Am I the only one that sees some significant privacy issues with exact pickup/drop off times and location being released? It seems like singling out a single passenger's data (e.g. to/from home) would not be that difficult.
Not many people take taxis from home to work every day, or even weekly. If you are the type, then likely, you are someone who lives in Manhattan (getting to work via cab in a borough is a tenuous situation) and in a dense enough area where you are one of dozens/hundreds of people who could conceivably be dropped off at your home spot (think of the density of high-rises).
The question is more inspired by someone I know who lives in Manhattan who has a psycho ex. This data would answer the question (if he were tech savvy enough to mine it) "Where does her new boyfriend live?" which is rather frightening IMO.
OK...but how would this psycho-ex track the new boyfriend down?
Presumably, the ex knows where the girlfriend lives...and I guess, he also knows what the new boyfriend looks like? So he watches the apartment until the BF leaves by taxi. The ex then notes the taxi's time of pickup. And then...
The ex waits a full month before calling up the TLC, buying a new hard drive, transferring a couple of GB, and then doing the data analysis to find that particular taxi that made a pickup within the vicinity of the girlfriend's apartment, and finding where that taxi made a dropoff?
And then the ex goes to those coordinates and...then what? Barges into one of high-rises and knock on every door until he finds the new boyfriend?
I think that if the psycho-ex were to act like a psycho, he probably will not do it through this kind of data analysis.
