The Majority of Scooters in LA Are Going To Share Your Location With the City (cnet.com) 64
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.
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Yes, working for a living. That's something we all shouldn't be doing according to a large portion of the population. Instead, we should vote the correct politicians in office to give us all the food, housing, and medical attention we need without having to earn it.
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The soon to be wildly socially unacceptable e-scooter. Corrupt lobbyists got that one past. So you are going to mix, people entering and exiting buildings with motorised scooters that can do 20Km/h and carry 100kg, can you idiots not see the problems. The more you have the more problems you will have and the more actual knock down brawls you will have. In the typical American style after an incident, I paid for the scooter and I have more right to the footpath, get out of the way. Idiots will be bowling ove
Got a few networked Fusion Centers waiting? (Score:3, Interesting)
Usage patterns of movement?
What roads, pathways, parks need upgrades due to changes in transport usage?
Who is using what transport, where and when?
High Intensity Crime Areas? Will police get real time movements? Like with CCTV on a nice new GUI and map?
Have that new police ghost car all ready?
Will that connection with a city be worth the fake ID detection risk? To stay in a networked city with fake ID?
Got a fake ID? Using/sharing parts of another ID? Created an ID when it was more easy?
CCTV and lots of extra facial recognition will be ready to ensure all transport is working well.
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Posts like the gp seem to be AI bot experiments on responding.
So the real question is how does the training feedback handle post responses? Mod level can work as reward or punishment, and so can number of replies...
Oh shit, I'm helping it out.
Here's what they're collecting (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
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Why doesn't the city just require everyone to put a GPS on their cars to ensure they are parked in permitted locations?
It would be hard for this to be a less apt analogy. Car owners are incentivized not to park those cars in the middle of the street or the middle of the sidewalk because they, the owner, will be ticketed and/or will have to pay to retrieve the car from impound, and in the meantime won't be able to get where they want to go. Someone who just spent a buck riding a company's scooter around on the sidewalk that they're never going to need again (if for no other reason than there are hundreds of others around i
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"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."
Wait, didn't the article say the tracking was just for 'city planning' ?
But here they state that it's for finding parking offenders.
So this is already being abused outside of it's stated scope.
"Route information is provided to the city after the trip has completed and within 24 hours and it doesn't include the n
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... the devices will certainly send some sort of ID which can then be related to other databases which DO contain your name, age, gender, address, race, political stance and a whole lot more stuff about you you were never told was being collected. So your post seems rather pathetically ignorant about the true nature of these kinds of systems and how they are and will be used against you by your government.
I came here to say pretty much what SlaveToTheGrind said, but you make a valid argument, and I'm re-considering my position as a result. I suspect you were modded down because of that gratuitous 'pathetically ignorant' jab you tossed in at the end. Raising a point is sufficient - there's no need to slam it down on the head of whomever you disagree with.
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It was more meant as an observation than an insult.
I really think its pathetically ignorant if in this day and age you don't know databases can be combined. This has been an issue for the last, i dunno, 15~20 years or so.
There is real pathos to this type of ignorance, just as there is with arguments from climate change deniers and flat-earthers.
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Actually you aren't. Government tracking is misused in dictatorships to help those in power stay in power.
Corporate tracking (beyond what is needed to make the system optimal) has two prongs:
1. Selling targeted advertising
2. Government getting access without a warrant
The former is small potatoes compared to the latter. Google and Amazon are only interested in whether you are more interested in Pampers or Depends.
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Btw because I posted the words Pampers and Depends, I can expect to see advertising for them on other web sites later today. Or even right now already.
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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.
That's a ridiculous thing to say. Prepare for ridicule!
You have to pay for these services somehow. You also will likely ride past various cameras. Your identity can reasonably be correlated with your trip. Your quote doesn't say they're not passing identifiable info, only that it doesn't include specific info.
It's just one extra step (Score:2)
Sure sure - until the usage database is cross referenced with the payment database. I'm sure the NSA will never think of doing that.
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Can't wait to say "We're #1!"
In oppression. Surveillance. Civilian control.
Clinical Paranoia.
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A tent city block the pathway again?
Parked RV in bicycle lane?
Hilarity insues (Score:3)
Scooter RENTAL companies, not scooter companies. (Score:2)
Relax, LA is not enforcing data sharing on all scooter manufacturers, this is just for the rental companies that offer scooters within that specific city.
Don't use them (Score:2)
Fucking paranoids (Score:2)
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I really don't understand how people are allowed to continue in their position after writing and approving headlines like these. And I don't understand how their bosses are allowed to continue in their position after not dealing with their employees' appalling inability to think critically or write functionally.
As you point out, the scooters won't share "your" location with LA, only theirs. On top of that, "your" is a very, very small number of people (scooter riders in LA) compared to all the people who wi
Fucking moron (Score:2)
The scooters don't share your location with LA, they share their location. Only the scooter company tracks where you are going - which you somehow don't care about.
The scooter company knows who took that trip. LA can use that information to determine that a scooter user was in the area, then use a warrant to get the identifying information. They can also correlate the scooter data with other data in order to identify users.