7 ms·

This was my reaction as well. Yes, Uber's behavior here is reprehensible. But it's also kid stuff compared to what other entities (including the Federal Governm

by w4 12y ago

This was my reaction as well. Yes, Uber's behavior here is reprehensible. But it's also kid stuff compared to what other entities (including the Federal Government itself, whose behavior we never agreed to in a TOS agreement) are engaged in, and I have to wonder what, if any, authority the government could exert in these circumstances (disregarding the appropriateness of the use of said authority, or any potential legislative action). Assuming nothing about Uber's user terms and agreements aren't unlawful, it's almost certainly the case that, as alluded to by Franken's letter, users of Uber have agreed to provide Uber with this sort of access to their usage of the app. So while I agree with the spirit of what Frankin is saying, I'm just left with distaste for what obvious posturing and pandering it is.

smt88 12y ago
I see what you're saying, but there are two things that make this more egregious than other (assumed) offenses. First, Uber did this brazenly and, one could argue, openly. Their hubris needs to be curbed this way. Second, Uber explicitly wanted to go after a member of the press. The press is our shield against all the evil that is done against the public by governments and corporations. We need our journalists to feel absolutely safe in their chosen profession. We may disagree with or even hate some of them, but we have to show people considering such an important career that it won't put them at risk. As far as I know, Google and other companies are using/gathering our information equally legally. They might be doing something nefarious with it, but at least they claim to be responsible and honorable. With the exception of their press releases, Uber seems proud of their ruthlessness and lack of integrity.
- 001sky 12y ago
  First, Uber did this brazenly and, one could argue, openly The reported quote was couched in the hypothetical; reported out of an 'off the record' private event; by a reporter that was the +1 of an invite. Those are major caveats. While they don't excuse anything, they also (frankly) answer several of the senators questions. I find it un-imaginable that Franken (or anyone) has never articulated views in the hypothetical, that may or may not have been in line with "corporate policy". Imagine if the 405 freeway was mic'd during rush hour. We'd have prisons full of criminals charged with thought crimes. All that being said, Uber needs to get its act together. Transportation is a heavily regulated industry for a variety of reasons. There are personal safety issues involved, interstate commerce, and all kinds of local issues. Uber needs to get itself in a position where politicians and the public can trust the company to operate in a manner deserving of the public trust. And in that direction, it seems to me at least, that they are showing a pattern of behaviour that is more at issue than any single event. It seems their general approach is open to question, on quite a few fronts. Wether or not rebellious, upstart brands are a problem, I don't think thats it. They seem to take on take on a air privledged 'bro's' who are untouchable and shady. And that is something that they don't want to be type-cast as, when ultimately their business relies on the public's trust.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    > The reported quote was couched in the hypothetical; reported out of an 'off the record' private event; by a reporter that was the +1 of an invite. "Off the record" isn't some magic phrase you can use to stop a journalist from reporting what you say. It's a carefully constructed agreement between a source and a journalist. That agreement will cover what material is divulged and how it is sourced. It is wrong to suggest that this meeting was "off the record".
    - 001sky 12y ago
      This is dis-engenuous. One of the guests invited a tabloid reporter, did not appear to disclose the terms of the invitation to this person, and the result is predictable. The ethical nuances here are lost because you have a sketchy company and an ethically challenged publication. But in the same vein as the Mozilla incident, freedom of the press, nor freedom of speech...does not protect a citizen from another citizen. If a muck-raking journalist wants to hide behind ethics to keep citizens from muck-rakin them, that's simply not protected by law or frankly by any real ethical consideration, other than the sense of moral proportionality that reflects their own behaviour. It is a bizzarre point, but unfortunately its fundamentally correct. The only "new" ethical consideration in this flap has to do with using specific information (presumably confidential company information) to bolster an attack. From what i've read, nobody suggested that this type of attack was only possible using a certain set of information. Notwithstanding the distastefullness here, this is simply nothing that is not done in every major national election. So in that regard, the senator could equally send such a complaint to the DNCC. What is actually