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Privacy Technology

Uber Embraces Videotaping Rides, Raising Privacy Concerns (nytimes.com) 80

Posted by msmash from the watch-out dept.
For several months, some Uber passengers in Texas have been recorded on video as they have been driven to their destinations. The video has been stored online and could have been reviewed by members of Uber's safety staff if the driver had reported a problem with the passenger. From a report: The video recordings are part of a broad initiative at the ride-hailing company to capture more objective data about what happens inside vehicles during Uber trips, where disputes between riders and drivers often play out without witnesses. Uber has experienced years of complaints about the safety of its riders and drivers, who are often left to sort out episodes without the help of the company, and it has settled lawsuits claiming that it does not do enough to protect passengers. But as Uber increases the practice of recording drivers and passengers, the company is facing new privacy pressures. "Uber already has this treasure trove of highly personal data about people," said Camille Fischer, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "When you pair surveillance during those trips, whether it's over the driver or over the passenger, you are getting a more fine-tuned snapshot of people's daily lives." Uber began the video recording program in Texas in July, and is conducting smaller tests of the program in Florida and Tennessee. In November, it announced a similar effort in Brazil and Mexico to allow riders and drivers to record audio during a trip.
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Uber Embraces Videotaping Rides, Raising Privacy Concerns More

Uber Embraces Videotaping Rides, Raising Privacy Concerns

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  • Does this mean new season of Taxi Cab Confessions? (Score:5, Funny)

    by paralumina01 ( 6276944 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @12:06PM (#59439196)
    n/t
  • I can only see this abused for the kind of stuff that ends up on pornhub. Me and my BFF have gotten a little frisky on a long ride home after a hard night of drinking...peeping Toms, anyone? ;)
    • Yep -- there needs to be a clear mechanism for encryption and automatic deletion after a certain time if no incident is reported (I think the audio recording has this, not sure about video).
    • Do you think that a driver couldn't have a separate, independent video and audio recording device in his or her vehicle? What is stopping them from doing it on their own?

      • The law and harsh punishments.
        Besides, a small percentage of drivers doing something illegal is one thing. Mass surveillance is another.

        • What law? Seriously, find me a law that says the driver-owner of a vehicle (ride share or otherwise) can't have video surveillance inside the vehicle. Outside a handful of state, audio recording wouldn't be illegal either.

    • Maybe don't do that then? Many taxis have taken to videoing everything that happens in them as well to protect the drivers. It's not your private car.

  • No privacy in a public place (Score:5, Informative)

    by chuckugly ( 2030942 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @12:06PM (#59439202)

    There is no reasonable privacy in a public place - just require notices that the ride is recorded.

    • Re:No privacy in a public place (Score:5, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @12:13PM (#59439234)

      Time to pass laws requiring respect for privacy in public places and public accomodations. Love that the EU is gradually doing so.

      I'd support a reasonable compromise -- something like: in the absence of a criminal investigation or lawsuit, footage must be deleted within 30-60 days.

      There's no reason why all of our public behavior: what we talked about, whom we kissed in a cab (rideshare) 20 years ago, how we looked, etc, needs to become part of our permanent record.

      • Do you have the same expectation for banks and gas stations? If not, why not? If so, why so?

        • Yes: banks and gas stations should also be subject to strict data-retention limits. There's a public interest in catching and deterring robbery, but it shouldn't mean that everyone entering or exiting one of those establishments should be logged forever.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )

            Yes: banks and gas stations should also be subject to strict data-retention limits. There's a public interest in catching and deterring robbery, but it shouldn't mean that everyone entering or exiting one of those establishments should be logged forever.

            More importantly, there should be restrictions in these semi-public places on how those recordings can be used and released. I'm all for security cameras in taxis and ride shares to protect the drivers, but they should only be allowed to release them to law enforcement and insurance companies, not publicly at a whim. And I agree, data retention should also be included. The maximum should be the time limit a customer has to sue you for something.

          • Yes: banks and gas stations should also be subject to strict data-retention limits

            Okay, but why?

            I'm asking because it seems like these are public places, however they're not. They're private places. I have cameras all around my house outside. Some are pointing out into the street, others are simply viewing my yard. As a private camera owner, should there be some inherent requirement for me to not keep the videos for a certain amount of time? Good luck enforcing that.

            • They're places of public accomodation. Think of it this way: you can choose not to let someone whose ethnicity you don't like into your house. As a bank or gas station, you can't legally choose not to serve people of certain ethnicities. Places of public accomodation should be held to stricter standards as far as customer privacy. As far as your footage pointing out onto the street, there should be limits on continuous recording of public places ... you should be required to delete it after 30-60 days.

              • Think of it this way: you can choose not to let someone whose ethnicity you don't like into your house. As a bank or gas station, you can't legally choose not to serve people of certain ethnicities.

                Under federal anti-discrimination laws, businesses can refuse service to any person for any reason, unless the business is discriminating against a protected class.

