I had a question regarding the legality of mobile phones being part of someone’s job. This question arises from my observation of taxi aggregator and cab service providing companies and startups.
There are startups providing cab services for employees of established companies. These startups provide the vehicles to the drivers, and the drivers are expected to pass around their personal phone, with their app installed, wherein the passengers enter their employee id for verification. Does this not constitute to a privacy violation for the driver? There are definitely ways to implement some amount of privacy, such as a pinned screen, or an implementation that works on locked screen even (think google maps navigation) which are not done.
I definitely feel that the outcome from the discussion/filings from Privacy alert - Hyderabad police doing random WhatsApp messages searches for "drugs" on people's phones would have some effect here, as in the declaration of phone as private property not subject to searching and use by other people without consent, although I’m not sure where the distinction is placed. For example, private cab drivers do not share their phone with their passengers, it is purely used for navigation and passenger finding, although, it’s still using their private phone.
It feels a little exploitative for me, and no one would stand for them, which is why this post. Passengers could drop the phone while passing, and no one would be liable for the damage.