Uber gave U.S. regulators and law enforcement agencies details concerning roughly 14 million riders and drivers during the last half of 2015, the ride-share company revealed in its first transparency report released on Tuesday.
Between July and December 2015, Uber said it received 415 requests from law enforcement agencies interested in obtaining information related to criminal investigations and complied around 85 percent of the time. Records concerning 469 drivers and riders were in turn provided to authorities through these requests, Uber said.
During that same span, Uber said it gave various local regulatory agencies in the U.S. details on 11,644,000 riders and 583,000 drivers in response to 33 separate requests. Separately, Uber provided details concerning 1,645,000 riders and 156,000 drivers while responding to 34 requests from airport agencies.
In a statement, Uber said its first transparency report suggests the ride-share company attempts to prevent agencies from over-collecting, but acknowledged it has had problems fending off requests from regulators.
“The report shows that we comply with the majority of law enforcement requests, while ensuring they go through the proper legal process, as stated in our updated public guidelines,” Uber said.
“Of course, regulators will always need some amount of data to be effective, just like law enforcement. But in many cases, they send blanket requests without explaining why the information is needed, or how it will be used. And while this kind of trip data doesn’t include personal information, it can reveal patterns of behavior—and is more than regulators need to do their jobs. It’s why Uber frequently tries to narrow the scope of these demands, though our efforts are typically rebuffed,” the company added.
In a statement, Uber said it hopes that disclosing details about local and federal requests will provoke a public debate concerning the type of information service providers are compelled to provide to authorities.
“Historically, there hasn’t been a ton of public awareness or oversight around these issues,” Gautam Hans, a policy counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, told Mercury News.
More than 50 other major tech companies have made it a habit of publishing similar transparency reports, Uber added, but says its report is the first to detail requests from regulators.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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