For those unfamiliar, Uber (https://www.uber.com/) is an app driven rideshare program similar to a taxi, but far more efficient and user friendly. In fact, I actually love Uber’s service. Even when traveling abroad in unfamiliar cities, I can quickly and safely have a clean car pick me up wherever I am located and transport me comfortably to my destination at rates often far less than comparable taxi services. I know who is picking me up, don’t have to haggle over prices, and can even rate my driver (and he/she can rate me), which keeps most people honest and polite. However, hidden away in all of this convenience is a poison pill the police state loves.
Uber, unlike taxis, is by design cashless for safety and convenience. Once a system becomes cashless, the citizen loses privacy and can no longer travel with anonymity. Few things scare a despotic government more than the ability for people to freely move with anonymity. As such, Uber’s electronic files on your travels will soon become a critical piece of the intelligence community’s ultimate endeavor to realize total information awareness regarding every single human being on earth. Remember, any ride you take becomes a searchable record for use by Uber, the government, or anyone else for that matter with the right access. Not only is your credit card information on file, but so is your personal profile, phone numbers, and travel records. The government loves this aspect of Uber and for this reason alone it will resist the taxi union’s efforts to crush and outlaw Uber via their typical means of lobbying.
Like most evolution in business, when a better product or service appears, the old ones go away. Uber is for the most part a better service than the taxis and will likely put most taxi services out of business if their business model proves to be profitable over the coming years. To date, taxis still offer the best option for an individual to move about a city privately because of the ability to pay in cash. However, as taxi companies die, truly private travel will become more and more difficult. Unless Uber modifies its business model or a similar “anonymous” service appears, we will have to become much more creative to maintain our privacy. We still will have a few years to develop alternative methods, but for now, perhaps our best bet is to lobby Uber with our wallets. Write Uber with suggestions urging Uber to provide a platform for totally anonymous travel. As the situation becomes direr, we may even need to boycott Uber to try and force it to develop a privacy oriented service. If not, the market is wide open for another company to offer a fully autonomous rideshare program for those of us requiring more privacy.
By Guiles Hendrik
August 12, 2015
