25, 2011.Ĭhuck Geerhart, a lawyer for Don’s family, sued the city. Don suffered bleeding in his brain and went into a coma for a month before dying Dec. Hin Don, 81, fell after the operator of the M line allegedly jerked the train forward before the elderly man could sit down. In another case, an attorney for the family of a man who died after a fall on a Muni Metro train sought Clipper card records to determine which train he was riding. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission didn’t have any data related to McCahill’s alleged escape, said Pam Grove, a commission spokeswoman. In the case of the robbery getaway, prosecutors wrote in the subpoena that McCahill “is believed to have used his Clipper card to escape from police.” But it turned out that the suspect had not used the card to pay his fare – or perhaps had not traveled on Muni at all. Transit riders can remain anonymous if they pay for a Clipper card in cash and do not register it, he noted. People who don’t register stand to lose any money on their card if it is lost, stolen or stops working.Īs for the new app that scans Clipper cards for travel information, Goodwin said he was “completely unconcerned” because there is “no personally identifiable information on the card.” He said Clipper might even roll out a similar app so people can access their travel history. “Absent a subpoena or a search warrant, we would not turn over any information,” Goodwin said. John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said that three search warrants or subpoenas was a relatively low number and that people’s private information is well protected. “Clipper is one place that collects this data that people might not really be aware of.” “As with all location information, Clipper cards can tell quite a bit about a person – it could show that a person got off BART at a rally,” said Chris Conley, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union on Northern California. Privacy advocates say the transportation commission should not store data on individuals’ locations.
In addition, a new smartphone app, called FareBot, allows anyone to scan a Clipper card and find out where the owner has been.īay Area heat advisory extended through Saturday Personal data can be stored for seven years after a Clipper account is closed, according to the commission’s policy. Many cardholders might not realize that data tracking their every move on public transit is stored on computers and available to anyone with a search warrant or subpoena. Use of the card, accepted by every major Bay Area public transit system, is soaring with 689,000 transactions a day and more than 1 million active Clipper cards. In only one of those cases did the search turn up any relevant travel information, according to the commission’s response to a public records request from The Bay Citizen. The request for McCahill’s travel record was one of the rare occasions that police or lawyers have sought to use the Clipper card database to track the whereabouts of a cardholder.Īccording to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which administers the card, it has received three search warrants or subpoenas seeking customers’ personal travel information since the card’s inception in 2010. To try to place McCahill at the scene, prosecutors subpoenaed the information from his Clipper card, which they believed he’d used to pay his bus fare. McCahill gave officers the slip, investigators believed, by hopping on a Muni bus. San Francisco police arrested Marcel Largaespada on April 30 after a gunpoint robbery at a Lombard Street business, but they couldn’t catch his alleged accomplice, Alan McCahill.
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