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New York Taxi Drivers To Strike Over GPS
Stony Stevenson notes a NYTimes story on labor unrest caused by high-tech privacy concerns. One organization of taxi drivers plans a 48-hour strike, while another opposes any such action. "One taxi group plans to strike from 5 a.m. Sept. 5, through 5 a.m. Sept. 7, in opposition to New York City's requirement that all cabs be equipped with GPS technology beginning Oct. 1... saying GPS infringes on drivers' privacy... The Taxi and Limousine Commission passed a rule stating that all New York City cabs must have touch-screen display panels, credit card readers, and GPS beginning this year. Many taxis already are equipped with the technologies, which allow passengers to get news, route data, and other information. The TLC claims that the technology will not be used to invade drivers' privacy but will provide real-time maps and help passengers recover lost property."
I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the occasional taxi driver making a tourist's trip 10x longer than it's supposed to be...
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
"The TLC claims that the technology will not be used to invade drivers' privacy but will provide real-time maps and help passengers recover lost property." While it may provide real-time maps and help passengers recover lost property, none of that means that it will not be used to invade drivers' privacy.
Full Disclosure: I do contract work for several companies that make mobile gps / bardoce / magstripe enabled devices for similar purposes.
Why I do support this
a) Improve productivity: The driver is on the job. As a capitalistic society we strive to improve productivity and, while sad, monitoring does do this.
b) All cabs take credit cards: Have you ever had a bad cab experience? How about having no cash and driver not accepting credit because it's past 6 PM (wtf is with that rule anyhow)
c) Bad Routes avoided: Looking at a map gives you some idea where you are and the driver would be less likely to take longer routes. Puts you, the consumer in control
d) Better privacy: Remember the stories of the handheld credit card readers being used by dishonest restaurant employees to steal your credit card? You don't hand your card to anyone, you pay at the device
e) Better oversight: If all the system use similar credit checking devices it's easier for regulatory groups to audit them -- versus having 30 different pos* devices
* Point of Sale
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
I know when I work that the system administrators are watching what I am doing: checking which ports I have open, which websites I visit and maybe even sometimes reading my mail. It seems like this is normal these days. Good luck with the strike, but I doubt it will change anything.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I am a staunch libertarian and advocate for personal right to privacy, but there are no valid reasons for drivers to be concerned about their privacy in this scenario. Are airline pilots in danger of having their privacy violated because the aircraft's current trajectory and speed is logged? Effective fleet management and tracking is part of the industry you're working in, folks.
/Paranoid off
That said, I inherently don't trust government, and can start to see where the passenger's rights become threatened somewhat when the government's database starts linking credit card transactions with GPS records and begin constructing logs of people's travels. I mean, they are requiring cabs implement both at the same time.
So nice to know that now, not only is my credit card info available, but every taxi trip I take in NYC is geocached for me and the DHS.
I can just imagine a movie in the not too near future (I'm writing this down because I want it documented that I thought of it) where a serial killer spells out the name of his next intended victim using his GPS fare info. The detective cracks that mystery just in time to see the killer spell the name of someone dear to him.
Meh. Probably rent it, but not see it in the theater.
How is having a camera in your office at a desk job acceptable? If I get my work done at an acceptable quality on time, I shouldn't feel awkward should I need to pick my teeth or scratch my self somewhere silly.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
I live in NYC and take a cab ride just about every day. I still get excited when I find a cab with this new technology suite. After all, San Fran has a much nicer, modern "subway" system, Hong Kong has that great train with video screens, and I'm sure other cities have new stuff to brag about with their transportation infrastructure. What do we have in NYC? Checked out our subways recently?
The cool thing is that these vehicles are still the famous "yellow" taxi cabs of NYC lore, but:
1. You can watch a real time, zoomable map of NYC to see where you are and estimate how much further you have to go. Any idea how great this is for tourists or people new to town? (Was very helpful showing in-laws the route from airport to home in real time and pointing out important locations...)
2. You can watch news which is great if stuck in FDR traffic.
3. You can see how much you owe and why.
4. Legal information / passenger rights / terms and conditions are presented much more efficiently and tidily. That is, it cleans up the cab from all of that paperwork.
I fully support the new cabs and hope that they will improve them with real time traffic volume on the maps, etc.
For those of you who don't see the boiling frog issue...
1:Taxi company installs GPS and charges with credit cards.
2:Taxi company stores credit card details of it's customers in huge database
3:Taxi company stores GPS data in huge database
4:NSA demand access to the last 10 years of data from the database.
5:The government now knows about every cab ride you have taken, within an accuracy of 1m - 10m, for the past 10 years.
It doesn't matter if the NSA does not have this authority today ( hint: they do ) the mere fact that data like this can be accumulated means that it will be, and that will at any latter point in time enable anybody with access to the database to tell where anybody they didn't like has gone for a cab ride.
Now, that was the taxi company. Now merge this data with the data from restaurants, face-recognition software on video tapes from old surveillance cameras... etc...
The problem isn't that they can know what cab rides you have been on. The problem is that before you know it they can know what cab,bus,airplane,train you were on, what restaurant you ate at, where you placed a call with your cellphone, which "security" camera you walked by, what stores you visited.. etc etc... Much of this data is already being collected, and as long as it is kept there is little to stop a future government from suddenly overturning all privacy laws and demand access to all this data at once. If ( i.e when/already ) they do this they will be able to reconstruct your entire life. Were you politically inconvenient? Well, what have we known, suddenly there are laws which punish you retroactively...
The scary bit is that I don't even have to come up with a conspiracy theory. The law already permits it. The NSA already has the taps running, and the legislation is already in place. Good game.
This news is somewhat old in New York, and it's interesting to see slashdot spin this from a tech angle.
In actuality, many of the cab drivers are upset because if they are forced to accept credit cards, they will have to pay thousands of dollars out of their own money to install the flat-screens in the backseat, raise the price of renting a taxi itself to drive, and allow the credit card companies to pocket about a dollar out of every fare. That will add up.
Rather than throw technology at the cabs, I'd prefer if they made it a requirement that NY taxi drivers spoke English and knew their way around the city, like the London ones do.
How on Earth did you manage to use you're/your both correctly and incorrectly in the same sentence?
Peace sells, but who's buying?
- The deal (for the GPS hardware and service) has been contraced to a vendor whose CEO is the President of the taxi garages' association.
- The association's Vice President for Business Development is the former First Deputy Commissioner of the TLC (NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission).
- The GPS vendor's Vice President of Operations is the TLC's former Deputy Commissioner of Safety and Emissions, the TLC officer in charge of all vehicle related issues.
No joke, look it up on google.