                At the national level, protected classes include:

                Race or color
                National origin or citizenship status
                Religion or creed
                Sex
                Age
                Disability, pregnancy, or genetic information
                Veteran status
                Some states, like California, have more protected classes than the federal baseline. In addition to the above factors, California adds:

                Marital status
                Sexual orientatio

                • The point is that laws relating to BUSINESSES are more restrictive than homes, and justifiably so. What you can do in your home isn't an argument to allow businesses unlimited rights to keep surveillance footage.

                  • Dunno. After reading over several things about this, I think that if you invited a friend over for dinner, and that friend wanted to bring another friend, one that you've not met, and you agree, but when they get there you don't allow the new friend inside your house due to their ethnicity, and they are forced away with no food, they can probably successfully sue you.

                    As far as data retention, how would that be enforceable?

      • Or one could just behave respectably when in public. Shocking concept but it's just crazy enough that it might work.

        • Different people have different standards of respectability, and standards change. Things like cheating on your spouse (which Americans are generally too strict about anyway), often don't give the whole story -- there are such things as marriages without love and abusive marriages. A society where "respectability" is enforced will become an awfully boring society. I'd rather enforce spontaneity by limiting retention of footage, even if it reduces safety a tiny bit -- I'm not a coward who desires a zero-c

          • (which Americans are generally too strict about anyway)

            Just from the tone of that aside I'd say you're fairly ignorant of how much side car riding Americans do.

            • I know they do, but they moralize far too much about it when other people get caught. Hypocritical bastiges all.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by v1 ( 525388 )

        I'd support a reasonable compromise

        There already IS a compromise in place. It's called "if you're outside your house, and not in a bathroom or changing room or hotel room, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy."

        Being in public means being in public. Cabs are public. Uber is public.

        I also don't get why anyone thinks forcing people to erase evidence of your being in public after a certain period of time serves any purpose. Though sadly we are seeing "right to be forgotten" being pushed more and m

        • That's not true -- there is an expectation of privacy in public. Someone following you with a camera 24/7 could likely be sued (or arrested in some places) for stalking. As cameras become ubiquitous, you end up with records of everything, so it becomes functionally identical to my example, and the "right to be forgotten" becomes a good thing. The problem is that people are generally unforgiving, moralizing pieces of rubbish. So the next best thing to forgiveness is the ability to forget.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vux984 ( 928602 )

          "Being in public means being in public."

          Being in public doesn't mean consent to be recorded and tracked and to have all your actions collated and published and commented on. Its never meant that before. It certainly didn't mean that 50 years ago. Technology couldn't do it, and anyone trying to do it manually would have been arrested for stalking you.

          Just because technology can now do it to everyone at once doesn't make it somehow "ok" now.

          What's your ideal future hold? Chinese social credit scores. That's dystopian. You think that's freedom?

      • I generally agree with you. However:

        There's no reason why all of our public behavior: what we talked about, whom we kissed in a cab (rideshare) 20 years ago, how we looked, etc, needs to become part of our permanent record.

        The problem isn't that whom we kissed in a cab 20 years ago might embarrass us if it becomes public. The problem is that whom we kissed in a cab 20 years ago is considered embarrassing in the first place. One of the drawbacks of privacy is that it allows us to hide our failures, while

      • Sure, and the minute that we can guarantee that passengers in taxis and ubers won't threaten the drivers or worse, then we can do that. But since that currently doesn't happen, the drivers and businesses need to protect their interests.

        https://nypost.com/2017/04/05/passenger-from-hell-threatens-to-accuse-uber-driver-of-rape/

        https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-cabbie-sues-passengers-over-false-assault-allegations-1.797780

        https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/01/23/sacramento-uber-drivers-battl

        • And they would still have the right to protect their interests, by being allowed to keep footage for no longer than a specific time unless there's a legal case involved.

    • How's that bootleather taste?

    • wiretapping and eavesdropping laws vary from state to state, the audio portion of these recordings could easily be illegal in many "2 party consent" states: https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-con... [mwl-law.com]

  • It's hard to get VHS copies uploaded to the internet.

    • It's hard to get VHS copies uploaded to the internet.

      Not too difficult actually. I've got a working Sharp VHS/DVD recorder, it can dub VHS to DVD-Rs which my PC DVD drive can rip. I'm in the process of transferring old family VHS videos to USB stick for my sister.

      Kudos to Sharp for keeping the relevant manuals on line and for the equipment still working perfectly despite not being used for 10 years.

      NB. These recorders are available on ebay from less than $100/£100 if you have any precious VHS ta

      • It's not impossible - I used a Replay TV paired with a VHS to digitize some old VHS recordings then pulled the digital stream to my PC.
        But unless you're a tech-head like us....
        (The irony was that some of these recordings were original airings of shows like ST:TNG - I didn't digitize them for the shows themselves but for the ads and bumpers and skipped over the recordings I had painstakingly sat through and paused through the commercials!)

    • I think the only way to truly protect privacy in this instance is to require the use of Betamax.
  • Isn't Uber/Lyft and others still considered the same? I'm no expert on transportation services but I believe most if not all public transportation services have "Cameras". I really hope this doesn't become an entitlement issue because people want to act stupid without burden of proof. I actually hope Uber and Lyft are required to have video surveillance as a public safety measure for all parties.
  • "Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid, or something like that?" "Oh no, it's just that they're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future."

