NYC Wants Uber, Lyft to Share More User Data: What Would That Mean for You?

NEW YORK, NY — Not a week has passed in the new year, and Uber and NYC government officials are already knee-deep in their first big quarrel of 2017. The ride-sharing company is going into battle — and urging its users to join — against a new rule proposed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission (or the TLC, the agency in charge of regulating both the old-school taxi and new-school ride-share industries).

The rule would require Uber, Lyft and other ride-share companies to hand over location data on all their drivers' pick-ups and drop-offs — as yellow and green cabs already do — so the city can better regulate "driver fatigue" and (ostensibly) make the streets of NYC a safer place to be.

Uber and Lyft have taken a strong pro-privacy stance against the data grab — a direct appeal to paranoid, post-Snowden America.

“We have an obligation to protect our riders’ data, especially in an age when information collected by government agencies like the TLC can be hacked, shared, misused or otherwise made public," an Uber spokeswoman said in a statement sent to Patch.

And Lyft said: "Such information would reveal intimate details about people’s lives, including trips to their homes, their doctors’ offices, places of worship, and any number of destinations New Yorkers go for private purposes. ... The risk that this information may be obtained and used improperly by third parties significantly outweighs any potential benefits."

In a mass email blast earlier this week, Uber urged customers to "send a clear message" to city officials at a hearing on the new rule scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 5, at 10 a.m. on the 19th floor of 33 Beaver St. (Aka, the TLC offices.)

For his part, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio — a longtime sparring partner with Uber in the public arena — has again sided against the company, even incorporating the TLC's proposed data grab into his own "Vision Zero" campaign for street safety.

“Fatigued drivers put themselves and other road users at risk and these rules are vital in furthering the City’s Vision Zero goals," Austin Finan, a spokesman for the mayor, said Wednesday. "The data we’ve requested is essential to ensuring that these rules are not skirted. ... This is a basic ask of New York City’s for-hire vehicle industry that does not compromise customer privacy in any way.”

If the new rule does pass, despite Uber's objections, and ride-share providers are forced to hand over GPS data to the city — what does that mean for New Yorkers?

Here's what we've gathered from speaking with various experts and advocates on both sides:

• The data dumps won't be THAT specific. Once they've been somewhat anonymized by the TLC and released to the public, they won't identify drivers or customers (even numerically) or name addresses (only general neighborhoods). So it's not like your boyfriend or girlfriend will be able to go on the TLC website and map your precise path to infidelity, or like the NYPD will wise up to your Adderall-dealing route.

• However! Ride-sharing companies would, before the anonymizing process, be submitting specific pick-up and drop-off addresses to the city. So company reps — as well as some privacy advocates who've gotten on board — argue that all it would take is one ambitious basement hacker, Russian spy, nosy competitor, etc. to breach TLC security and unleash the real gritty stuff. (Which, as we know, is not so inconceivable these days. And, as Uber points out, already kind of happened to yellow-cab drivers and their celebrity riders, thanks to the same mandate now proposed for Uber, Lyft, etc.)

• Harry Campbell — Uber driver, ride-share expert and brains behind the popular industry blog The Rideshare Guy — told us he believes Uber's appeal to the pro-privacy crowd is "a little overblown" and mighty "convenient," considering "Uber has always held their data very close to the vest" and that "when they do release data, it's always very favorable, very curated." The company's reluctance to publicize all its trip data in NYC, Campbell said, might be more of an attempt to maintain an edge in a tumultuous market than a genuine crusade to protect its customers. (Especially given Uber's own sketchy habit of tracking users' locations even when they're not using the app.)

• For ride-share drivers working over the 12-hour-per-day limit set by TLC in order to make ends meet, there's a fear that — under this new rule — city regulators would punish the drivers themselves, not their overlord tech companies, for pushing daily limits. "That's sort of where I would be a little bit worried," Campbell said. "What is the city going to do with that data?

• For customers, though, there would be another unexpected perk of letting city officials more closely monitor Uber. According to the TLC:

"It will facilitate investigating passenger complaints or complaints from a pedestrian or other motorist about unsafe driving, including for incidents alleged to have occurred during or between trips, by allowing TLC to determine the location of a vehicle at a particular time. The data is particularly important for investigations in the [ride-share] sector, where, unlike yellow and green taxis, the vast and growing vehicle fleet does not have readily identifiable markers, such as a medallion or permit number on the roof light."

• In fact, local attorney Brad Gerstman plans to file a lawsuit against Uber on behalf of two female customers this Thursday (the same day as the TLC hearing — on purpose). One of the women claims her driver started taking her to the Bronx instead of the Upper East Side, and that she had to literally jump out of the moving vehicle to escape. The other woman claims her driver was so tired he veered into oncoming traffic. The common thread: Uber allegedly wouldn't release driver or trip info to either customer, preventing them from filing a complaint with the city.

Mouth off or learn more at a city hearing this Thursday, Jan. 5, at 10 a.m. on the 19th floor of 33 Beaver St.