The majority of scooters in LA are going to share your location with the city

guest · Mar 21, 2019

The majority of scooters in LA are going to share your location with the city
For every three scooters that don’t share GPS data, 10 will
March 21, 2019
https://www.cnet.com/news/the-major...e-going-to-share-your-location-with-the-city/

Los Angeles is pumping the brakes on scooter companies that won't tell it what part of the city you're wheeling around.

"Route information is provided to the city after the trip has completed and within 24 hours and it doesn't include the name, age, gender, address of the user," the agency said in a statement.
The requirement raised privacy concerns because sensitive data would be handled by the city government. The government partners with data aggregators, like Remix, to analyze that information.

It still isn't clear how long LADOT retains the location data, and there aren't public details on what aggregators can do with that information. What is clear: Companies that don't share the data won't be allowed to put as many scooters on the streets as those that do.
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"We are alarmed when cities force operators to share sensitive location data with third-party for-profit data firms, without stipulating that the firms do not use that data to meet private business goals," a Spin spokesperson said.
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guest · Oct 29, 2019

Uber sues Los Angeles to keep scooter location data private
The ride-hailing company doesn't want to share everything with the city's government
October 28, 2019
https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-sues-los-angeles-to-keep-scooter-location-data-private/

Los Angeles wants a peek at the location data collected by the Uber scooters in its city. The company, better known for its ride-hailing service, doesn't want to give up the information, and is taking legal action to keep the data private.

On Monday, Uber filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles after months of refusing to give the Department of Transportation access to its scooter location data. In September 2018, LADOT instituted a requirement for all scooter companies to provide location data on the vehicles. The city said it was for city planning purposes.

"Independent privacy experts have clearly and repeatedly asserted that a customer's geolocation is personally identifiable information, and -- consistent with a recent legal opinion by the California legislative counsel -- we believe that LADOT's requirements to share sensitive on-trip data compromises our customers' expectations of data privacy and security," an Uber spokesperson said.
"Therefore, we had no choice but to pursue a legal challenge [...]"
The lawsuit raises concerns with how LADOT is handling people's location data, arguing that the city agency didn't take necessary measures to protect that information.
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guest · Mar 18, 2020

Uber plans to file federal lawsuit against Los Angeles over location data privacy
March 17, 2020
https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-plan...ainst-los-angeles-over-location-data-privacy/

Uber's legal battle with Los Angeles is heating up, as the ride-hailing company looks to take its data privacy dispute to federal court. The company's scooter service's permit is suspended in LA after Uber refused to provide the Los Angeles Department of Transportation with real-time location data on its riders.

The lawsuit was intended to file on Monday, and addressed the LADOT's requests for real-time location data, a policy the city instituted in September 2018 for scooter companies. An Uber spokesman said that the company had full intention to file the lawsuit on Monday, but faced sudden delays hours before. The spokesman did not explain what the delay was.
The company still intends on filing the federal lawsuit by this week, the spokesman said.

The data requests are a part of the city's "Mobility Data Specification" plan -- which cities like Seattle, Austin, Texas and Louisville, Kentucky have also adopted.
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Uber provides several cities with its scooter location data, but argues that Los Angeles's request goes too far by asking for real-time information.
Uber had originally tried to sue LADOT last October, but delayed it over an administrative process with the city agency in attempt to negotiate the data policy.

The company has attempted to compromise with LADOT, offering geolocation data but only after 24 hours from when the trip started and stopped. Uber argued that this type of data would allow for LADOT to use data for planning purposes, without affecting its users' privacy.
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guest · Mar 30, 2020

Uber sues L.A. over real-time location data for scooters and bikes
March 25, 2020
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-25/uber-sues-los-angeles-scooters-data-privacy

The Silicon Valley giant, which owns the scooter and bike company Jump, escalated that battle on Tuesday by suing the city in federal court.

Uber’s 44-page complaint argues that L.A.'s data-sharing requirements violate the protections against unreasonable search and seizure in the 4th Amendment and the California Constitution.
The lawsuit has the potential to shape how cities across the United States balance oversight with user privacy as shared bicycle and scooter companies proliferate.

“This is unfortunate timing on the part of Uber, as the city’s resources are consumed by responding to the pandemic,” Llanos said in an email.
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guest · May 31, 2020

D.C. groups oppose city's real-time vehicle location tracking policy
May 29, 2020
https://statescoop.com/washington-dc-groups-oppose-citys-real-time-vehicle-location-tracking-policy/

A Washington, D.C., neighborhood advocacy group passed a resolution this week opposing the city’s adoption of a data-sharing process that would allow it to track the location of ride-hailing vehicles, dockless e-scooters, bicycles and mopeds in near-real time.
The group, called the DC Federation of Civic Associations, is the latest to voice opposition to an amendment made in February by the D.C. Department of Transportation.

