Uber has your home address. It has the addresses of the places you want to get to. It knows when you’re going to church, to your boyfriend’s house, to the union hall, to the doctor’s office. And if you’re a driver for Uber, it’s tracking you for hours and hours each day.
We talk a lot about NSA surveillance, National Security Letters, warrant canaries, facial recognition technology, a police van disguised as a Google Maps vehicle, the war against encryption, and government-mandated backdoors. And yeah, sure, the expansive net of government surveillance is really troubling. That’s why organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation put out “Who’s Got Your Back” reports, grading the technology industry on how they treat user privacy.
But these reports look at how the tech industry responds to government surveillance. Ultimately, the EFF gave Uber five out of five stars—endorsing the company as one that “has your back.” Government surveillance is nothing to sneeze at, but reports like these implicitly turn a blind eye to the astounding privacy invasions that companies like Uber regularly engage in, all on their own—and not for purported national...
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