Passengers in the sharing economy need to know what kind of ride they’re buying.
Last night, Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith published an explosive story, reporting on a dinner in New York City where Uber executive Emil Michael floated the idea of hiring opposition researchers to dig up dirt on journalists who had been critical of the startup. Michael, who has since repeatedly apologized, asserted that neither “me nor my company would ever engage in such activities.” Uber spokesperson Nairi Hourdajian tweeted that “We have not, do not and will not investigate journalists. Those remarks have no basis in the reality of our approach.”
Alexander B. Howard
Alexander B. Howard is a DC-based writer focused on the intersections of technology, government, politics and media. Previously, he was a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, the Ash Center at Harvard University, the Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, and an associate editor at SearchCompliance.com and WhatIs.com.
If so, Uber would differ from Hewlett Packard, Wal-Mart, Deutche Telekom, Fox News and other tech companies that have investigated and monitored journalists reporting on them. Regardless of the truth of whether this famously aggressive company has or will gather such “dirt files,” one item in Smith’s report deserves special notice, as Jay Yarrow picked up this morning. Smith reported that Uber demonstrated how it could spy on journalists, writing:
In fact, the general manager of Uber NYC accessed the profile of a BuzzFeed News reporter, Johana Bhuiyan, to make points in the course of a discussion of Uber policies. At no point in the email exchanges did she give him permission to do so.
The profile in question is Bhuiyan’s personal Uber profile, which carries with it her travel log and payment information. Uber told Smith that “Any such activity would be clear violations of our privacy and data access policies. Access to and use of data is permitted only for legitimate business purposes. These policies apply to all employees. We regularly monitor and audit that access.”
According to Ellen Cushing, a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine, that policy doesn’t look watertight.
Cushing explained more in a followup post about the warning she received, writing “as far as I know, the company hasn’t looked into my logs,” but adding:
But when I contacted a former employee last night about the news, this person told me that “it’s not very hard to access the travel log information they’re talking about. I have no idea who is ‘auditing’ this log or access information. At least when I was there, any employee could access rider rating information, as I was able to do it. How much deeper you could go with regular access, I’m not sure, as I didn’t try.” A second former employee told me something similar, saying “I never heard anything about execs digging into reporters’ travel logs, though it would be easy for them to do so.”
Step back a bit and think through the potential issues of Uber knowing who its riders are, when, and where, and what they are likely to have been doing. Such associations can be powerful. Strong conclusions can be drawn from the details of an Uber travel log, as Uber has itself noted when discussing what it calls a “Ride of Glory,” defined as “anyone who took a ride between 10pm and 4am on a Friday or Saturday night, and then took a second ride from within 1/10th of a mile of the previous nights’ drop-off point 4-6 hours later (enough for a quick night’s sleep)”. Or consider for a moment that Uber uses detailed information to see how prostitution rates in a given neighborhood correlate with the need for Uber rides.
In a post titled How Prostitution and Alcohol Make Uber Better, Uber staff wrote, “Areas of San Francisco with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary also have the most Uber rides. ” Uber
With great data comes great power, and therefore responsibility. That means culture and ethics matter. The reason Michael was angry at Sarah Lacy appears to be because of her excoriating post about Uber’s culture.
Now, imagine if powerful members of Congress decide that they don’t like Uber’s labor practices, or surge pricing, or its approach to flaunting regulatory strictures, or the way it lobbies city governments not to be subject to reporting on compliance with accessibility laws. What then? Will the same executives who have shown a limited “God View” at launch parties choose not to use more powerful internal analytics to track who is going where and when? What policies and code would stop them from looking at the profiles of Senators and Representatives and drawing conclusions about where and when they go? Or for that matter, my profile, or yours?
I know this is all hypothetical, but multiple reports of executives accessing user profiles mean we need keep our eyes open and ears clear, particularly given the relationships we can see forming between powerful politicians and tech companies, and the stories we already know meta data can tell about our lives.
The co-founder and CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, is a driven entrepreneur relentlessly focused on building a great product that seamlessly connects demand to capacity in a brilliant mobile app, leaving payment and logistics in the background. When I sat across from him at the launch party for Uber in DC, I found him to be funny and quick-witted, with a natural salesman’s charisma.
This morning, I wrote that Uber users, including me, needed to hear more from him next and not about future profit projections, plans for future expansion or more partnerships.
As he has in the past, Kalanick used a “tweetstorm” to go direct to the public, tweeting out a statement that included assurances and an apology to Sarah Lacy. “We are up to the challenge to show that Uber is and will continue to be a positive member of the community,” tweeted Kalanick, “And furthermore, I will do everything in my power towards the goal of earning that trust.”
I’m still left with unresolved questions. We need to know that we can trust him and his company with our locations and our safety. We want to know that they won’t ever use the data generated by our movements or pickups against us or the people who represent us. We want the company to willingly disclose data about how it provides accessible transit options to our neighbors and embrace transparency about its interactions with customers, regulators and our communities. We want to know that the people we’re trusting with data about our lives aren’t “morally bankrupt.”
I hope Uber is up to the challenge. The stakes are too high to blindly trust without verifying.
This post first appeared on the author’s personal blog Digiphile.
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