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Here is a good one: Cabbies overcharging passengers millions of dollars We have all heard of cabbies scamming people out of a higher fare. Now, the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission has given us the proof. Here is the transcript of the testimony the New York Taxi commissioner gave to the city council and the source of the article.
Apparently from the commissioners testimony they are going to try and put some of the taxi drivers in jail. What piqued my interest in the story though was that they were able to use GPS and data gathering technology to relook the fares these guys had and determine whether they were scamming their passengers or not. Big Brother turns up in the strangest places. Sometimes it makes me wonder if we are not all destined to get chipped like my dog someday. Still, it is an interesting use of technology and one that I think is a little appropriate in this case given that Taxis are so heavily regulated in NYC. There is even a market for taxi medallions in the city and medallions sell for several hundred thousand dollars apiece, so there is obviously money to be made even without cheating.
I think even a few years ago they started putting current taxi or bus locations for some city on Google Maps, and this must have been possible with tracking chips. I can see how it would be quite helpful to know where your bus is located by checking your phone as you're walking to the bus stop. In fact, I imagine it will be standard operating procedure in the future; parents esp. will want to know where the bus is where their children are. Then again, the privacy issue isn't quite the same on a bus as it is on a taxi.
I dont know about a reasonable expectation of privacy for taxi-drivers. They are providing a service that is inherently public aren't they? Saying they have an expectation of privacy is kind of like saying Google cannot take a picture of your house from the public street in front of it is it not? Speaking of Google, I am still waiting for them to premier Street View in Germany. I saw the Street View car last year near my house, but they are caught in endless legal wrangles with the German gov and and have so far not premiered it. We even had an article in our local town newsletter recently telling us how to get our house's picture renoved from the database.
