Uber gave the US authorities data on 12 million users and published testimony of canary

Uber followed the lead of 60 other technology companies and published its first Transparency Report with statistics on the number of requests from government agencies and regulators to receive information about the company's users. I must say that the published statistics is a bit shocking. In the period from July to December 2015, the company issued to various regulators data on more than 12 million passengers and drivers! This is approximately 3.7% of the US population. Perhaps, we are talking about all Uber users in the United States (the company does not publish statistics for other countries yet).

The figure of 12 million is basically data for regulators such as the California utility commission or the New York taxi and limousine commission . Uber does not tell which commissions and what specific data it reported. It remains to hope that we are not talking about a complete discharge of the database, but about some summary information about trips, how many taxi drivers work in a particular city, etc.

However, in the old days, when you got into a taxi and paid cash, there was no reason to worry about privacy. Now everything is different. Even a taxi becomes an information service that accumulates data.

Law enforcement agencies received 408 requests for passengers and 205 requests for drivers. The company fully or partially satisfied 84.8% of requests.

Reportedly, requests are most often related to investigations of fraud or the use of stolen bank cards.

Well, just in case, Uber posted a canary testimony: the company said that it had never received the NSL subpoenas for the Foreign Intelligence Observation Act (FISA). If such a request is received, the company does not have the right to announce its receipt, but it can remove the corresponding phrase from the report, as Reddit did .