Privacy Concerns — Quaint Like A Checker Cab

In a time when security cameras and EZPass technology — not to mention whatever they’re planning with congestion pricing — are so ubiquitous arguing that GPS technology somehow invades your privacy seems like a stretch:

Taxi drivers on a collision course with the city over new tracking technology and credit card payment systems may play the strike card today.

The Taxi Alliance is widely expected to warn that medallion cabbies will walk off the job Sept. 1 if the Taxi and Limousine Commission holds to its plan to install the new gear in their hacks.

The 8,400-member Alliance has been moving toward a strike declaration for months.

“If the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg continue to stay silent as drivers’ privacy and economics are trampled on, we will strike,” Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said yesterday.

The TLC said the Global Positioning System tracking devices are meant to be used only to help cabbies get around the city, reunite passengers with lost belongings and perhaps catch criminals who prey on cabbies.

But drivers say the system will invade their privacy, create a new breed of backseat drivers who disagree with GPS directions and cost them money.

Striking over technological changes that actually encourage consumers to use their service more — nice bargaining tactic. Even the TWU didn’t have such a bad public relations position to begin from (it’s about health care for all Americans!) and look where they got.