ACLU Sues LA Over Controversial Scooter Tracking System (theverge.com) 61
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 Verge reports: 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. The group's California chapter is joined on the suit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP. The ACLU is [...] alleging that MDS violates the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution preventing unlawful search and seizure. "The government's appropriate impulse to regulate city streets and ensure affordable, accessible transportation for all should not mean that individual vehicle riders' every move is tracked and stored without their knowledge," said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at ACLU SoCal. "There are better ways to keep ride-share companies in check than to violate the constitutional rights of ordinary Angelenos who ride their vehicles."
"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. The group's California chapter is joined on the suit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP. The ACLU is [...] alleging that MDS violates the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution preventing unlawful search and seizure. "The government's appropriate impulse to regulate city streets and ensure affordable, accessible transportation for all should not mean that individual vehicle riders' every move is tracked and stored without their knowledge," said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at ACLU SoCal. "There are better ways to keep ride-share companies in check than to violate the constitutional rights of ordinary Angelenos who ride their vehicles."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The most fundamental human right is bodily integrity, and the ACLU opposes it. [aclunc.org] Fuck the ACLU, fuck them with a cactus.
Re: (Score:1)
They oppose it because it is a recognised medical procedure with known health benefits and because it is discriminatory to certain groups of people.
Re: (Score:2)
recognised medical procedure
Invented to make masturbation difficult because Victorian doctors were crazy prudes. They also burned girls' clits with acid, but you don't hear about that one.
with known health benefits
Extremely dubious, or dare I say, a complete farce promoted by degenerate mutilation fetishists.
discriminatory to certain groups of people.
A law to stop people from mutilating children will affect mainly the groups that mutilate children, who could have guessed?
Re: (Score:3)
but don't you dare try to impose your will on to others, asshole.
OH THE IRONY
Re:Thanks ACLU! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if the scumbag part is accurate, but it's ironic you stand up for the baby to not have its foreskin terminated because of bodily integrity, but are fine having its entire body terminated a few months earlier.
There's a way through, but this isn't it.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course it's worth remembering that in modern society circumcision is always imposed without the "patient" having any say in the matter. This wasn't the case long ago when it was a part of the rites of puberty. Then it was "do it or be cast out of the tribe".
It's a tradition that has become a religious belief in certain cultures. I'm afraid that this makes me dubious about the impartiality of the studies finding medical benefit...they might be right, but proving them unbiased is difficult as almost eve
Re: (Score:2)
We chose not to circumsize our son and our Dr was ok with it. He also said it does have value in some situations. Apparently in Vietnam, many uncut US soldiers got various infections while wading through swampy areas. It was much more prevalent than those who were cut. Keeping that area clean is more challenging and failure to do so causes more issues for those who haven't been cut. He went on to say its not much of an issue anymore since most people shower/bathe daily and its much easier to keep that area
Re: (Score:3)
Your right to chop off foreskins like a barbarian applies to YOUR dick. Not anyone else's.
Re: (Score:2)
Holy shit. Thanks for pointing that out, mostly you only see stories about the ACLU defending rights but in that case they are just straight up support child abuse. Unbelievable, how can they ignore the human rights of the child that way?
Re: (Score:2)
They're also suing the US Government because they don't want people to receive a fair trial:
https://www.aclu.org/press-rel... [aclu.org]
Sorry, who am I kidding. They don't want men to receive a fair trial.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you read the page you linked to?
Re: (Score:1)
Yes? Just look at the endorsements, it's a rogue's gallery of deplorables. Yuck.
Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLUâ(TM)s Womenâ(TM)s Rights Project, Ashley C. Sawyer, policy director at Girls for Gender Equity, Joel Levin, co-founder of Stop Sexual Assault in Schools. Yowza. All of them are horribly biased sexist pigs. Where are the boys' advocates? The ACLU didn't cite any of them. Is it even legal to be on the side of boys' rights in this country? I sure wish the ACLU cared about civi
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. Did you?
Let's see their four challenges:
1 - They don't want the definition of "sexual harassment" to be "sexual harassment" because that stops people bringing spurious sexual harassment complaints that are nothing to do with sexual harassment
2 - They want schools to have jurisdiction over the behaviour of people in other places. There is no justification for that. Sexual harassment or assault off-campus is already properly addressed by the law
3 - The current system requires and allows institutions to i
Re: (Score:2)
Circumcision is extreme rape.
Where are we with the license-plates? (Score:2)
Privacy is quite important, but ACLU aren't consistent defending it either. There is no argument for nor against mandatory tracking of scooters, that wouldn't apply to tracking ordinary motor vehicles.
