Uber responds to Sen. Al Franken, says it accessed reporters' account because she was late, scales back access to God View; senator still dissatisfied
Uber Said It Accessed BuzzFeed News Reporter's Information Because She Was “Late” — The company, responding to Sen. Al Franken …
Context & Ripple Effects
Uber is answering Sen. Al Franken's letter by admitting a BuzzFeed News reporter's account was accessed — justified internally as a response to her being 'late' — and by scaling back who at the company can use the God View tracking tool. The concession is notable because God View is the internal dashboard that made rider surveillance visible in the first place.
The exchange matters because it did not end here: Franken went on to question both Uber and Lyft over passengers' real names and photos in profiles as a discrimination risk (his later letter drew responses from both companies), and by 2017 bipartisan senators were pressing Uber over its concealed breach affecting 57M users (those letters). One senator's follow-up became a multi-year oversight arc across the ride-hailing sector.
First-order effects
- Uber must live with narrower internal access to God View and a public admission that an employee opened a journalist's account for what it called a scheduling reason.
- Sen. Franken signals the response is insufficient, keeping pressure on Uber rather than closing the inquiry.
Second-order effects
- Lyft gets pulled into the scrutiny: Franken separately sends it a detailed privacy-practices letter asking which employees can access customer data, so one company's lapse becomes an industry-wide questionnaire.
- Both companies are later forced to defend design choices — riders' real names and pictures — turning product features into regulatory talking points.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, ride-hailing data practices move from press scandal to standing congressional oversight: internal tools like God View, profile design, and breach disclosure each become subjects of formal senatorial inquiry, raising compliance costs across the sector.
The trend: Congressional oversight of ride-hailing is escalating from single-incident letters about internal data access toward systematic scrutiny of how platforms handle passenger data.