
L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes - ilamont
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-04/los-angeles-suspends-uber-jump-scooters-bikes-data-privacy
======
michaelt
I guess I don't see any way a dockless bike/scooter rental scheme can be
compatible with privacy. Their need to know where available bikes are, and to
be able to detect thefts makes it hard to imagine they could work without GPS
tracking.

And as soon as you know who rented what bike when, and where each bike went,
you're going to start knowing customers' homes, workplaces and places of
worship.

Although the government _and_ uber knowing this data is less private than uber
alone knowing, we all know uber doesn't give a shit about customer privacy.
Personally I'd be much more worried about uber having the data in the first
place than about the government also having the data.

~~~
bko
Would you feel the same way if Uber complied privately and the article read:

"Uber shares real-time rider information with government agency"?

It seems like Uber can't win. If they share information, they're violating the
trust and privacy of their riders. If they don't they still don't care about
privacy but they're now also flouting regulators.

~~~
rhn_mk1
> It seems like Uber can't win.

Which is fine. They chose to collect the information, and they are facing a
bad look following that decision.

Of course, their business model might not work without the collection, but not
every business model is guaranteed to look good.

~~~
Spivak
But Uber is offering a service that by its very nature requires that you
expose the service provider to information you may wish to keep private. How
is this the service provider's fault? It's not like they're going out of their
way to add tracking into something that doesn't require it.

Like this is a little nuts, if you buy one of those GPS trackers for your kids
you don't get to act shocked when you find out the company has their location
records. You get to be angry if they use those records for anything other than
providing you service but of course they have them.

~~~
diffeomorphism
If a service "by its very nature" does shady things, maybe that service should
not be offered in the first place?

Critcizing users afterwards that they "can't act shocked" for having these
things done to them is only playing a blame game.

~~~
XCabbage
This is a very daft take.

It's not even _remotely_ shady for a service to inherently involve knowing
where you are. That's something that is true of every brick and mortar store,
and indeed every cab driver. Yet the government doesn't demand that those
businesses provide real-time feeds of information about the movements of their
customers, and if the government _were_ to do so and they were to object on
privacy grounds, we wouldn't take it to mean that their entire business model
is inherently immoral and all shops should cease to exist.

------
tyxodiwktis
The core issue is that ridership data is a key piece the cities need to craft
a tax on ride-sharing, and to tailor the tax to help their financially
challenged public transit entities. Uber knows that if they give up scooter
use data the city will immediately request it for ride sharing as well. The
privacy question conveniently aligns with Uber’s position, but I doubt that
this is Uber’s core concern vs avoiding every major city banging on the
rideshare piñata to fund the gigantic debt service payments and generous
benefit programs for their underutilized public transit systems.

~~~
stefan_
You are talking about the city that has half its space dedicated to free
street parking and a bunch of highways cutting through it as if it's some sort
of modern mobility policy paragon just trying to correctly price out
externalities.

No, whatever Ubers goal in _not doing this_ , I'm sure the motivations of
local L.A. politicians are forever more twisted. These people wouldn't know
public transport if a bus ran them over. Which is unlikely to happen, given
their average speed of 9 mph.

~~~
asdff
1.2 million ride LA metro a day.

~~~
sieabahlpark
And many many many more don't. It's the second largest city in the US.

------
the-dude
Headline misleads, L.A. intends to suspend Jump, an Uber subsidary. They have
time to appeal until Friday.

~~~
jobigoud
Yeah, I was picturing the chaos if the UBER app suddenly stopped working all
of a sudden.

------
notpeter
In case folks are curious about the underlying technical details, LADOT along
with the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) built the Mobility Data Specification
(MDS) which are "RESTful APIs used to specify the digital relationship between
mobility as a service Providers and the Agencies that regulate them."

API Spec: [https://github.com/CityOfLosAngeles/mobility-data-
specificat...](https://github.com/CityOfLosAngeles/mobility-data-
specification/tree/dev/agency)

Uber, as they do, is refusing to comply with laws/provide data that would
enable local governments to actually regulate them. As I understand it, the
pilot phase was for Bikes/Scooters, but the intention is to require use of
similar APIs by car based rideshare companies in the future. Which explains
some of Uber's resistance despite this only currently covering JUMP Bike
Share.

There's a number of other cities (NYC, Miami, Philly, SF, SJ, SEA, etc)
involved with OMF/MDS. LADOT is one of the first implementations but they
aren't doing it all in house. Much of the design/development of the mobility
API spec and open source implementation[2] has been contracted out to
Lacuna.ai (via Ellis & Associates, a wholly owned subsidiary)[3].

[2]: [https://github.com/CityOfLosAngeles/mds-
core](https://github.com/CityOfLosAngeles/mds-core)

[3]:
[http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinecontracts/2019/C-130956_c_7-2...](http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinecontracts/2019/C-130956_c_7-26-19.pdf#page=10)

------
testfoobar
Of all the public-goods usurped for private profit companies recently, I find
the scooters to be the most intrusive.

Scooters on sidewalks are dangerous and should be banned.

We have explicit laws against skateboarding and riding bicycles on sidewalks
in most communities. For bicyclists in San Francisco: "It’s illegal to ride on
the sidewalk if you are over the age of 13. (SF Transportation Code Sec.
7.2.12)" [https://sfbike.org/resources/bicycle-law/rules-of-the-
road/](https://sfbike.org/resources/bicycle-law/rules-of-the-road/)

Yet, everyday you can find scooters on sidewalks wherever scooters are
available. Toddlers use sidewalks - they walk in a random walk. Hearing
impaired, sight-impaired, mobility-impaired people use sidewalks. Seniors use
sidewalks. These people do not expect 180lb adults riding at 5 to 10mph right
in their face. The kinetic energy and momentum at 10mph of an adult is
considerable.

Falls for anybody can lead to bone fractures. Even more so for seniors. Hip
fractures in particular can be fatal for seniors.
[https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-hip-fractures-
elderly...](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-hip-fractures-elderly-
death-sentence.html)

Scooters should not be allowed on sidewalks.

