[caption id=”attachment_108822″ align=”aligncenter” width=”1024″] Minnesota Senator Al Franken, center, watches results come in from his and other races at the DFL Victory Party in Minneapolis, Minn., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014. (AP Photo/The Star Tribune, Glenn Stubbe)
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A lawmaker who oversees privacy issues in the U.S. Senate is pushing ride-sharing titan Uber for answers about its handling of customer data.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) wrote in a letter to the company dated Wednesday that he is alarmed by the alleged inconsistency between Uber’s stated privacy policies and the company’s response to recent press accounts. The reports have called into question Uber’s treatment of consumer information and the press.
“This raises serious concerns for me about the scope, transparency, and enforceability of Uber’s policies,” Franken, the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, wrote. “Moreover, it is unclear what steps, if any, you have taken to ensure that your policies are adequately communicated to all employees, contractors, and affiliates, and to ensure that such policies are fully enforced.”
BuzzFeed reported this week on a private dinner during which Uber’s vice president of business, Emil Michael, floated the idea of hiring opposition researchers to dig into the personal lives of journalists as retaliation for their work. Michael later said through a company spokesperson that his remarks were “wrong” and “do not reflect my actual views.”
The outlet later reported that Uber has launched an investigation of its top New York executive for tracking one of the publication’s reporters without her permission.
Uber published a blog post about its data privacy policy Tuesday to tamp down outrage stemming from the bad press — a move that Franken deemed inadequate.
“[T]he policies made available on your website do not in any clear way match or support what your company has said in the wake of Mr. Michael’s reported statements,” he wrote.
Franken issued 10 questions to the company that seek to clear up discrepancies between the published policy and the blog post, and probe deeper into the privacy issues raised by the BuzzFeed reports.
Uber responded Thursday by saying it had hired a law firm to conduct “an in-depth review and assessment” of its privacy practices. The company didn’t say how long such a process would take.
Franken requested a response to his inquiries by Dec. 15.