the legitimate issue here is something much narrower: whether or not a malicious person would have the potential to abuse information that is not publicly available to do this. That is very much a legit issue, but I'd be interested to see if the actual discussion would have been so bizaerre as to require this formulation. That would bring the company and its policies into the actual discussion in a way which simply articulating that low ethical standards swing both ways does not. For example, a malicious threat would be something along the lines of "I know where you were last weekend at xx:xx" where this information would be used to extort or blackmail someone (eg, an affair etc). This type of threat would specifically hinge on the abuse of private information. Whether or not this was somehow allowed under any user agreement or employee policy is beside the point--its blatantly an abuse of implicit trust. That is an entirely different type of situation that saying if "reporter X" is unethica, someone might very well do the equivalent of a classified-security clearance review of "reporter X" and articulate the findings in public. [1] Needless to say, most people that look at this cannot distinguish the two cases, or if they can they are happy to disregard the reality of how the world works already. The second issue is the idea of proportionality. In that when faced with some level or argument or counter argument, you dis-repscet the process of discourse and engage in ad-hominem. That is to say, in this case, retaliation with character assasination. Again, I think this cuts both ways here. Being tone deaf and lacking in porportionality is a problem for ethically challenged startups--not doubt--but its also a problem with tabloids (see: uk phone hacking) and social media lynch mobs. [1] If it meets the test of being legal and proportionate, its not really unethical by default.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- thehammer 12y ago
  "The press is our shield against all the evil that is done against the public by governments and corporations." This seems incredibly naive to me. It's certainly idealistic, and it's extremely difficult to believe that the media, at least the American media, isn't heavily biased by capitalism. Sensationalism does more harm than good, and it's trivial to "buy" press coverage. The New York Times may very well have enough integrity to refuse to be bought, but it's a common practice to solicit journalists to write articles about new products and such. If you have an agenda, there are journalists ready to be paid to support it. Not only is the press sometimes not our shield, sometimes they're actually a sword against us. While Travis' comments were certainly regrettable, there's an important distinction between talking about doing something and actually doing it. Almost anytime someone is called out for something they've said, the comments are taken out of context. It's easy for me to imagine that what was said was a reaction to a journalist behaving badly, writing an article with an agenda. It seems likely that the suggestion to use trip data was a suggestion to stoop to the same level, rather than simply to be evil towards someone who was noble and with unquestionable integrity. Uber gets a lot of press, and while some fair points are made, the press I've seen tends to be overly aggressive, misinformed, and usually displaying a clear agenda. What Uber is doing is revolutionary, disrupting well entrenched business models. When you disrupt an industry, you make enemies of the people who were lazily profiting from it. That doesn't mean Uber is good and their opponents are evil. But make no mistake that there is a battle going on, and ugly things are being said on both sides. We're all a bunch of idiots if we waste time letting ourselves be drawn in by someone else's agenda rather than assessing the merits of each side independently and voting with our wallets.
  - smt88 12y ago
    It doesn't matter if the press functions with 100% altruism or 100% efficiency. No body comprised of humans ever will. Of course there are capitalistic motives, and making money does often run counter to the public benefit of the press. But there are many idealistic journalists (look at ProPublica, for many examples) who are doing important work, exposing things that aren't always sexy, but are definitely in the public's interest.
    - 12y ago
lmg643 12y ago
agreed. my first thought in reading this: "Dear Mr. Kalanick - how dare you allow your staff to announce an idea to spy on the American people and use the information you learn against them? Didn't you know that privilege is exclusively for the US government? You know we will partner with you to abuse the vast information available on the habits of Americans through your service when the time is right - no need to get people riled up more than they already are. Best Regards, Uncle Sam."
- peteretep 12y ago
  The biggest thing that will disenfranchise your political weight is dismissing the government as a homogenous mass, moving in lock-step, that "they're all as bad as each other". Uncle Sam is _people_. Good people, bad people, influential people, less influential people.
