Yahoo Finance Group of British drivers take Uber to court in the Netherlands
A group of British Uber (UBER) drivers have taken the taxi company to court in the Netherlands in an attempt to get access to personal data it collects about them.
The drivers have said that Uber determines the allocation of available rides and their fares based on information about their performance, behaviour and other personal traits which it gathers through an app they use to work.
The drivers have gone to the Dutch court requesting full access to this information and the working of Uber’s algorithms.
“Uber should offer total transparency,” their lawyer Anton Ekker said at the District Court in Amsterdam. “Drivers are not given the information they have asked and to which they are entitled.”
Uber said it had shared all required information with their drivers and that it could not do more in order to protect the privacy of passengers.
Uber lawyer Axel Arnbak said: “It’s extremely dangerous for the privacy of passengers if we share all data about specific rides.”
“This is very sensitive information. For a driver, it simply says they went from A to B, but it tells much more about a passenger.”
The court said it would decide on the matter by 11 February next year.
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It comes after the taxi giant last week said it had moved to sell its autonomous driving research unit to self-driving startup Aurora.
Uber’s advanced Technologies Group sale is a significant shift from part of the business that was once hailed as its path to long-term profitability.
It will still hold a significant interest in Aurora, investing $400m (£299.5m) to give it a 26% stake. Aurora is also backed by Amazon (AMZN).
Aurora was founded by former Tesla (TSLA), Uber and Google executives and will look to develop self-driving tech for the commercial trucking sector, rather than robotaxis.
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