Uber and Lyft confirm ban on recording and broadcasting videos of passengers

Osman
Orsal/Reuters

• Both Uber and Lyft have confirmed that they do not allow
  drivers to stream or publish videos of passengers.
• In October, Uber took heat after a group of Ottawa
  Senators hockey players were recorded bad-mouthing a coach by an
  Uber driver.
• In July, a driver in St. Louis was found to have streamed
  hundreds of rides on Twitch. 

Recording and publishing videos of riders is against the rules
for Uber and
Lyft
drivers, the companies have reaffirmed, after several
high-profile incidents garnered headlines and privacy concerns in
recent weeks.

The issue came to light once again at the end of October, after a

video
circulated of Ottawa Senators hockey players bad-mouthing an
assistant coach for the organization. “If you
actually do pay attention, he doesn’t ever teach you anything,”
defenseman Chris Wideman said if the
coach. Caught by a dashboard camera in Arizona, the
video resulted in an uproar from the club, which urged a Canadian
newspaper to take down the video saying it violated privacy laws.

New guidelines were put into place by Uber at the end of
September, the
Associated Press reported, and were in effect at the
time of the video’s publication, a company spokesperson confirmed
to the wire service. Drivers are permitted to record rides for
security documentation, but may not broadcast or publish the
footage. 

“Broadcasting a person’s image, audio, or video recording is a
violation of these terms and may result in loss of account
access,”
Uber’s guidelines state.

Lyft’s policies point to local regulations. “Please refer to your
city and state’s regulations on recording devices when giving
rides,”
its website says. “Some cities or states may require
signage making known the presence of recording devices, while
other regions may not allow recording devices at all.”

In July, a driver for both Uber and Lyft in St. Louis was found
to have recorded and broadcasted up to 700 rides on the
Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch. Among the
passengers recorded were Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry
Cantrell, drunk college students, and more. Often times,
passengers’ names could be heard on the recordings.

In a high profile incident of a driver recording and publishing
video of a passenger, Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick

was taped lecturing a driver about taking responsibility for
his problems. 

State laws for recording vary by state to state. Arizona, in the
instance of the hockey players, is a “one-party” state, meaning
that recording is legal provided at least one of the parties
involved has knowledge of the surveillance.

38 states share Arizona’s one-party rules, while 12 require the
consent of all parties, according
to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Most states have specific additional rules for hidden cameras.