  - quanticle 12y ago
    That said, I do think it is valuable to point out that while Al Franken is admonishing Uber with one hand for tracking people without permission, he's giving the NSA pats on the back with the other for doing the very same thing [1]. If anything, the NSA tracking is worse. Uber can't send me to Gitmo, but the federal government sure can. [1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-franken-nsa_n_3423413.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-franken-nsa_n_34...
ams6110 12y ago
My feeling also. If this isn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is. The Federal government is one of the worst offenders at being careless with personal data and of using it for political purposes when it suits them. I'm not defending Uber here, but this is just grandstanding by Frankin.
- mturmon 12y ago
  OTOH, Frankenstein is the chair of the committee whose job is to oversee these matters. Perhaps the Senate Intelligence committee would be the analogous thing for government surveillance: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/memberscurrent.html http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/memberscurrent.html
  - mturmon 12y ago
    Worst auto correct ever, btw. "Franken"
- craigching 12y ago
  > My feeling also. If this isn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is. The Federal government is one of the worst offenders at being careless with personal data So all federal government is responsible for all other arms of federal government, Al Franken is a member of the federal government, therefore guilt by association? Just a question, but are you ok with your movements being tracked by Uber? Are you ok with any corporation spying on your movements and potentially using that information against you? So because the NSA spies on you, it's not ok for Al Franken to stand up to corporate privacy issues? Just saying ... Yes, I would like to see anyone stand up for privacy issues, corporate or federal. As has been pointed out in other threads on this post, Al Franken actually does stand against both. So let's agree that "the pot calling the kettle black" is a bad analogy because not all federal government necessarily agrees with other arms of the federal governments' actions. Yeah?
craigching 12y ago
> So while I agree with the spirit of what Frankin is saying, I'm just left with distaste for what obvious posturing and pandering it is. At least someone is speaking up. You criticize Al Franken for not going after everyone else as well, but why not criticize the other 99 senators who haven't done anything. I apologize in advance if I'm missing another senator that has done anything like this about privacy.
- briandear 12y ago
  Rand Paul has done something far more important that weighing in on a private business policy.. He (along with a few others) have been extremely outspoken against the Patriot Act and warrantless NSA spying. Where's Franken's letter to Obama demanding "executive action" to suspend warrantless information gathering by the government. If Uner wants to be a shit, we don't have to use Uber. If I don't want my personal information harvested by my government, I have no recourse. I even live in France, yet my French bank records are required by FATCA to be disclosed to an American government entity simply because I happen to have an American passport. That's far more intrusive than anything a ride-sharing app can do to me. How about reports that the government has monitored journalists? Where's Franken's letter about that? This is nearly meaningless political grandstanding because Uber happens to be both well-known as well as currently in the headlines. http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-nsa-has-at-least-1-liberal-friend-left-sen-al-franken-20130611 http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-nsa-has-at-least... And here's Rand Paul proposing a bill to end warrantless NSA wiretaps. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-bill-would-curb-nsa-on-phone-records/blogEntry?id=19351069&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.fr%2F http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-bill-would-curb-nsa...
  - jazzyk 12y ago
    100x this.
rtpg 12y ago
>But it's also kid stuff compared to what other entities (including the Federal Government itself, whose behavior we never agreed to in a TOS agreement) are engaged in, Complaining about gov't behaviour compared to private enterprise is like complaining about how kernel-level processes can do so much more than userland processes.
- ivanca 12y ago
  No, it would be like complaining that a bug found in an userland program is publicly scrutinized but not when the same one is found on a kernel program.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    One man's bug is another man's misunderstood feature. Cf. Shellshock.
spoomor 12y ago
> including the Federal Government itself, whose behavior we never agreed to in a TOS agreement You voted for them, which is their way of saying "see, it's in the fine print, hahaha"
- perlgeek 12y ago
  Not everybody who lives in a country has the right to vote.

