Uber Shows Us Why Privacy Matters

It appears that a senior vice president at Uber, the online taxi service, suggested that the company ought to investigate journalists who offend the company.  In particular, Emil Michael, the SVP in question, seems to have directed his remarks at a BuzzFeed reporter named Sarah Lacy, who evidently has been critical of the company. 

Although Uber has repudiated Michael's remarks and pledged not to investigate journalists, let's think hypothetically about what a nasty corporation might do in order to dig up dirt on an individual.  There is the company's own database.  In the case of an online taxi service, that would include name, credit card information, and perhaps a lot of addresses.  Some you might not want your significant other to know about if you've been less than a paragon of fidelity.  Others you might not want your employer to know about if you've been interviewing discreetly for a new job.  Of course, there could be the address of the only abortion clinic in your city or a seedy hotel where the only things you could get are services from sex workers or illegal drugs. 

In addition, businesses corporations have access to commercial databases created by shadowy companies that vacuum up everything about you they can find on the Internet and sell it for a fee.  These databases might well include archived pages from social networking and other sites that you thought you deleted years ago (shiploads of stuff on the Internet have been archived, and a deletion on the active website doesn't necessarily mean all the archived stuff is gone).  Businesses can also hire snoops to snoop around online and otherwise.  They can get the name of the driver from the online taxi service, interview him, and find out that you were getting mighty friendly with someone in the back seat when you told your spouse you were going alone to a client dinner.  Or they can find out the name of the restaurant where you were taken, and interview the bartender to learn there was someone waiting for you who whisked you away after spending five minutes at the bar. 

No one is perfect.  For many, their imperfections can be uncovered online or through information available online.  Private interests can be bad.  Some can be evil.  There are fewer legal constraints on private interests digging up dirt online than there are on the government.  It's creepy to think that NSA or some other government agency might be sneaking peaks at our e-mail accounts.  But, ultimately, the government is subject to a variety of constraints that, at least sometimes, can be invoked.  A business corporation or other private interest that wants to do evil is much harder to rein in because of the paucity of rules.

Privacy laws are like locks on doors.  You lock your doors to keep undesired people out of the privacy of your home.  Privacy rules keep undesired people out of the privacy of your data.  Everyone wants a nonpublic place where they aren't subject to prying eyes.  Even the Uber SVP, Emil Michael, who reportedly claims that his inflammatory remarks were meant to be off the record.  (See http://www.cnbc.com/id/102199538). From the vantage point of his petard, Michael acknowledges the desirability of privacy.

It's unlikely Congress will do anything useful in the foreseeable future.  But if it wanted to shock us with a pleasant surprise, it could enact a strong set of privacy rules for online data and the use of online data.  After all, privacy matters.