IE11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Bill Would Regulate Use of E-Vehicle Data

A state Assembly bill reintroduced last week and headed to committee would set boundaries on the use of personal information collected by mobility devices like e-scooters, e-bikes and others.

jacqui-irwin.jpg
It stalled during the last legislative session, but a state Assembly bill that would make important distinctions about how the personal information generated by mobility devices like e-scooters and e-bikes is used has been reintroduced.

Assembly Bill 859, introduced Thursday by Assemblymembers Jacqui Irwin and Buffy Wicks, would further refine familiar concepts from the California Consumer Privacy Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), around consumers’ rights to their own personal information and what governments may do with it. The bill aims to cover all rental mobility devices including e-scooters, e-bikes, rideshare; potentially even, in the future, autonomous vehicles. Its predecessor, AB 3116, failed to clear the Assembly Committee on Appropriations; AB 859 has been referred to the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee. Among the takeaways:

  • The bill, which is co-authored by Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, and Wicks, D-Berkeley, authorizes a public agency — a state or local entity that issues permits or regulates “mobility services” operators — to require those operators “periodically submit” anonymized trip data as well as the operator’s mobility devices such as e-bikes or e-scooters that were operating in the area. It also would authorize those same public agencies to share anonymized trip data with “a contractor, agent or other public agency” only if conditions are met, including that the information is being shared to assist the entity in “transportation planning, integration of mobility options and road safety.” It specifies that a trip included in data being submitted must not have ended in the last 24 hours; and that recipients of anonymized trip data are “expressly prohibited” from using or disclosing it “for any commercial purpose.” Notably, the bill would bar a public entity from “sharing trip data with a contractor or agent.”
  • CalECPA, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015, prohibits government entities from “compelling the production of, or access to electronic communication information or electronic device information” without a “search warrant, wiretap order, order for electronic reader records” or subpoena except in emergency situations. But local governments “have ignored this statute,” Irwin’s office said in a news release, framing the bill’s reintroduction as “a response to some local governments’ unlawful collection of individual on-trip location data of e-scooter and e-bike riders in their jurisdictions.” On Feb. 23, a U.S. District Court judge ruled the Los Angeles Department of Transportation can continue collecting trip data from e-scooter and similar transportation companies — and dismissed a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union alleging privacy violations from the city’s Mobility Data Specification permit requirement.
  • The bill would give local government entities “data collection authority that they currently do not have,” Wicks said in a statement, adding: “By permitting these entities to acquire de-identified and aggregate micro-mobility device data, this bill will strike an important balance between local planning needs and Californians’ constitutionally and statutorily protected right to privacy.”
    “Last year, we called it a scooter bill. But it is basically making sure that local governments also make sure to protect people’s personal information. There’s a whole fight with some local governments that think that our CalECPA doesn’t apply to them; they think it only applies to police departments. We’re going to make sure that Californian’s civil rights are not violated by local governments,” Irwin told Techwire recently.
Theo Douglas is Assistant Managing Editor of Industry Insider — California.