A change to the department’s “2020 Dockless Bike and Scooter Share” policy included a requirement that ride-hailing and dockless vehicle companies like Uber, Lyft and Lime share trip data “as close to real-time as possible, but with no more than a 3 minute delay.”

“The District Department of Transportation (DDOT)’s new requirement that scooter and e-bike providers share granular, near-real-time location data of users poses a serious privacy threat to District residents, and has no real justification. Such data could be used to track individuals throughout the District [...] ” said Lauren Sarkesian, senior counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute in a press release.
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guest · Jun 8, 2020

The ACLU is suing Los Angeles over its controversial scooter tracking system
MDS, or Mobility Data Specification, is used by LADOT to track all of the city’s electric scooters
June 8, 2020
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21284490/aclu-ladot-mds-lawsuit-scooter-tracking-uber

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Los Angeles Monday over the city’s requirement that electric scooter rental companies provide anonymized real-time location data.

The lawsuit centers on the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s use of a digital tool called the Mobility Data Specification program (MDS), which the agency created as a way to track and regulate electric scooters operating on its streets.
MDS provides the city with data on where each bike and scooter trip starts, the route each vehicle takes, and where each trip ends. LADOT has said the data won’t be shared with police without a warrant, won’t contain personal identifiers, and won’t be subject to public records requests. But the ACLU says the data tool is unconstitutional.

“Renting an electric scooter should not give the government the right to trace your every move — where you start, where you end, and all stops, twists, and turns in between,” the ACLU said in a statement.
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ACLU: Privacy Lawsuit: Your Scooter GPS Data is Being Tracked

The lawsuit, brought against the City of LA. and LADOT, seeks an injunction to end all prospective collection, storage, or maintenance of precise location data acquired through MDS.
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EFF: EFF, ACLU File Lawsuit to Stop Los Angeles From Collecting Real-Time Tracking Data on Citizens’ Rental Scooters

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today joined the ACLU of northern and southern California in filing a lawsuit against Los Angeles for collecting detailed trip data and real-time locations and routes of the electric scooters thousands of residents use each day.
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guest · Jul 7, 2020

Los Angeles used Signal to plan controversial vehicle-tracking program
July 6, 2020
https://statescoop.com/los-angeles-dot-signal-mobility-data-specifications/

Officials at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation appear to have used an encrypted messaging service to discuss a vehicle-tracking program that some civil liberties groups say could be used to identify individual drivers.

According to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Daily News, the department’s general manager, Seleta Reynolds, along with other department employees, spoke with technology consultants using Signal, an encrypted messaging app that allows users to delete messages automatically.
The officials reportedly used the app to discuss a controversial program that allows cities, including Los Angeles, to collect trip data from dockless bikes, scooters, mopeds and ride-hailing vehicles in near real time.
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“It’s both disturbing and deeply hypocritical that the same city officials who want to track the personal movements of Angelenos are taking such extraordinary steps to shield their work from public view. [...],” according to a statement from Communities Against Rider Surveillance, a group of civil liberties advocates and mobility companies that formed in February to protest MDS.

California state law mandates that records related to public business, like LADOT programs, be kept for at least two years, but after the Los Angeles Daily News’ records request, LADOT said it found no records of Reynolds’ Signal messages related to MDS.
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LADOT general manager used encrypted messaging for controversial tracking program

“Signal, and other encrypted apps, are akin to keeping a shredder in the office and shredding every document that passes through a public official’s desk,” said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. “If public officials are using apps that either destroy records automatically, or otherwise make them inaccessible, they are violating the Public Records Act.”
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guest · Aug 4, 2021

EPIC & CDT Amicus Brief Highlights Dangers of Unchecked Government Collection of E-Scooter Location Data
August 3, 2021
https://epic.org/2021/08/epic-cdt-amicus-brief-highligh.html

EPIC and the Center for Democracy & Technology have filed an amicus brief supporting Los Angeles residents' court fight against a city initiative to collect detailed location information on all individual e-scooter trips taken in Los Angeles.

The lawsuit is currently on appeal after the trial court dismissed the case because it found no privacy interest in the data. EPIC and CDT's amicus brief describes how Los Angeles spearheaded a new data collection pipeline called the Mobility Data Specification (or MDS) to standardize the location data that ride share providers collect so that the data can easily be disclosed to governments for analysis—and, potentially, surveillance.
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