~~~
zachkatz
Now do cars.

~~~
thanatos_dem
Cars aren’t allowed to drive down sidewalks in any jurisdictions I’m aware of.

~~~
zachkatz
Right, because they have multiple dedicated lanes that are designed to drive
in. Bikes and scooters don’t have the same luxury, so they have to choose
between risking getting killed by riding among cars, or riding on the
sidewalk. The solution is obviously to build safe infrastructure for scooters.

------
bransonf
The thing is, these scooter APIs are getting reverse engineered pretty often.
(I contribute to a github repo[0])

So Uber can’t really hide the data if they’re in noncompliance.

St Louis has this clause written in their scooter legislation that a certain
number of scooters must be in certain regions for the purpose of equity. I’ll
tell you it’s a damn lie as far as the data is concerned. No one seems to care
though. It was written in so politicians could advertise it as a good thing,
but they refuse to enforce it because of the little revenue or attention the
scooters bring. I don’t really care where they put the scooters, but it still
pisses me off both that scooter companies are seemingly above the law and that
some politicians are lazy cheats.

[0]
[https://github.com/ubahnverleih/WoBike](https://github.com/ubahnverleih/WoBike)

~~~
dschep
WoBike is great, and I've contributed to that repo too, but that data is quite
different from data in question in this article. Unless I'm mistaken, most of
the reverse engineered APIs (and public ones in municipalities that mandate
them) are for _available_ scooters. This article is about scooter location
while it's being ridden around by a renter.

~~~
bransonf
In the linked article, which I'm assuming this refers to:

> The city will require companies to share information on the start point, end
> point and travel time of each bike or scooter trip within 24 hours after it
> ends, and whether the vehicle entered zones where riding or parking are
> restricted.

I know for at least all of the scooters I've tracked, you can identify each
scooter by a unique ID. Assuming you pull your data on a minute-by-minute
basis, you can retrace the start and end of a scooter ride.

For example, Scooter 123 is available at x,y at 12:05, It's not available from
12:06 to 12:15. It becomes available at 12:16 at x,y. The ride was
approximately 11 minutes and started and ended at those two points.

I don't think the city wants real-time data, and frankly I don't think these
companies would be willing or even capable of producing it.

------
karlerss
> data are necessary to figure out which companies are flouting the permit
> program’s rules

Sending all ride data seems excessive. A few photographs taken by city
officials showing scooters in wrong places should do the trick.

~~~
dannyr
There's a cap on number of scooters and bikes each company can deploy. That's
what LA is trying to enforce by asking for data.

FTA

"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."

~~~
malandrew
Require hard to counterfeit licensing stickers for each vehicle that need to
be re-applied to each scooter yearly. Sell a limited number of numbered
stickers. If you find a vehicle without a sticker, you know they aren't
following the requirements.

To prevent sticker tampering, stickers can be placed behind a transparent
piece of tempered glass or forego stickers entirely and use bolted on metal
plaques.

------
robomartin
This is preposterous. Imagine government requiring any business to delivery
real time data on customer behavior, from doctors to restaurants, Walmart to
dispensaries.

The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution is about privacy FROM GOVERNMENT
INTRUSION, which is precisely what this is, an intrusive act on the part of
government.

Why don't they devote their time and effort to actually fixing the crumbling
infrastructure here? It's a joke. There are third world countries that have
better streets and highways than we have in certain parts of Los Angeles.

~~~
scelerat
Fourth amendment deals with "unreasonable" search and seizure. It could be
argued that municipalities requesting data on usage of infrastructure they
must maintain, fund and plan for is not unreasonable.

