Critics Raise Privacy Concerns Over Scooter Data Collection

Critics are raising privacy concerns over the amount of data being collected by shared scooter services and the cities in which they operate.

That’s according to a new report from Bloomberg Business Week, which examined the issue through the lens of cases involving Uber and Lyft and the cities of Austin and Los Angeles.

When people rent scooters in these cities, the companies that operate them record information about the scooter’s journey, which the local government uses to make sure the company is sticking to regulations or to plot future bike lanes.

In Los Angeles in 2018, the city’s Department of Transportation issued permits that required companies to share real-time geolocation data about each trip and the full ride route within 24 hours. Uber sued the city over these regulations in 2020, but ended up dropping the litigation after it sold its bike- and scooter-sharing business later that year.

“Real-time, in-trip geolocation data is not good for planning bike lanes, or figuring out deployment patterns in different neighborhoods, or dealing with complaints about devices that are parked in the wrong place, or monitoring compliance with permit requirements,” the company’s lawsuit said. “What it is good for is surveillance.”

Read more: Uber Files Federal Suit Against LA Over Data Demands

There is also an ongoing case that was filed by the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation. A judge dismissed the suit earlier this year, but the two plaintiffs are appealing, Bloomberg said.

According to the news service, a public records request uncovered emails between officials in Austin that showed concerns about privacy issues after the collection standard was widened without adding more safety measures. In August, Austin withdrew from the Open Mobility Foundation.

“We know that the OMF is also concerned about personal privacy and transparency, but it is clear that the OMF’s vision for managing shared mobility services and these issues has diverged significantly from our own,” Robert Spillar, head of Austin’s transportation department, wrote to the foundation on Aug. 5.

There’s still tension over who should be handling the data from these vehicles, said Molly Turner, a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “Technology may have made it easier to measure urban life, but it doesn’t mean we’ve reached a collective agreement about what aspects of urban life should be measured, or by whom,” she said.