https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vb94na/eff-los-angeles-scooter-location-data-identify-individuals

In March, Motherboard reported on the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s (LADOT) plans for scooter companies in the city to provide real-time location data of their vehicles to the department. Lime and Bird, two scooter companies, had been granted a one-year permit for their scooters in the city. Uber, which operates a scooter service called JUMP and which has pushed back against the data collection plans, was given a shorter permit. The stated purpose of the data is for city-planning, such as seeing which communities are actually able to access the scooters.

Now non-profit digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has voiced concerns around how that location data could be de-anonymized to identify individual riders and their routes. In a letter dated April 3 and reiterated in a blog post published Wednesday, the EFF said “even with names stripped out, location information is notoriously easy to re-identify—particularly for habitual trips.”