Should Cities Be Able to Gather Location Data from Publicly Available Scooters?
Tech giants such as Google and Facebook are routinely slammed for the amount of location data they collect from mobile phones. But Los Angeles and about a dozen other cities are facing criticism for collecting location data from another device: scooters.
Los Angeles established the Open Mobility Foundation to encourage location data sharing between scooter companies and local authorities. The goal was to empower urban planning and prevent companies such as Uber from using their greater understanding of mobility patterns to get ahead of regulations.
But in their fervor for keeping pace with tech companies, municipalities lost sight of the constituency they are supposed to serve: the scooter riders, whose privacy has now been doubly violated — by both the mobility company and local government.
The city of Austin pulled out of the Open Mobility Foundation this year, alluding to privacy concerns. Earlier, the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation sued LA, saying the city was collecting “sensitive location information en masse” without justification.
We’d encourage both cities and mobility companies to collect the minimum amount of data required to power their services.
Ultimately, the best practice in this case is the same as for any other instance of data collection: The collectors should clearly communicate the information they want to gather and why, getting clear consent from the consumer for both data collection and sharing.