Wheely entered the New York City market in March after operating in London, Paris, and Dubai. The company, founded by Swiss-Russian businessman Anton Chirkunov in 2012, markets itself as a high-discretion service: its fleet of mostly Mercedes, Cadillacs, and Range Rovers comes stocked with chargers, water, and hot towels, and drivers sign nondisclosure agreements and attend a company “Chauffeur Academy” on etiquette, dress, and discretion. Drivers can make up to $12,000 a month, according to the company.

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission requires all for-hire vehicle operators to submit monthly records of every trip, including the time and location of each pickup and drop-off, the driver’s identification, and the vehicle’s license plate number. TLC spokesman Jason Kersten said the rules are “vital to driver and passenger safety, corporate accountability, and our ability to make informed decisions as we regulate the largest industry of its kind in the United States.” The commission has said the data helps ensure drivers do not travel unreasonably long distances in a day, which can lead to fatigue and accidents.

Wheely sued the city earlier this year, arguing that the reporting requirement violates the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and that advances in technology have made it easier to combine the data with other sources and identify individuals, including where they live, work, or worship. In a ruling this spring, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon rejected that argument, writing that the privacy intrusion was relatively modest and was outweighed by the city’s legitimate safety concerns. She noted that Wheely was aware of the reporting requirements when it entered the city’s highly regulated taxi industry. “What it cannot do is persuade this Court that any of its arguments for why the TLC Rules are unconstitutional, or otherwise unlawful, has the slightest merit,” she wrote. Wheely is free to leave the New York market — as it did in Moscow over similar demands — or play by the city’s existing rules, she added.

Chirkunov said in an interview that the requirement amounts to government surveillance of riders’ movements. “We believe that riders have the right to travel in their city without their movements being tracked by the government,” he said.

The company is now appealing the decision. Wheely hopes the case could get a boost from a recent Supreme Court decision that found police generally need a warrant to obtain cellphone location data, ruling that location data is more sensitive than other business records.

An unusual coalition has lined up behind Wheely. The libertarian Cato Institute, the Legal Aid Society, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have all filed legal briefs supporting the challenge. “The district court’s decision could subject many New Yorkers to the possibility of long-term and continuous surveillance,” the Cato Institute wrote.

Wheely also points to a precedent showing the risks of data collection: more than a decade ago, a local data enthusiast was able to obtain taxi commission data and cross-reference it with photos on celebrity gossip blogs to purportedly show that some celebrities did not tip their drivers. The company’s website quotes Georgetown law and privacy expert Paul Ohm: “Only DNA is harder to anonymize than human movements.”