An electric Citi Bike like the one reportedly used as a getaway vehicle after the murder of United HealthCare C.E.O. Brian Thompson creates “digital exhaust,” streams of data that can be used to track the rider, said David Shmoys, a computer scientist at Cornell University who helped design the system.
Between the creation of a Citi Bike account, connecting it to a credit card, undocking it, riding it around the city and docking it at a new location, every user creates many “streams of digital breadcrumbs” that can help Lyft, the company that operates Citi Bike, track the user’s location, and possibly their identity, Mr. Shmoys said.
Combined with the user’s phone data and location shared with cell towers, “It is amazing how much information is conveyed,” Mr. Shmoys said.
Jordan Levine, a spokesman for Lyft, declined to describe what data the company has retrieved or shared with the New York Police Department. “We stand ready to assist law enforcement with this investigation,” Mr. Levine said in an email.
Every Citi Bike user must use a credit card to create an account, and the IP address used to do so is recorded, said Brian Muller, a regular Citi Bike user who participates in a program to redistribute bikes where they’re needed around the city. The credit card could be stolen and the IP address masked to hide the person’s identity, said Mr. Muller, who works as an information technology engineer.
“If the perpetrator was smart, they would have a throwaway Lyft account not associated with their personal accounts,” Mr. Muller said.
Electric Citi Bikes are limited to a speed of up to 18 miles an hour. Because they are slow compared with other kinds of electric bikes, because it takes so much time to rent a Citi Bike, and because so much data is generated every time such a bike is unlocked, Mr. Shmoys said that he was surprised that a gunman in such a high-profile crime would chose to use a Citi Bike at all.
Perhaps the only advantage to using a Citi Bike was timing. The shooting occurred in Midtown Manhattan at 6:44 a.m., the exact place and time at which commuters are riding thousands of Citi Bikes to office buildings in the area.
“It’s a time of day when there’s a lot of bikes in Midtown,” Mr. Shmoys said. “Those stations are full.”
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