~~~
DuskStar
By that metric, requiring that all cars report their location live to the
municipal government would be OK - after all, that car is using the roads they
maintain. For that matter, why limit it to cars? Require that every citizen
report their GPS location 24/7 - if you're out of the house you're using their
roads or sidewalks, and if you're in the house you're using city
water/power/sewer.

~~~
scelerat
Indeed, I don't entirely disagree.

------
salawat
Don't taxi, bus, and trucking companies do this? I always thought any public
transit actor had to do this to provide data to be used by DoT for traffic
engineering. Like I know that traffic engineers tweak limits of public
transport asset density as part of planning traffic flows.

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is just Uber getting rolled into the
infrastructure they should have been participating in anyway.

I'm not terribly thrilled about the implications; but it's also not surprising
at all that a transit service provider would have to guarantee to a locality
that they can locate their assets.

~~~
malandrew
> it's also not surprising at all that a transit service provider would have
> to guarantee to a locality that they can locate their assets.

That requirement can easily be met by occasional random spot checks a few
times a month. There's no need for realtime reporting.

------
badrabbit
Why GPS? Why not low tech transponders? They're precise enough to help you
locate a scooter but too imprecise for navigation or tracking the exact path
someone took. Especially if they don't ping frequently.

~~~
alistairSH
Partly because some cities have no-ride zones where scooters and bikes are
banned outright or supposed to be speed limited.

The boardwalks in some CA cities fall into this category. You can ride in the
street parallel at whatever speed you want. But on the boardwalk, you're
capped at X mph (usually <10mph, if I'm remembering correctly).

Yes, the city could just use traffic enforcement to issue tickets. But, I'm
inclined to have software enforcement and not hire more traffic cops.

~~~
mschuster91
> But, I'm inclined to have software enforcement and not hire more traffic
> cops.

I can contest what a police officer is claiming in a court. With automated
systems? Good luck.

If society wants to enforce traffic laws, it should hire more cops, not
hackable AI blackboxes.

~~~
alistairSH
The software doesn't issue you a ticket, so there's nothing to contest. It
simple slows the scooter down in the restricted zone. And if the software is
wrong, you stop using the system, and move to a vendor that makes it work.

Anyway, not claiming this is ideal. Just sounds (without much thought) like a
better solution than traffic cops.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Maybe if we're going to go down this route, we should have these systems in
our cars, too.

~~~
scelerat
No one wants to go there because _freedom_ but I (reluctantly) agree. There
might be safety considerations, too, but I'm guessing they are mostly edge
case type issues

~~~
samatman
There are massive safety implications.

We expect pressing the gas pedal to have a predictable outcome.

Subverting this expectation is potentially quite dangerous.

Consider that someone might temporarily exceed the speed limit while passing,
legally, in the oncoming traffic lane. Then this system kicks in, they can't
pass, and get hit by oncoming traffic because they're pinned by the car they
tried to pass.

~~~
alistairSH
Can you legally exceed the speed limit to pass? I don't believe you can (at
least not in most locales).

------
Mikeb85
Uber doesn't really have a leg to stand on. Cities use traffic data to
determine things like traffic light synchronisation, where to build or expand
roads, speed limits, etc...

In this case, they're allowing electric personal vehicles on city sidewalks,
information would be useful to determine if they should create bike lanes,
change traffic signal patterns, etc... Not to mention, at the end of the day,
cities do have control over what drives where, how fast, etc...

------
angleofrepose
The general conversation of the comments here is confusing.

> 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_...](https://idlewords.com/talks/senate_testimony.2019.5.htm#two_views)

~~~
chance_state
> 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 actually laughed out loud when I read this. Incredible that these companies
have the audacity to take that stance.

"It is only we, the technocratic elite, that should be allowed to know where
people live, work, socialize or worship, and to use that information to
extract even more data and even more profit from these people. The city
government should sweep the streets and mind its own business."

~~~
marcoperaza
I’m confused that HN is suddenly enthralled with giving real time location
data to the government. There was actually a recent Supreme Court case that
extended Fourth Amendment protections to such data.

~~~
angleofrepose
If that were the case:

> enthralled with giving real time location data to the government

Then I would completely agree with you, but as I point out in the first except
of my original comment, this IS NOT the case. Maybe the reporting is wrong,
and therefore I'm wrong, but I'm frustrated by the general consensus in this
thread being what you just wrote. That is not the situation. And similarly,
I'm frustrated by the implicit defense of ride share companies here. As I end
my original comment, I distrust both municipalities and these ride share
companies. I'm not enthralled by anything here.

------
jevans22
Uber doesn't really have a say though, right? If the law says they need to
provide the data, they need to provide the data.

------
mentat
Feels like the buried lede is that all the other companies already sold out
all the private information of their riders.

------
sailfast
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.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
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.

~~~
supercanuck
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!

~~~
lone_haxx0r
> 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.

~~~
my_usernam3
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.

~~~
tqi
I think it's more complicated than that though.

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-
sco...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-scooter-
surveillance-privacy-20190315-story.html)

> 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.

------
justinzollars
LA should focus on its massive homeless problem. 50,000 people sleep on the
streets every night in LA.

~~~
reaperducer
Remarkably, a government of the size and complexity of Los Angeles is able to
do more than one thing at a time.

~~~
justinzollars
ah right. They can simultaneously fail business and the homeless. #concurrency

