LA wants to track data on scooter users. Is it a dangerous precedent?
LA wants to track data on scooter users. Is it a
dangerous precedent?
By Laura J. Nelson Mar 21, 2019
LOS ANGELES — The abrupt arrival of thousands of electric
scooters in Los Angeles last year has already forced public, sometimes ugly,
disagreements about how the city’s street and sidewalk space should be used.
As Los Angeles prepares to launch a one-year program
legalizing the vehicles, they’re now sparking a fight about data privacy.
Under new city rules, every company with a permit to rent
out scooters or shared bicycles must send data to transportation officials on
every trip the vehicles make.
That location data will help the city determine which
companies are flouting new operating rules that cap the number of vehicles and
restrict where they can be parked, officials said. Tracking them electronically
will also be faster and cheaper than paying employees to look for rogue
vehicles blocking sidewalks or wheelchair ramps.
“The public has to be reassured that there is somebody
who is keeping a close eye,” said Seleta Reynolds, the Transportation
Department’s general manager, who is overseeing the initiative.
The problem, opponents say, is that Los Angeles wants to
keep too close an eye.
Uber, which operates Jump scooters, and several data
privacy organizations have said the city’s policy constitutes government
surveillance and would yield far more information about bicyclists and scooter
riders than is available for drivers or transit commuters.
Many scooter trips in Los Angeles are tourist joyrides,
but public officials say the zippy electric devices could become a meaningful
transportation alternative that helps commuters get to transit stops and run
errands without driving.
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.
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 digital rights group.
The vast trove of information could reveal many personal
details of regular riders — such as whom they’re dating and where they worship
— and could be misused if it fell into the wrong hands, the nonprofit Center
for Democracy and Technology told the city in a letter.
The New York Times recently analyzed a database
containing the movements of more than 1 million cellphones and easily
identified individual people, including an aide to New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio
and a middle school teacher whose phone reported her home address, her
workplace and the location of her Weight Watchers meetings.
The scooter and bicycle data will be classified as
sensitive and confidential, which means information on individual rides will
not be published on the city’s open data website or subject to public records
requests, Reynolds said.
The data would be provided to police officers with a
warrant, and could be revealed in response to a subpoena, the city said.
Some form of the data will also be shared with other city
agencies “at the level of aggregation that we think they need,” Reynolds said,
including city planners and the sanitation workers tasked with removing
scooters from sidewalks, wheelchair ramps and other rights-of-way.
Uber spokesman Davis White said the city has not answered
“fundamental questions” about how the city will safeguard the data. Uber is
willing to share some data with L.A., he said, “so long as user privacy is
protected.”
The city has urged California regulators to adopt a
similar model for trips made in Uber and Lyft cars, which would reveal vast
amounts of information on the companies’ operations statewide — data cities
badly want to review, but that the companies have jealously guarded.
The dispute highlights the lack of trust between cities
and transportation companies that have typically moved into new markets without
asking permission, working with local officials or sharing details on their
operations.
“I would trust Uber as far as I could throw one of their
cars, and you can quote me on that,” Gillula said. But that doesn’t mean their
concerns are without merit, he added.
The city plans to require companies to submit ride data
starting April 15. Uber is pushing for a model that would require the companies
to share less detailed information, and has urged the Transportation Department
to submit the plan to the L.A. City Council for debate.
Allowing companies to summarize their own data is akin to
“letting the fox watch the hen house,” Reynolds said, adding that she is
“somewhat skeptical” that the companies would provide accurate information on
their own.
Uber infamously used a program called Greyball that
served up a fake version of the ride-hailing app to regulatory officials to
stymie enforcement efforts. Seattle, which had an early study of bike-share
data, found that the companies’ self-reported data had a “high margin of
error,” Reynolds said.
Aggregated data could also pose problems for L.A.’s pilot
program, which caps companies at 3,000 scooters or bikes citywide, but offers a
bonus of up to 7,500 more if they are deployed in low-income neighborhoods, she
said. Tracking that compliance will require granular data that is “defensible
and credible.”
“None of the things they’ve outlined in terms of
transportation planning, or enforcement, or oversight requires keeping a record
of where everyone has traveled,” said Kevin Webb, the co-director of Shared
Streets, a nonprofit organization that helps cities and companies share
transportation data, and that has accepted funding from Uber and Lyft.
One option, he said, would be to create a confidential
database where trip data could be stored and stripped of some identifying
information before being sent to the city. The database would record who shared
the data, and what information was shared, creating a log that could be
audited.
“The city is framing this as a debate with the
companies,” Webb said. “But really, it’s between the city and all the citizens
who are customers whose data and lives are being swept up in this fight.”
©2019 Los Angeles Times
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