One of the oldest services that governments have provided their citizens is the construction and maintenance of roads. To make life better for those who use roads, some of the most modern governments have begun using state of the art technology to notify drivers of their status, enabling them to plan around things like construction or traffic-causing accidents. One such high-tech solution can be seen below:

 

AM radio, a state of the art technology invented in 1900, is used by departments of transportation in many forward-thinking states to help drivers navigate treacherous traffic conditions. We can all think of multiple times in our lives where those helpful flashing lights have encouraged us to tune in on our AM radios for some time-saving advice. Another state of the art solution provided more commonly by governments is shown here:

Ok, you get the point. Government solutions to non-critical problems with their services (and even some critical ones) tend to be outdated, unreliable and generally unhelpful. They hardly solve the problem at all.

Waze is a Tel-Aviv based startup that was founded in 2008 with the goal of reliably providing traffic and road condition information in the absence of successful government solutions. They succeeded. Waze built a GPS navigation app which allows users to submit reports of everything from accidents to construction to police speed traps. They even partnered with Google and FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Sandy to allow reporting of gas stations that had fuel. Acquired by Google in June 2013 for $966M, Waze has over 36 million users who have shared over 90 million reports in over 110 countries [1].

When we evaluate Waze critically, we find that it is highly generative, data-centric and slightly encouraging of openness. It is highly generative because Waze’s users produce most of the valuable content on the platform with Waze simply enabling them to do so. The more users on the Waze platform, the more valuable it becomes for everyone else. It is data-centric because the data on Waze’s platform is their primary asset and the primary value-add for users. Waze is slightly encouraging of openness because it distributes information that used to be locked up in the minds of construction workers, emergency responders or individuals stuck in traffic to a larger group of people.

Yet one of the critical places where Waze scores extremely poorly is in the domain of preserving privacy and individual liberties. Waze’s demise in this category, like many modern internet companies, stems from their privacy policy regarding the information they collect on you. Before we go into that, we must begin with what specific information Waze collects:

• “Detailed location and route information to create a detailed location history of all of the journeys you have made while using the Application”
• “All of the phone numbers which are stored on your device’s phone book” (if you opt into the ‘find friends feature’)
• Search queries within the Waze app [2]

Of course it is in Waze’s best interest to collect all of this information. They can use it to improve their own services, get a better understanding of their users and support their company financially through directed advertising. None of this is particularly onerous or damaging to individual liberties (at least in my opinion). Developing a better service is in all stakeholders best interest and a private company needs a strong business model to sustain the services it provides.

Where Waze strays away from protecting civil liberties is when it comes to how they are allowed use your data. One particularly onerous sections of their privacy policy and its implications are outlined below:

Waze will share your personal information with others without your consent “to comply with any applicable law and assist law enforcement agencies under any applicable law, when Waze has a good faith belief that Waze’s cooperation with the law enforcement agencies is legally mandated or meets the applicable legal standards and procedures,” [2]

Remember, if you are an active Waze user then Waze has a personal history of most places you’ve driven, places you are thinking about going and your live location if you have the app open. Operating on the assumption that governments always apply laws justly, this is not a problem. Unfortunately history has shown us that this assumption is frequently incorrect. And in that case, Waze provides these governments with a(nother) tool to track the exact whereabouts of Waze users of interest. As a digital trends article on the subject put it, “Anything you share with Waze can be used against you in a court of law,” [3].

Waze has also started negotiating deals with governments of places like Rio De Jeneiro and Florida to share data bi-directionally with departments of transportation [4]. While this is great for improving the services of both parties, it is a bad sign for user privacy that Waze is using private user data as a bargaining chip for better access to data from governments.

Since Waze scores so poorly in the privacy category, it begs the question: can such a platform exist that does better? Could a platform modeled after Benkler’s nonmarket peer-production concepts provide as effective of a service without compromising on privacy? While this is clearly an open question that deserves a deeper analysis, I believe that it can and it is a service that I would love to see in the world. Until then, it appears that as a privacy-concerned person I’m stuck tuning into my AM radio for my traffic information.

References:

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/06/nav-app-waze-says-36m-users-shared-900m-reports-while-65k-users-made-500m-map-edits/

[2] https://www.waze.com/legal/privacy

[3] http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/terms-conditions-waze-privacy-accident/#ixzz3U247x1Q9

[4] http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/07/07/why-google-waze-helps-local-governments-track-its-users/