The Golden State of Scooter Surveillance
In the City of Angels, the Devil’s in the Data
Here in California we are early adopters of new technology — and guinea pigs for new ideas. We don’t blink an eye when an autonomous vehicle or one wheeled-scooter-thingy rolls down the street. And most of the time we’re okay with technology companies gathering our data so we can have all the conveniences we love — a ride on demand, anything we want delivered, or recommended movies to watch — as they long as they don’t move too fast and break things. But we don’t feel the same about government. In the age of Trump and ICE run amok, liberals and libertarians alike are concerned about access to our data by government actors. And the idea of a government agency tracking our location and movement around a city is particularly disturbing.
Yet one government agency — the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) — has been tracking citizen movement in an unprecedented way right under our noses, all in the name of regulating electric scooters. Californians need to fully understand the scope of this surveillance now and its planned expansion in the future.
LADOT requires any company that provides mobility services to obtain a permit to operate, and uses its permit power to require every operator to comply with data sharing requirements using a new…
