US Government Asked to Block Uber From Collecting Background Location Data

Uber's challenges are not just on how it treats employees/contractors but how it treats the data it captures. Both questions threaten its business model. JL

Cyrus Farivar reports in ars technica:

"We may also derive your approximate location from your IP address."
A privacy activist group has filed a formal legal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), asking federal authorities to halt Uber’s pending “unfair and deceptive data collection practices.”
In its 23-page complaint filed on Monday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) notes that Uber’s new User Privacy Statement—which takes effect July 15, 2015—says the company will try to collect location data even when the app is running in the background. The organization has been successful in filing similar complaints against the likes of Google and Facebook, resulting in a negotiated settlement with those companies.
That new policy states:

When you use the Services for transportation or delivery, we collect precise location data about the trip from the Uber app used by the Driver. If you permit the Uber app to access location services through the permission system used by your mobile operating system (“platform”), we may also collect the precise location of your device when the app is running in the foreground or background. We may also derive your approximate location from your IP address.

It would be easy and relatively inexpensive to smear someone. Just sayin'.

Uber did not immediately respond to Ars’ question as to why this change was necessary.The complaint also touches on unauthorized access of Uber users’ address book—using their contents to send unsolicited text messages to those people.
Uber came under fire in November 2014 when a company executive said that he thought it would make sense for the firm to hire opposition researchers to look into the personal lives and Uber records of journalists to "give the media a taste of its own medicine.”
The company also made news a month before for displaying a real-time activity map of thirty of its "notable users" at a launch party in Chicago. The map was part of Uber's "God View," an administrative tool that lets the company see a map of all active Uber cars and customers who have called an Uber car. One of the users on the map found out he was being tracked when an attendee of the party began texting him his Uber car's exact location.
"I’m willing to bet that the FTC is already investigating Uber," Chris Hoofnagle, a lecturer in law at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former EPIC employee, told Ars. "The FTC loves to target the whales in industry because matters bought against large companies generate headlines and bring smaller companies to heel as well."
UPDATE 12:46pm: Uber spokeswoman Molly Spaeth declined to answer specific questions, but sent Ars this statement: "There is no basis for this complaint. We care deeply about the privacy of our riders and driver-partners and have significantly streamlined our privacy statements in order to improve readability and transparency. These updated statements don't reflect a shift in our practices, they more clearly lay out the data we collect today and how it is used to provide or improve our services."
She added:

We do not currently collect background location data. We may want to start doing that in order to provide new useful features, such as providing faster loading time when the user opens the app (currently, there is a lag time between opening the app and seeing the available cars in your area during which time the app is trying to figure out your location).
We are not currently doing this and have no plans to start on July 15.  If we move forward with this, users- will be in control and can choose whether they want to share the data with Uber.