On MTA, You Can Ride But You Can’t Hide
By Georgette George and Sarah Roth
Any New Yorker who rides the subway regularly is now familiar with OMNY, MTA’s tap fare system that has gradually been replacing all other forms of payment since its debut. They’re also likely familiar with OMNY’s wordy subway advertisements, highlighting the system’s supposed convenience and benefits. And sure, with subway prices surging to $2.90 per-ride this past year, who wouldn’t appreciate a 7-day fare cap? But New Yorkers who buy in are paying for that 13th free ride with their privacy. That is because OMNY logs when and where you enter the subway or the bus, linking data about your ride to your payment information and other personal data it has collected about you (such as age, name, home address, email, and image).
There are about a million reasons why New Yorkers should not trust the MTA with these intimate portraits of our lives. For starters, back in August, OMNY unveiled a feature that allowed anyone to look up the trip history associated with a specific credit card number, giving even the most technologically unsavvy of bad actors access to our sensitive information. OMNY rolled back that feature after massive backlash, but stalkers and harassers can still purchase trip histories from any number of hackers and data brokers preying on OMNY and its private vendors’ cache of personal data. What’s worse, the OMNY terms of use include no provisions to prevent the MTA or private vendors from sharing your data with NYPD or ICE.
Imagine a simple bus ride costing your livelihood. This is a real possibility for marginalized communities in New York, who are the disproportionate targets of invasive police surveillance. OMNY can track undocumented New Yorkers and even individuals coming from out of state for abortion and gender-affirming care. While there are some digital best practices that impacted communities can adopt to protect their privacy, OMNY surveillance is quickly becoming unavoidable for those who rely on New York’s public transit system.
The gradual replacement of anonymous cash payment systems with OMNY also excludes individuals who do not have access to electronic forms of payment. This places marginalized New Yorkers who heavily rely on public transportation, such as poor and undocumented, Black, brown, and immigrant New Yorkers, at a major disadvantage. Linking a payment card to your OMNY account first requires opening a New York bank account, which the starting deposit fee and monthly upkeep of poses a financial strain on individuals who are already counting pennies to sustain their lives. A Department of Consumer and Worker Protection research brief estimated that 305,700 NYC households (9.4%) were unbanked in 2021.
The OMNY Privacy Act prohibits New York transit authorities and vendors from sharing payment data with police and law enforcement. It also requires a cash payment option protecting undocumented and unbanked New Yorkers and reducing the wealth gap barriers between New Yorkers. The Act bridges the push for safer privacy practices and unequal economic practices.
New York is voted number one in the country for public transit usage. This highlights the scary surveillance potential of OMNY, placing millions of New Yorkers who utilize public transportation on a daily basis at risk of surveillance. The OMNY Privacy Act is a strong step toward protecting MTA riders’ privacy, as well as transit access for unbanked New Yorkers.
Georgette George is a senior at Towson University and a 2023 Fall Advocacy Intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.).
Sarah Roth is the Advocacy & Communications Associate at S.T.O.P.