[projectvrm] Uber Article in NYT is more than about Uber

["Nathan Schor" < >]

We Can’t Trust Uber http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/opinion/we-cant-trust-uber.html

I don’t bring this article to the list’s attention because it’s yet another critique on Uber’s antics. Nor about the articles message, with which we’re over familiar.

Instead, what’s most pertinent about this piece is it’s yet another signal (and a cogent one, at that) reminding the general ‘informed’ public that it’s time to support an alternative approach to surveillance-driven marketing. And even better, in this case, is NYT’s credibility among both influential mainstream and business audiences.

It’s professionally inspiring and, of course, useful to our cause when CapGemini endorses VRM to ‘insiders’, but it’s another level of inspiration when NYT readers digest material like the following:

We already regulate sensitive data, ranging from health records to financial information. We must update oversight for 21st-century data as well. When we’re picked up on a rainy street corner, it’s not enough to know where the car is going. We need to know where our data is going, and how it’s used.

The data collection gets more extensive at every turn. Facebook is updating its terms of service as of Jan. 1. They state in clearer terms that Facebook will be tracking your location (unless you disable it), vacuuming up data that other people provide about you and even contacts from your phone’s address book (if you sync it to your account) — important provisions many of Facebook’s 1.35 billion users may not even notice when they click “accept.”

 

Nathan Schor 305.632.1368 ">