  • Do we still use the word "videotape?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      I'm not sure about videotape, but young YouTubers regularly use the word "film" to mean "record", so it wouldn't surprise me.

  • Dash cams are a necessary evil (Score:3)

    by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @12:44PM (#59439408)

    There was a well-publicized incident in which a drunken, verbally abusive passenger threatened her Uber driver by saying "I'm going to scream out the window that you raped me". (https://woldcnews.com/1590075/uber-permanently-bans-bronx-woman-who-falsely-accused-driver-of-rape/). What saved the driver was dashcam footage.

    If I were driving for Lyft/Uber, there's no way I'd get in the car without a dashcam.

    • And from the other side, I've heard a common scam for Uber drivers has been to claim you threw up in their car when you didn't to collect a cleanup fee.

      It really just boils down to each actor not being able to trust the other.

  • It protects everyone involved.

    The flip side is that now you need protection from whoever holds the recordings.

    The phone should be capable of operating both cameras at once (AFAIK most can't, at least not both in video mode at once, but I've been wrong before) and it should be mounted where it can see in and out at the same time. Both videos should be encrypted with threshold encryption [wikipedia.org] with three keys, and requiring 2/3 of the keys to decrypt, so that any of driver+passenger, driver+uber, or passenger+uber

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by anegg ( 1390659 )
      In order to allay fears about the misuse of video records of passengers, perhaps the system should only provide a visual record of the driver and the area immediately around the driver, excluding the passenger area. Audio recording would be from the entire cabin. Wouldn't this provide enough information to adjudicate claims of driver misbehavior while simultaneously protecting the privacy of the passenger(s)? Unless of course the passengers are totally out of control.

      • Wouldn't this provide enough information to adjudicate claims of driver misbehavior while simultaneously protecting the privacy of the passenger(s)?

        Sometimes the passengers act inappropriately. The drivers need protection, too.

        • Totalitarian surveillance will save us all from inappropriate behavior!!

          • No one's stopping you from starting a competing service that forbids drivers from recording passengers or passengers from recording drivers. You aren't forced to take Uber or any other service if you don't like the way they do business either. Vote with your feet and wallet.

            On a side note, I do find the whole debate a bit humorous. I wonder how some of the people arguing for or against this would feel if their arguments were applied to firearms. I've seen a few people who I'm quite certain would argue th
      • Do you trust Goober to treat the audio recordings with respect? Goober is primarily a big-pig data corepiration. They have a gold mine if they can run the recordings through voice-recognition and sell what you talked about to advertisers and other marketeering scum.

  • Anyone ridden public transportation? (Score:3)

    by pgmrdlm ( 1642279 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @01:11PM (#59439564) Journal
    If so, you know that there is video there already. Yes, there are signs posted easily seen that let you know. Also, they have screens visible to all riders of what is on the video.

    If the uber solution is roughly the same, I see no issue with this. It protects both the drivers of being falsely accused of actions, and also the riders from incorrect actions by the riders.

    Somehow, I would like it to be when a ride has been identified as starting. The video would begin recording. And when the ride ends The video stops recording. Or, something like that. It would have to be triggered by the application on the drivers phone, by the actions that he takes to get paid for the ride.

    There is a need for this, but it has to be done right.

  • Don't regular taxis already have this? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Malays Boweman ( 5369355 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @01:40PM (#59439694)
    I think this is a bit of a non issue. If you are in a public or semi public mode of transport, expect to be videotaped. And if you do something criminal, expect it to wind up on Liveleak, Youtube, or network news. Just like footage of inside public school busses, commuter busses, and taxis.

  • There are cameras filming you when you walk on the street, in planes, trains, buses, taxis (NY next month) and now there's a riot about Uber?

    The kids are filming themselves _in_ the Uber half the time!

    • I agree. There should be a riot about ALL of those things, Hong Kong style.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rakhar ( 2731433 )

      It's exactly because of that that people are complaining. Do you think the people complaining about this are happy about all the other public recordings? Different people have different tolerances, and as surveillance becomes more constant more people are going, "Hey wait a minute..."

      If the only thing keeping people from raping and murdering in the streets is 24/7 surveillance, maybe our society has deeper issues that need addressed.

  • "video taping". That's so 1990s.

  • Given the way Uber operates, I don't see why this is something they need to set as a company policy. Just allow drivers to decide for themselves if they want to record what happens in their car. And give riders the option to request a car with recording, without recording, or don't care. And give feedback to the drivers as to what percentage of riders select those options, so they can change their decision to record in response. The only thing Uber should mandate is that cars which are recording need to

  • Typical. They see a social problem (of anti-social behavior, and hence mistrust), and find a brutal, anti-social, technical "solution".

    It reminds me of a family member of mine with that same illness.

    Why are the drivers and passengers treat each other like crap?
    *Because they don't see each other as people!* But as anonymous interchangeable entities!
    *Because they don't know each other, and never could feel empathy for each other!*
    Humans are wired like that. Sociopaths/psychopaths are hard-wired like that, and

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