An executive with Uber, the app-based cab service, said how he wants to spend $1 million to dig up dirt on its critics, wanting to get at “your personal lives, your families.” This from the same company that blogged about the data it has on its riders’ “brief overnight weekend stays”; that is, sexual rendezvous.
But Uber is not the only company that is amassing vast stores of personal data on its customers and that is not afraid to use it. We worry about an intrusive government invading our privacy and taking away our liberties. But we have constitutional protection against that, for whatever that is worth. But what about intrusive companies invading our privacy and taking away our liberties?
From Craig Timberg, Nancy Scola and Andrea Peterson, Uber executive stirs up privacy controversy – The Washington Post.
An Uber executive’s suggestion that the company should investigate the private lives of journalists has sparked a backlash against the popular car service, offering a potent reminder that tech companies are amassing detailed — and potentially embarrassing — records of users’ communications, Internet traffic and even physical movements.
The controversy stemmed from remarks by Uber Senior Vice President Emil Michael on Friday night as he spoke of his desire to spend $1 million to dig up information on “your personal lives, your families,” referring to journalists who write critically about the company, according to a report published Monday night by Buzzfeed. The same story said a different Uber executive once had examined the private travel records of a Buzzfeed reporter during an e-mail exchange about an article without seeking permission to access the data.
That combination of vindictiveness and willingness to tap into user information provoked outrage Tuesday on social-media sites, spawning the hashtag “#ubergate” on Twitter. Critics recounted a series of Uber privacy missteps, including a 2012 blog post in which a company official analyzed anonymous ridership data in Washington and several other cities in an attempt to determine the frequency of overnight sexual liaisons by customers — which Uber dubbed “Rides of Glory.”
This week’s incident was the latest reminder about the potential for abuse as intimate information accumulates on the servers of tech companies that have widely varying approaches to user privacy and face few legal barriers in how they use personal data.
“We have never in history been at a point where we were more extortable,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in online privacy. “We have to think about how the service provider itself can be a threat.”
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