And yet, having to register your car with the government, the need maintain such registration, being denied such registration over transgressions completely unrelated to driving (such as failure to pay child-support [mannfamilylaw.com]), hardly raise an eyebrow...
Re: (Score:2)
You have to register your car because proving who owned it and tracking stolen ones was a pain in the ass, and it gives government a crypto tax revenue stream.
Re: (Score:1)
Proof of ownership can be established via the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), which does not need to be routinely visible.
Ease of recovering of the stolen vehicles is something to be considered voluntarily.
Finally, both of your arguments would apply to scooters — just as I said :)
Re: (Score:2)
---
Re: (Score:1)
Just like these little scooters, you mean?..
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure how things work where you register your car but none of the cars I have registered have ever been traceable in real time.
Re: (Score:1)
Ah, but they have [milesight.com]. The technology is around since, at least, 2010 [ieee.org]...
More use than just "in check" (Score:2)
My first thought is that keeping track of all the movements, especially anonymized, probably has less to do with keeping the ride share companies "in check" than to give the city data to use in city planning.
If they know where the scooters are traveling through, where they're starting and going, that allows them to plot how to best work with them - kind of like figuring out where bikers want to go so you can figure out if a bike trail will be used just for exercise because it doesn't go anywhere useful, or
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. The original intentions were to get transit vectors to better understand how they are changing transportation. Sure, the information can be abused pretty easily; all it takes is one camera along the route with a time stamp to de-anonymize the information.
The data really should be abstracted somehow into different sets of origin/destination vectors, and path heat maps, or some other set of metrics that gives the MTA exactly what they are looking for and nothing more.
Re: (Score:2)
That doesn't mean that *this* approach shouldn't be stopped right now.
I agree that you are probably right about motive, but execution of the plan creates "an attractive nuisance" that will almost ensure that the data is misused. So they really need to redesign it NOW, before the data is collected.
Seriously, why don't they think? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What stops someone from disabling it on the scooter or hacking it to send back bad data?
The contract terms you entered into when you rented the thing.
Re: (Score:1)
What stops someone from disabling it on the scooter or hacking it to send back bad data?
The contract terms you entered into when you rented the thing.
Absolutely. I'm talking about someone who is already going to go do criminal activity and so obviously doesn't care. If they even use their own ID they're a fool.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
without damaging the device
Or the intellectual property contained therein.
Anonymous keeping of scooter data is horrible! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Bicycle registration is a real thing (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bicycle registration, however, doesn't involve tracking the bicycle.
That said, it will, eventually. So will pedestrian tracking. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be opposed now.
As tracking gets cheaper it will be more frequent, both by governments and the private sector. I've heard, I'm not sure I believe, that many stores now track how each customer moves around the store. And the unique identifier is the secret information of "what phone do they have". If this isn't true now, it will be within the deca
Surely the ACLU have something better to do. (Score:5, Insightful)
This tracking is not required for private scooters. It is not required for rental scooters used on private land. The requirement only applies to scooters owned by a rental company and which are operated on public right of ways. No one is required to rent a scooter or bike and no company is required to operate such a service.
The government has a compelling interest in tracking rental scooters and bikes. If nothing else because there have been substantial problems with them being 'abandoned' and left lying across sidewalks and bike lanes creating hazards for others (esp. disabled people) using these right of ways for their intended purposes (the intended purpose of these is not to park rental scooters on). Tracking allows cities to understand when, where, and how often this is happening and allows them to go after the rental company in near real time to get their act together.
Note that the government could ban such rentals entirely and impound any rental bike or scooter found illegally parked on any public right of way with a high impound fee - this is a compromise.
Traffic cameras are not illegal. License plate scanners on police cars, city vehicles, and garbage trucks are not illegal and they all allow a degree of tracking (in some ways more than scooters as the city doesn't really know who rented the scooter but they know the registered owner of a licensed car or truck).
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Surely the ACLU have something better to do. (Score:4, Informative)
The business model for these rented scooters and bikes is quite different - they are left (by design) at relatively random places (who is going to rent a scooter for a two mile trip and then take it another mile to the "rental kiosk" and walk back to their original destination?).
If rental cars and other high value rental items were being left around on the streets blocking normal use of the streets, then perhaps the program would be expanded to include those. If you rent a $40,000 rental car at an airport, drive to your destination, and just leave it there and never return it, it will continue to accrue rental charges until they eventually declare it stolen at which time they will probably sue you for the value of the car -- few people will do this.
There is no Constitutional right to rent a means of conveyance without being tracked by either a private business or the government. Perhaps you would like to push for a Constitutional amendment to rectify this? Think about the tracking of guns in some jurisdictions - even with the Second Amendment.
