Los Angeles has temporarily suspended Uber Technologies Inc. ’s permit to offer dockless scooters for rent, amid a deepening disagreement over the city’s data-collection efforts.
City officials informed the company of the decision in a letter sent Tuesday. The ride-hailing company, which offers scooters through its Jump business, had been given until Tuesday evening to show that it could comply with the requirements of the Mobility Data Specification, a platform city officials developed to track the number and movements of scooters around the city.
Los Angeles has about 32,000 scooters registered to eight companies. City officials said in a statement that the other seven companies, including Bird Rides Inc. and Lyft Inc., have complied with their requirements.
The MDS is essentially a series of communication protocols between scooter companies and the city, allowing them to exchange data. Los Angeles wants to track scooters’ use and location in real time, saying that will allow the city to prevent them from being dumped en masse in popular areas, to monitor whether scooter companies are following circulation caps, and to assist with city planning.
City officials said in the statement that their intent is to manage how public roads are used and that they target data-collection efforts on the scooters, not the passengers.
Uber said that it wouldn’t comply with the requirements, calling them invasive to customer privacy.
“We believe that [the Los Angeles Department of Transportation] requirements to share sensitive on-trip data compromises our customers’ expectations of data privacy and security,” an Uber spokesperson said.
The company has argued that the geolocation data Los Angeles wants to collect means the city will be able to identify users. Privacy advocates say such information could be used to enable stalking, harassment or surveillance.
City officials say that the data is anonymized to strip it of identifiable information and that they are only concerned with the equipment being tracked.
Many cities consider the Los Angeles system a template they can use to manage digital services such as those provided by Uber and Lyft, standardizing such data transfers rather than developing individual systems. Los Angeles officials plan to use the MDS to eventually govern data about ride-shares. It could also be applied to future technologies, such as drone deliveries.
Uber’s challenge to Los Angeles could have a tremendous impact on how cities approach this issue in the future, said Meera Joshi, a visiting scholar at New York University and a former head of New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.
“Because so many other cities are adopting the L.A. data standards, whatever happens will have a ripple effect: either it’ll embolden other cities or have a chilling effect,” she said.
Under the terms of its temporary suspension, Uber will be able to operate within the city for 10 days. During that time, it must request a hearing with LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds or another official. If Uber doesn’t make the request, its license could be permanently revoked, requiring it to remove all its scooters from city streets within 72 hours.
“While all other permitted scooter and bike companies are complying with the rules, Uber has repeatedly refused, despite knowing about these requirements for months and agreeing to abide by them when obtaining a permit,” a spokeswoman for LADOT said.
This week’s conflict is the latest in a widening battle between Uber and city officials over the MDS. The parties had attempted to negotiate a compromise in a phone call last week but talks deteriorated.
Privacy advocates have also criticized Los Angeles’s plans for real-time data collection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology have written to Ms. Reynolds to express concerns over the city’s policies regarding its use of the data and its procedures for storing it.
The city has published its principles on how it will govern elements of its data collection, by treating the information gathered as confidential, encrypting it, and only allowing law-enforcement access through subpoena.
Uber itself has come under scrutiny over user privacy. In 2017, it settled accusations from the Federal Trade Commission that it failed to properly monitor employee use of a program called “God view” that allowed staff to view user trips in real time. Another piece of software developed by Uber, Greyball, was designed to stop those who violated its rules from using its service. The company used Greyball to identify law-enforcement sting operations and competitors attempting to disrupt operations.
As part of the FTC settlement, Uber must hire an outside firm to audit its privacy practices every two years for the next 20 years. It hired its first chief privacy officer, Ruby Zefo, in 2018.
In April, Los Angeles made the MDS open source, meaning that other cities can use it to build their own systems. Use of the system is governed by the Open Mobility Foundation, an organization that counts as members more than a dozen U.S. cities as well as Bogotá, Colombia. The foundation didn’t respond to a request for comment.
—Preetika Rana contributed to this article.
Write to James Rundle at james.rundle@wsj.com