by w4 12y ago

smt88 12y ago

I see what you're saying, but there are two things that make this more egregious than other (assumed) offenses. First, Uber did this brazenly and, one could argue, openly. Their hubris needs to be curbed this way. Second, Uber explicitly wanted to go after a member of the press. The press is our shield against all the evil that is done against the public by governments and corporations. We need our journalists to feel absolutely safe in their chosen profession. We may disagree with or even hate some of them, but we have to show people considering such an important career that it won't put them at risk. As far as I know, Google and other companies are using/gathering our information equally legally. They might be doing something nefarious with it, but at least they claim to be responsible and honorable. With the exception of their press releases, Uber seems proud of their ruthlessness and lack of integrity.

001sky 12y ago
First, Uber did this brazenly and, one could argue, openly The reported quote was couched in the hypothetical; reported out of an 'off the record' private event; by a reporter that was the +1 of an invite. Those are major caveats. While they don't excuse anything, they also (frankly) answer several of the senators questions. I find it un-imaginable that Franken (or anyone) has never articulated views in the hypothetical, that may or may not have been in line with "corporate policy". Imagine if the 405 freeway was mic'd during rush hour. We'd have prisons full of criminals charged with thought crimes. All that being said, Uber needs to get its act together. Transportation is a heavily regulated industry for a variety of reasons. There are personal safety issues involved, interstate commerce, and all kinds of local issues. Uber needs to get itself in a position where politicians and the public can trust the company to operate in a manner deserving of the public trust. And in that direction, it seems to me at least, that they are showing a pattern of behaviour that is more at issue than any single event. It seems their general approach is open to question, on quite a few fronts. Wether or not rebellious, upstart brands are a problem, I don't think thats it. They seem to take on take on a air privledged 'bro's' who are untouchable and shady. And that is something that they don't want to be type-cast as, when ultimately their business relies on the public's trust.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > The reported quote was couched in the hypothetical; reported out of an 'off the record' private event; by a reporter that was the +1 of an invite. "Off the record" isn't some magic phrase you can use to stop a journalist from reporting what you say. It's a carefully constructed agreement between a source and a journalist. That agreement will cover what material is divulged and how it is sourced. It is wrong to suggest that this meeting was "off the record".
  - 001sky 12y ago
    This is dis-engenuous. One of the guests invited a tabloid reporter, did not appear to disclose the terms of the invitation to this person, and the result is predictable. The ethical nuances here are lost because you have a sketchy company and an ethically challenged publication. But in the same vein as the Mozilla incident, freedom of the press, nor freedom of speech...does not protect a citizen from another citizen. If a muck-raking journalist wants to hide behind ethics to keep citizens from muck-rakin them, that's simply not protected by law or frankly by any real ethical consideration, other than the sense of moral proportionality that reflects their own behaviour. It is a bizzarre point, but unfortunately its fundamentally correct. The only "new" ethical consideration in this flap has to do with using specific information (presumably confidential company information) to bolster an attack. From what i've read, nobody suggested that this type of attack was only possible using a certain set of information. Notwithstanding the distastefullness here, this is simply nothing that is not done in every major national election. So in that regard, the senator could equally send such a complaint to the DNCC. What is actually the legitimate issue here is something much narrower: whether or not a malicious person would have the potential to abuse information that is not publicly available to do this. That is very much a legit issue, but I'd be interested to see if the actual discussion would have been so bizaerre as to require this formulation. That would bring the company and its policies into the actual discussion in a way which simply articulating that low ethical standards swing both ways does not. For example, a malicious threat would be something along the lines of "I know where you were last weekend at xx:xx" where this information would be used to extort or blackmail someone (eg, an affair etc). This type of threat would specifically hinge on the abuse of private information. Whether or not this was somehow allowed under any user agreement or employee policy is beside the point--its blatantly an abuse of implicit trust. That is an entirely different type of situation that saying if "reporter X" is unethica, someone might very well do the equivalent of a classified-security clearance review of "reporter X" and articulate the findings in public. [1] Needless to say, most people that look at this cannot distinguish the two cases, or if they can they are happy to disregard the reality of how the world works already. The second issue is the idea of proportionality. In that when faced with some level or argument or counter argument, you dis-repscet the process of discourse and engage in ad-hominem. That is to say, in this case, retaliation with character assasination. Again, I think this cuts both ways here. Being tone deaf and lacking in porportionality is a problem for ethically challenged startups--not doubt--but its also a problem with tabloids (see: uk phone hacking) and social media lynch mobs. [1] If it meets the test of being legal and proportionate, its not really unethical by default.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
thehammer 12y ago
"The press is our shield against all the evil that is done against the public by governments and corporations." This seems incredibly naive to me. It's certainly idealistic, and it's extremely difficult to believe that the media, at least the American media, isn't heavily biased by capitalism. Sensationalism does more harm than good, and it's trivial to "buy" press coverage. The New York Times may very well have enough integrity to refuse to be bought, but it's a common practice to solicit journalists to write articles about new products and such. If you have an agenda, there are journalists ready to be paid to support it. Not only is the press sometimes not our shield, sometimes they're actually a sword against us. While Travis' comments were certainly regrettable, there's an important distinction between talking about doing something and actually doing it. Almost anytime someone is called out for something they've said, the comments are taken out of context. It's easy for me to imagine that what was said was a reaction to a journalist behaving badly, writing an article with an agenda. It seems likely that the suggestion to use trip data was a suggestion to stoop to the same level, rather than simply to be evil towards someone who was noble and with unquestionable integrity. Uber gets a lot of press, and while some fair points are made, the press I've seen tends to be overly aggressive, misinformed, and usually displaying a clear agenda. What Uber is doing is revolutionary, disrupting well entrenched business models. When you disrupt an industry, you make enemies of the people who were lazily profiting from it. That doesn't mean Uber is good and their opponents are evil. But make no mistake that there is a battle going on, and ugly things are being said on both sides. We're all a bunch of idiots if we waste time letting ourselves be drawn in by someone else's agenda rather than assessing the merits of each side independently and voting with our wallets.
- smt88 12y ago
  It doesn't matter if the press functions with 100% altruism or 100% efficiency. No body comprised of humans ever will. Of course there are capitalistic motives, and making money does often run counter to the public benefit of the press. But there are many idealistic journalists (look at ProPublica, for many examples) who are doing important work, exposing things that aren't always sexy, but are definitely in the public's interest.
  - 12y ago

lmg643 12y ago

agreed. my first thought in reading this: "Dear Mr. Kalanick - how dare you allow your staff to announce an idea to spy on the American people and use the information you learn against them? Didn't you know that privilege is exclusively for the US government? You know we will partner with you to abuse the vast information available on the habits of Americans through your service when the time is right - no need to get people riled up more than they already are. Best Regards, Uncle Sam."