(Although, long ago I knew a very frequent business traveler with the top "loyalty program" with Hertz, who would just leave the car at the passenger drop off at the airport, leave the keys in it, and catch his outgoing flight if he was late. Apparently someone, perhaps parking enforcement, would notice this and tell Hertz to come out and pick up the car. He never got an additional charge for doing this -- but I suspect if someone with no loyalty status did so, they might have had a different experience.)
Re: (Score:2)
The government can track you. They just need a warrant. No, they do not have the power to do this without a warrant. Just because the company tracks their product doesn't mean the government gets access without a warrant.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think all laws that require businesses that sell guns, explosives, and radioactive products to keep track of who buys their product and provide those records to the government w/o a warrant are also unconstitutional?
Perhaps when I can legally buy a gun from a business without ID, any government checks, or any government having any knowledge of the transaction I will entertain the creation of a new "right" to privacy on public right of ways. However, let's focus on the clear, enumerated, individual ri
Re: (Score:2)
Why then limit it only to rented scooters? Why not apply it to ALL rented transportation.
Rented scooters are new so the usage is not well understood. Perhaps it would be beneficial to offer dedicated scooter routes, in which case you need data. To do this you either need to have a lot of people on the streets to monitor flow ($$$) or use other data. Ideally you would want to monitor all scooters but you're not likely to get private owners to add tracking and you already know that rented ones have it. So it's likely being done to assist planning cheaply. The level of anonymisation might not be s
Re:Surely the ACLU have something better to do. (Score:4, Interesting)
This tracking is not required for private scooters. It is not required for rental scooters used on private land. The requirement only applies to scooters owned by a rental company and which are operated on public right of ways. No one is required to rent a scooter or bike and no company is required to operate such a service.
That's not how rights work, especially on public land.
Government can't put a tracking device on your car without a warrant, and this would follow the same argument.
The idea you have to give up core, enumerated rights when you step onto simple public property has so many things wrong with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The right to privacy on public right of ways is NOT an enumerated right - let alone one that has been incorporated on state and local governments. If you disagree, please cite the Amendment/Article/Section/Clause of the US Constitution where you think the right you are referring to is enumerated (hint, "rights" invented by the courts are NOT classified as enumerated rights).
To rephrase what you quoted but apparently failed to read. These "trackers" are a condition placed on a business to allow it to use pub
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what the proper name for them is - those bumpy things that act as foot signs for blind people - but about 1 in 4 times I go past one some oxygen waster has parked a rental scooter/bike on (or worse) right next to it. Or they're on the footpath at 90 degrees to it.
I've keyed a few. Another time I was moving one to a less obstructing location and it accidentally fell over and the handlebars landed in a dog turd.
Why the city don't just fine the idiots is beyond me.
It's engineering (Score:3)
Many instances of continuous tracking is done because it makes the most engineering sense, not because it there is any motive to do anything privacy-invading with the data.
It is much easier to track all the time and then sort out the data than having the tracked object interpret and make decisions on when to produce it. If there is a bug in the interpretation, then it would be much easier to change the data-processing code at the server than updating the firmware in each tracked device. A change at the server works retroactively, whereas it wouldn't in a tracked devices unless it saved the data.
This applies to lots of systems with input in real time, not just with mobile devices such as electric scooters.
If a scooter goes missing and stops transmitting then continuous tracking will provide a last known location for it which is probably close to where it ended up. If a scooter instead doesn't transmit before it stops, then a malfunctioning scooter would only have provided it start time and position, making it much more difficult to find it for retrieval.
Rental scooters laying around where they shouldn't be is already a big problem, and if there was no continuous tracking it would become more difficult to retrieve them.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why the rental company should be in favor of the process. It says nothing about why the city or the citizenry should be in favor of it. And nothing about why the government should have any requirement that the tracking be imposed.
N.B.: There are valid reasons for the government to desire such tracking. The question is "Does it have the right to require it or to have access to it if implemented?".
Fuck trackers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Better ways? (Score:2)
l. "There are better ways to keep ride-share companies in check than to violate the constitutional rights of ordinary Angelenos who ride their vehicles."
Name them.
What's the government's purpose? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The word "private" is not 100% correct. These are dockless scootershare system (short-term, automated scooter rentals) like Bird, Lime, Scoot, Wheels, etc. as well as dockless bikeshare systems. The cities license the companies to operate within their cities and have to negotiate the use of public sidewalks or on-street vehicle parking for device parking. So while the devices are owned by a private company, their negotiated use is within the public right-of-way.
The cities want the data to...
- Track the trip