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The Majority of Scooters in LA Are Going To Share Your Location With the City (cnet.com)
Los Angeles is pumping the brakes on scooter companies that won't tell it what part of the city you're wheeling around. From a report: Last September, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation said it would require all scooter companies to provide real-time location data on the vehicles to help with city planning purposes. The data is collected by GPS on the scooters. 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. Privacy advocacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Technology and Democracy, have publicly spoken out about these data requests.
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. Companies that declined to provide the data were given a 30-day provisional permit to operate in LA, which were handed out last week, while those that agreed to hand over anonymized location data received permits for a full year.
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. Companies that declined to provide the data were given a 30-day provisional permit to operate in LA, which were handed out last week, while those that agreed to hand over anonymized location data received permits for a full year.
Typical clickbait headline. Nothing is being reported during the trip, and the minimal information being reported doesn't include any personally identifiable information so there's no opportunity for misuse of the data down the road. I don't see the issue -- the city certainly has an interest in knowing where these things are being littered about when they're not in use. FTFA:
"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. "LADOT is asking companies to provide the start trip and end trip of every vehicle as trips start and as trips end to make sure scooters are being parked legally and within the terms of the permit."