peteretep 12y ago
The biggest thing that will disenfranchise your political weight is dismissing the government as a homogenous mass, moving in lock-step, that "they're all as bad as each other". Uncle Sam is _people_. Good people, bad people, influential people, less influential people.
- quanticle 12y ago
  That said, I do think it is valuable to point out that while Al Franken is admonishing Uber with one hand for tracking people without permission, he's giving the NSA pats on the back with the other for doing the very same thing [1]. If anything, the NSA tracking is worse. Uber can't send me to Gitmo, but the federal government sure can. [1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-franken-nsa_n_3423413.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-franken-nsa_n_34...

ams6110 12y ago

My feeling also. If this isn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is. The Federal government is one of the worst offenders at being careless with personal data and of using it for political purposes when it suits them. I'm not defending Uber here, but this is just grandstanding by Frankin.

mturmon 12y ago
OTOH, Frankenstein is the chair of the committee whose job is to oversee these matters. Perhaps the Senate Intelligence committee would be the analogous thing for government surveillance: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/memberscurrent.html http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/memberscurrent.html
- mturmon 12y ago
  Worst auto correct ever, btw. "Franken"
craigching 12y ago
> My feeling also. If this isn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is. The Federal government is one of the worst offenders at being careless with personal data So all federal government is responsible for all other arms of federal government, Al Franken is a member of the federal government, therefore guilt by association? Just a question, but are you ok with your movements being tracked by Uber? Are you ok with any corporation spying on your movements and potentially using that information against you? So because the NSA spies on you, it's not ok for Al Franken to stand up to corporate privacy issues? Just saying ... Yes, I would like to see anyone stand up for privacy issues, corporate or federal. As has been pointed out in other threads on this post, Al Franken actually does stand against both. So let's agree that "the pot calling the kettle black" is a bad analogy because not all federal government necessarily agrees with other arms of the federal governments' actions. Yeah?

craigching 12y ago

> So while I agree with the spirit of what Frankin is saying, I'm just left with distaste for what obvious posturing and pandering it is. At least someone is speaking up. You criticize Al Franken for not going after everyone else as well, but why not criticize the other 99 senators who haven't done anything. I apologize in advance if I'm missing another senator that has done anything like this about privacy.

briandear 12y ago
Rand Paul has done something far more important that weighing in on a private business policy.. He (along with a few others) have been extremely outspoken against the Patriot Act and warrantless NSA spying. Where's Franken's letter to Obama demanding "executive action" to suspend warrantless information gathering by the government. If Uner wants to be a shit, we don't have to use Uber. If I don't want my personal information harvested by my government, I have no recourse. I even live in France, yet my French bank records are required by FATCA to be disclosed to an American government entity simply because I happen to have an American passport. That's far more intrusive than anything a ride-sharing app can do to me. How about reports that the government has monitored journalists? Where's Franken's letter about that? This is nearly meaningless political grandstanding because Uber happens to be both well-known as well as currently in the headlines. http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-nsa-has-at-least-1-liberal-friend-left-sen-al-franken-20130611 http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-nsa-has-at-least... And here's Rand Paul proposing a bill to end warrantless NSA wiretaps. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-bill-would-curb-nsa-on-phone-records/blogEntry?id=19351069&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.fr%2F http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-bill-would-curb-nsa...
- jazzyk 12y ago
  100x this.

rtpg 12y ago

>But it's also kid stuff compared to what other entities (including the Federal Government itself, whose behavior we never agreed to in a TOS agreement) are engaged in, Complaining about gov't behaviour compared to private enterprise is like complaining about how kernel-level processes can do so much more than userland processes.

ivanca 12y ago
No, it would be like complaining that a bug found in an userland program is publicly scrutinized but not when the same one is found on a kernel program.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  One man's bug is another man's misunderstood feature. Cf. Shellshock.

spoomor 12y ago

> including the Federal Government itself, whose behavior we never agreed to in a TOS agreement You voted for them, which is their way of saying "see, it's in the fine print, hahaha"

perlgeek 12y ago
Not everybody who lives in a country has the right to vote.