is compromised because of their negligence?
I'm not sure what it would look like, but regulation and penalties should be focused on sensitive data storage not use.
It never will - Franken loses his chairmanship of the committee come January when the Republicans take power, which only serves to highlight that this "investigation" is merely him pandering to his constituency on his way out.
http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2562
"... that this "investigation" is merely him pandering to his constituency on his way out."
An alternative, and more likely, explanation is that he is just being consistent in representing his constituency throughout his career.
It seems like arbitrary application of political power in this way is more likely to increase political lobbying dollars than anything (make The Eye glare a different way or get your competitor).
Uber is not (yet) on the inside, and its brazen, undiplomatic and downright stupid behavior is an embarrassment and a liability for those who work to destroy privacy quietly.
A backlash against Uber might escalate into a broader backlash, and that makes a lot of people very nervous.
If you're a U.S. senator, you're probably not all that plugged-in to what various companies are doing with privacy. Heck, I'm constantly learning new things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634687.
> and so it can be used for political posturing.
So? You're unlikely to be able to build-up the mindshare to tackle an industry-wide problem without meaningful high-profile examples. Uber happens to make a particularly good one: they have a "God Mode" where they can see everyone's physical location! Quite a bit more visceral than uploading your e-mail address to Facebook and following you around with 1x1 pixel images.