Uber is gearing up for a fight with New York City, which wants the ride-hailing app to share information with the city about where drivers pick up and drop off customers.
According to a report, Uber is not keen to share that data and, on Thursday (Jan. 5), presented a case at a hearing as to why it doesn’t want to hand it over. Prior to the hearing, Uber had sent an email to New York City customers titled “The government wants to know where you’re headed … on every ride.”
According to the report, the New York City Taxi & Limo Commission (TLC) collects data from every taxi trip in New York City and uses the data to audit self-reported working hours of drivers. The goal is to prevent exhausted drivers from getting behind the wheel and endangering city dwellers. Uber and Lyft have yet to provide the information, but now that their services are used in the city, the Taxi & Limo Commission wants information on riders’ destinations. Uber argues that, since the Taxi & Limo Commission wants the information largely to prevent fatigue among taxi drivers, detailed logs about drivers’ hours should be enough. The Taxi & Limo Commission isn’t satisfied, arguing it needs the information for other reasons as well, such as traffic analysis and planning and to pinpoint drivers who break traffic laws.
Uber said it doesn’t want to hand over the information to protect the privacy of customers and said it doesn’t trust the Taxi & Limo Commission to protect the information. “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,” Uber told The Huffington Post in a statement.