Privacy concerns emerge for ORCA card users

Expanded use of a regional transit card in four Puget Sound counties is raising privacy concerns.

The ORCA card can be used to pay for rides on buses, trains, boats, streetcars and vans in King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties. But a report in The Seattle Times warns that the cards record where and when those passengers travel.

That information is available upon request to employers who subsidize the cards for their workers. About 2,000 companies and institutions offer such subsidies.

Lee Tien, senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, says he doesn't understand why transit agencies actually need the enormous amount of trip data ORCA generates. He said San Francisco's BART works just fine with a magnetic stripe card that doesn't record locations.

Individuals who don't get their ORCA card from work may also have privacy concerns. If they register their card to protect against loss or theft, their personal information goes into the transit-agency database.

ORCA - an acronym of One Regional Card for All - is a card that riders use like a debit card, tapping it against an electronic reader as they get on a bus, train or boat. The cards either have cash balances that are spent per trip or are used as a flat-rate monthly pass. Card sales began in April, and ORCA will gradually replace 300 kinds of transit passes and paper transfer slips.

"I understand the concern people would have if every movement is tracked," Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl said. "That's not the purpose of ORCA."

People can assure their privacy by purchasing a nonsubsidized card and not registering it, but those who pass up company subsidiaries would miss out on hundreds of dollars in a year.

Doreen McGrath, who works for Seattle City Light, was startled when she visited the ORCA sign-up page on the city intranet and found a disclaimer that said the date, time and location of card use would be recorded and accessible to the city.

"The city will not use ORCA data to monitor an individual employee's performance on an ongoing basis ... The city will not use information obtained from ORCA as the sole basis to discipline a city employee," the note read.

"I find that an amazing violation of my right to privacy," McGrath said. "I don't need them to know my private movements. It's none of their damn business."