Group Criticizing Mobility Data System Includes Uber, Others

A new group formed by Uber, community advocacy groups and others has come out against Mobility Data Specification, the popular system for opening two-way communication between mobility companies and local government.

Communities Against Rider Surveillance (CARS) announced its existence Feb. 27 with a press release calling MDS “a dangerous technology that makes it easy for local governments to track people’s personal movements through cities.”

The technology, which consists of APIs, is an effort the Los Angeles Department of Transportation began in 2018 with an eye toward emerging mobility options such as self-driving vehicles. But soon, companies such as Bird, Lime and Uber’s JUMP started putting their shared electric scooters in urban areas — leading cities such as Los Angeles to look for new ways to regulate and analyze them.