NYC cabbies threaten strike over GPS system plans

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A major cab drivers' group is stepping up talk of a strike over the issue of new taxi technology.

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which counts more than 8,400 members, will call for drivers to idle their cabs in September if city leaders don't nix plans for a GPS system that the group fears could be used to track drivers' movements, executive director Bhairavi Desai said Wednesday.

The drivers' alliance plans to specify the date, duration and other details of the potential work stoppage next month, she said.

A spokesman for the Taxi & Limousine Commission, the agency requiring all 13,000 city cabs to install touch-screen and global positioning systems, did not immediately respond to office and cellphone messages early Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-07-25-nyc-gps-cab-strike_N.htm

[NashVegas]

1. So Much for Letting the Market Decide

Don't ya love it when the government mandates and subsidizes technology, for a forced economy?

I got my HDTV ... and am completely underwhelmed.

[Olney Blue]

2. What's wrong with GPS? I can't live without mine!

[KansDem]

4. Probably because of this...

But the Taxi Workers Alliance opposes the GPS component, which the group sees as an invasion of drivers' privacy. Drivers are generally independent contractors, not employees, Desai noted.

The group also has expressed concern about fees drivers would pay for credit card processing, as well as the cost of the system — a three-year maximum of $7,400 for equipment and other fees. Vendors say advertising can offset at least some of owners' expenses.

But if the taxi commission abandoned the GPS piece, "then there's room to sit down and talk," Desai said.

The taxi commission has said the systems will record only pickup and drop-off points and fares — information that drivers already log.

I can see their point; the threat of micromanaging your job would increase immensely. For example, I wouldn't want some corpo-type looking at my driving patterns "Hey, KansDem! I saw you stopped at Point xyz for five minutes. What gives?" "I had to take a leak, OK?" "Get a legbag...you cost the company some coin!"

And do yo really believe "the systems will record only pickup and drop-off points and fares?"

[Olney Blue]

5. Thanks for the perspective on privacy. It just seems that having it would

prevent drivers from getting lost and therefore would be more efficient!

[JerseygirlCT]

7. Prevent them from getting lost, and prevent them from taking

unsuspecting people for a ride perhaps?

[Betty88]

12. GPS not always the best way

Two weeks ago my sister-in-law came to visit. She came into JFK, we live in Park Slope Brooklyn. I gave her directions to give the cab driver. Very direct, I have used the route often, and know what it should cost about $40 that includes the tip. He insisted to use the GPS directions telling her she did not know what she was talking about. Since she is not from the area she let him take her the way he wanted. The meter was over $50 and she gave him a tip.

[JerseygirlCT]

14. That's true, too.

Straight out, those roads might have made sense -- on paper. But if you know an area, you know what other factors come into it. (From CT, the GPS would always direct people to NJ via 95. If you know better, you avoid 95!)

Hadn't thought of that.

[FreepFryer]

10. Agree completely. The issue of 'locational privacy' is a powerful one.

It's a slippery slope.

http://www.caslon.com.au/privacyguide19.htm

http://www.springerlink.com/content/t728v116005p7040/

[qanda]

3. Why does it have to be mandated?

The local cab company that switched to GPS is blowing the competition away. The company with GPS is quicker and more efficient. It seems that if the other cab companies don't update soon, they are going to be put out of business. And to think, no one had to mandate the change.

[JerseygirlCT]

6. LOL, can you imagine a NYC cabbie having to be concerned that

he'd get caught driving 20 minutes out of the way to increase his fare?

I find it hard to muster a great deal of sympathy for them in this.

[FreepFryer]

8. However, docking drivers' pay for gas spent on necessarily circuitous routes would be very unfair.

(n/t)

[tanglefoot]

9. Go cabbies!

This corporate/government spying is getting ridiculous.

[pinniped]

11. The cabbies are afraid the passengers will notice they're going in circles.

Cabbies also don't want their locations found out because they're hanging out at casinos or engaged in other restricted activities.

[gratuitous]

13. Tempest in a teapot

Mrs. gratuitous works for a large cab company which uses digital dispatch and a GPS locating system. Disputes between drivers and riders are resolved in a snap with quick reference to the trip archive (with the drivers often being exonerated from bogus claims). The system is owned and operated by the company, and while subject to legitimate inquiry from governmental authority, is overwhelmingly used to resolve customer complaints of no-shows, failure to serve or driver padding of the trip. It's also quite useful in providing valuable information when there's an accident.

This is no more an "invasion of privacy" issue than your employer monitoring your computer use at work.

[MadHound]

15. In other words, yes, it is an invasion of privacy, but since corporate America is doing it

That somehow makes it legit. After all, all they're doing is monitoring their drivers, oh, and the customers that they ferry around:eyes:

To listen to the corporate beancounters, this country's workforce hasn't accomplished diddly in the past because the were always wasting time, playing on the computer, making unnecessary stops, what have. The trouble is that this exaggeration is completely belied by the progress we made before such intensive monitoring became the norm.

As a customer, I certainly don't want another way to be tracked and monitored, there are far too many ways to do that anyway. As an employee, I would be ripping the GPS unit out of my cab for the same reasons. Our country is quickly becoming a surveillance state, and the sad thing is that many people like yourself are rolling over and accepting it. It is attitudes like yours that enables the ongoing encroachment of surveillance technology into our daily lives. Will you roll over for having your cab rides monitored? How about in your private car? Or in your home? Or bedroom? Sorry, but one must really oppose all such surveillance, otherwise giving them an inch allows them to take a mile.

[The2ndWheel]

16. Just the natural progression of power

Nothing can be left to chance.

http://www.cartome.org/panopticon1.htm

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unverifiable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen."

[gratuitous]

17. Nonsense

The dispatching of the cabs and their license to do business derives from the company. Is the company not entitled to know what's going on its name? My cab rides (in case you hadn't noticed from my post) are indeed monitored. You know how I get around it? I don't take cabs. I ride my bike or walk for about 60% of my perambulations. Mass transit (publicly financed and, yes, monitored) makes up another 30%. The rest is by private car.

Taxis are subject, in case you didn't know, to heavy city regulation. Everything from maintenance of the vehicle (working lights and signals, clean interior, etc.) to size of the tires is inspected weekly, and non-conforming cabs are off the road until brought back into compliance. Most of the time the information collected is never reviewed or even looked at. But when a bank robber flags down a cab (for just one example of my personal knowledge), it helps immeasurably in his apprehension to know exactly when and where he was dropped off. The trip program is also quite useful in determining fault in an accident, and properly assessing comparative responsibility. Otherwise, it just occupies space on a mainframe hard drive somewhere.

While the current administration is certain cause for raging paranoia, this is certainly not a repository for it. You don't know what you're talking about.