Uber Moves for Dismissal of Lyft Driver Spying Class Action Lawsuit

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Uber is seeking dismissal of a class action lawsuit accusing the company of spying on Lyft drivers without their permission.

In a motion for dismissal filed this past Monday, Uber says the alleged “spying” does not run afoul of the federal Wiretap Act or the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

The company claims any information it collected on Lyft drivers was readily and publicly available, and that none of it was ever intended to be kept confidential.

Plaintiff Michael Gonzales, a former driver for Lyft in the San Francisco area, initiated this Uber class action lawsuit last year. He claims Uber has been using special software to track the locations of Lyft drivers, as part of an effort to reduce Lyft’s competitiveness with Uber.

Uber allegedly refers to its spying application internally as “Hell” – a play on its name for the software it uses to visualize the locations of its own drivers, known as “Heaven” or “God’s View.”

According to Gonzales, the Hell application extracts driver data from Lyft’s own app using fake rider accounts set up by Uber. Hell can allegedly track up to eight Lyft drivers within a given area.

Gonzales claims Uber has been using Hell to discover which of its own drivers have been picking up riders for both companies. Uber would then try to get those drivers to drive more for Uber and less for Lyft, he claims.

In his Uber spyware class action lawsuit, Gonzales raises claims for violations of the Wiretap Act, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, and provisions of California’s Unfair Competition Law, as well as provisions of the California constitution.

Uber’s current motion seeks dismissal of all these claims. The company argues that for several reasons, the Wiretap Act does not apply to the communications at issue or to Uber’s collection of those communications.

Since Uber allegedly used actual Lyft accounts to use Lyft’s data in the way it’s ordinarily used by Lyft riders, that use does not constitution an “interception” that would violate the Wiretap Act, Uber claims.

The data in question is also not privately communicated but is instead “readily accessible to the general public” – easily available to any person who wants to use Lyft’s app to retrieve it.

“Gonzales’s business as a driver therefore depended on making his location available, and he expressly agreed to let Lyft broadcast his location for just that reason,” the company claims. Therefore it’s not the kind of communication that qualifies for Wiretap Act protection, Uber argues.

The company also says Lyft’s driver information qualifies for a Wiretap Act exception for “communication from a tracking device,” since the driver’s own smartphones are being used to track their location.

Similar arguments cause Gonzales’ California state law claims to fail, Uber says. And the California constitutional claims fail because the drivers do not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy in the circumstances” that could be offended by the alleged data collection.

Gonzales is represented by attorneys Caleb Marker and Hannah P. Belknap of Zimmerman Reed LLP and by Mark Burton and Michael McShane of Audet & Partners LLP.

The Uber Spying Class Action Lawsuit is Michael Gonzales v. Uber Technologies Inc., Case No. 3:17-cv-02264, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.