A ride-share driver in St. Louis, working for both Uber and Lyft, has been suspended after covertly recording and live-streaming passengers to Twitch, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Viewers would comment on how the women looked and rate their attractiveness, while others would mock what the passengers were talking about or the neighborhoods where they lived.
The driver was identified by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as 32-year-old Jason Gargac.
He said that at first he had informed passengers that he was recording them, but the videos felt "fake" and "produced".
The Dean of the Law School at the University of Missouri, Lyrissa Lidsky, said this is not, technically, illegal because Missouri is a one party consent state.
Gargac's Twitch channel has since been completely deactivated, though Twitch told the Post-Dispatch that it was uncertain as to why the channel was no longer online.
"The livestream and the Twitch and all that is really more secondary than the security that I feel knowing if something happens, immediately there can be a response versus hopefully you'll find my truck in a ditch three weeks later", he said.
"We got in an Uber at 2am to be safe, and then I find out that because of that, everything I said in that vehicle is online and people are watching me".
At the end of a 90-minute in-person interview with the Post-Dispatch, Gargac asked that his full name not be published in connection with this story.
Gargac told the newspaper that he sought out passengers who might make entertaining content, part of capturing and sharing the everyday reactions that earned him a small but growing following online. Following the report, an Uber spokesperson confirmed to the Post-Dispatch that the company had "suspended Gargac after reviewing his videos". The company notes on its help page that some cities and states may require drivers to disclose the presence of recording devices while others may bar recording devices. However, Gargac rarely told his passengers he was live streaming.
Uber allows drivers to use video cameras to record passengers for safety purposes.
It is not a crime in Missouri for parties to record their own interactions, unless it shows someone nude without that person's consent.
"I think it's a larger question about privacy and technology for society, what we do when the norms around a particular technology are violated", Rosenblat said.
