St. Louis Uber Driver’s Secret Livestream Raises Privacy Concerns

News broke last week that Jason Gargac, an Uber driver from Florissant, MO, secretly filmed and broadcast videos of his fares to thousands of viewers via the live-streaming platform Twitch. Passengers and the public are outraged, citing privacy violations, but Missouri’s one-party consent laws complicate matters, with Gargac insisting he did nothing wrong.

Would you take an Uber if you knew your driver was live-streaming your ride to thousands of strangers on the Internet?

That’s the question that Jason Gargac’s passengers wish they’d been asked before getting into his car.

Using Twitch, an online streaming platform most commonly associated with the gaming community, Gargac has been secretly recording and broadcasting his fares since March 2018. In that time, his channel amassed over 4,500 followers, including subscribers who paid a monthly fee to support his efforts.

When former passengers learned of the channel, they spoke out in outrage. “It’s dehumanizing,” one woman told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, referencing the kinds of crude and suggestive comments left on the channel, particularly about female passengers. While Gargac insists that he had a team of moderators who removed explicit language from the comments, his own videos seem to tell a different story. “This better be (expletive) content, I swear to God. This better be (expletive) content, that’s all I’m saying. I mean, the blond girl looks kind of cute, if they’re together. The blonde is cute. The one who ordered is not,” he says in one stream as he waits for two female passengers.

Uber and Lyft both announced over the weekend that they have ended Gargac’s contracts, and his channel has disappeared from Twitch as well, but passengers looking for legal recourse or an apology may be out of luck. Missouri is a one-party consent state when it comes to video recording. Legal scholar Chip Stewart tells the Post-Dispatch that the question comes down to whether or not passengers can reasonably expect privacy in the backseat of a rideshare. The law is not currently on passengers’ side, though Stewart says that may change as technology evolves and is regulated.

In the meantime, Gargac seems to remain unapologetic about his actions. When asked about his motives by the Post-Dispatch, he cited income and personal security before simply concluding, “I love doing it.”