Under new LADOT program, vulnerable communities face a familiar reality

In October 1963, the FBI began using wiretapping technology to surveil Martin Luther King Jr.’s telephone conversations. In January 2014, the New York City Police Department began recklessly filling its gang member data base, resurrecting the infamous “stop and frisk” program by re-branding it for the digital age.  In May 2018, officers from ICE arrested an undocumented immigrant by tracking his location through a social media page.

For generations, minority communities have faced over-surveillance by law enforcement and under-service from publicly enjoyed amenities.  There’s a long history of technology created with good intentions being abused by authorities, and the victims of those abuses are all too often the most vulnerable among us.  The latest development posing a similar threat arrives under little fanfare and is cloaked in technical jargon only coders can thoroughly understand.

It’s called Mobility Data Specification (MDS), and it’s a new tool several cities are implementing to track the movements of electronic scooters, dockless bicycles, and eventually, Ubers, Lyfts and all forms of transportation.

In Los Angeles, the birthplace of MDS, mobility companies that want to operate here are now required to provide the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) with the location of every one of their e-scooters or e-bikes in real time, including the starting point, ending point and route of each trip.  This MDS requirement doesn’t include rider names, but studies have shown that it’s easy to figure out who a person is based on where they’ve been. JUMP even filed a lawsuit citing its serious concerns over rider privacy, but LADOT remains persistent in its demands, particularly the transmission of real-time location data.