Nathaniel,
There is no “creepy” data collection going on. Juno drivers are riding with the Juno driver app in preparation for a launch in New York. No different than they would with any other app. There are lots of drivers riding with multiple apps. So do ours.
This is part of a general “system warm up” or “beta testing” (call it what you want). We want to make sure our app works and it also takes time to roll out on board thousands and thousands of drivers. You cannot launch in NYC with 10 or 100 cars (you can try, but it’s probably a mistake).
Our drivers switch between “Online” and “Busy” (and offline when the is disconnected) designating whether they are available to pick up a Juno rider (Online) or riding with another service (busy). During Busy, we know where the driver is (though the driver can opt out of this, if he or she so wishes). We do not know where the passenger got picked up (to us it is just a point on the map), though we can infer where the passenger was dropped off (though we could have done this even without the “busy” mode — as this would be the point the driver would switch from offline to online). For your reference, every trip in a NYC Taxi is reported to the TLC (Taxi and Limo Commission) and this data is available online for everyone. This is more than we get, as we do not have pickup point. We do have the route, but is that really sensitive data? If you have taxi pick up location and time (which we don’t even though in a taxi this is public info and taxi drop off, do you think you can’t guess the route?
As to what we do this with data, we are looking at very high level data to understand patterns and ask ourselves a very simple question — do we have enough cars to launch a good service in NYC?
What you should have been discussing in your article is the fact that Juno treats drivers like no other. Juno drivers are shareholders in the company (the online/busy requirement is primarily related to counting “Active hours” and how their equity in the company works). Juno drivers earn a better commission. Juno drivers are treated like people. They do not get “deactivated” the way The Star Trek Borg deactivate Drones (yes, same terminology). We are trying to build an ethical, responsible car sharing service. Why not jump into a few Uber cars and ask drivers about Juno. See what you hear.
