NEW YORK – The New York City Council is scheduled to vote on Wednesday July 18 on a bill that would mandate Airbnb and other housing booking services to collect significant personal information from all New Yorkers who uses their services to rent out their home and give that information to the Office of Special Enforcement. The NYCLU expressed privacy concerns about who would have access to the data collected about hosts at a hearing on the bill in June and offered recommendations to the bill’s sponsors to help limit the risks of federal and local law enforcement improperly getting access to that data. The bill is slated for vote tomorrow without the recommended privacy protections.
NYCLU offers the following comment from Executive Director Donna Lieberman:
“The city council can and should take steps to protect New Yorkers from the impacts of gentrification in neighborhoods where housing costs are rising and residents are being displaced. But protecting New Yorkers’ ability to stay in their homes shouldn’t come at the cost of making their personal information available without ensuring that it won’t be used improperly by immigration authorities, landlords or other law enforcement. The council had the opportunity to anonymize the data so that the personal information of New Yorkers is not at risk, but they failed to take simple privacy precautions in the drafting of this legislation.
“The mayor’s office still has the opportunity to offer further privacy protections for New Yorkers when it considers how to implement this bill. We look forward to working with the Mayor.”