Private Getaway

There is a battle being waged between the web startup, Airbnb, and New York State. According to its website, Airbnb.com “is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world.” At issue is the concern that landlords might be using the website to circumvent New York State rental laws, specifically, renting out properties for less than 30 days unless a permanent resident is present.

According to a Bloomberg Business Week online article, Airbnb is refusing to comply with a subpoena to hand over the names of all of its 15,000 users.  They argue that the law should not apply to “ordinary, everyday people who occasionally share their homes.” They also feel the subpoena is “unreasonably broad” given the fact that Eric Schneiderman, the New York State Attorney General has said that they are only concerned with “a small number of bad actors who abuse the Airbnb platform.”

This battle raises privacy questions for both individuals and organizations in terms of how far the government can reach to enforce legislation.  While the intent of the legislation according to the Bloomberg article – that residents of an apartment building “shouldn’t have to worry about the apartment next door turning into a de facto hotel room” – is valid, does the government have the right to collect information on all users?  In essence, simply by being a user on a website where someone might be violating a law, all users become suspects and subject to investigation.  And beyond that, should the government be the sole arbiter of who is subject to prosecution in a marketplace where occasional home shares are growing in popularity due to the ease of it on the web.

For organizations, where do they draw the line when a small percentage of users are abusing the platform to circumvent legislation?  They are caught between privacy that they guarantee to their users and being party to illegal activity.  If they do not wish to relinquish all information, then they either become the arbiter of who is subject to investigation or they, to some extent, become complicit.

As social media continues to grow and new ideas for web services and apps appear every day, the implications of such questions increase.  It may not be long before benchmark cases of online privacy and constitutional rights find themselves much more frequently on the steps of the Supreme Court.