| Arguments on the basis of "they're a private organization; you have not right to tell them what to do" just don't hold a lot of water in these contexts. Forcing an organization to do something is a big deal because, unless you are specific about when and what kind of data you can force a private company to disclose, it can be abused. This is why such arguments are important. But if it wants to operate a business on NYC's streets on a (massive) scale -- well, that's a privilege, not a right. It actually is not a privilege, it is a right. Conducting business is a First Amendment right. In fact, this is a dangerous argument: if conducting business is a privilege, couldn't the government decide which businesses it likes and it doesn't like? The use of New York's streets is indeed a privilege, but that is already paid for by road taxes - anything more than that is just double dipping. It's called "rule of law", a concept which Uber has demonstrated considerable difficult in understanding thus far. Let's leave the attacks out of this - replace Uber with any other company and you have the same set of issues to discuss. Instead, let's just focus on the merits of the idea of government coercion of a private company to release data. If this data was truly beneficial to the public, couldn't the government buy it from the company through a voluntary transaction, paid for by taxpayers? The company can decide whether or not they wish to sell that information. The only reason a company would refuse to sell anonymized information is if they think the data is important to their competitive success. |