Keeping tab OK for cabs
IT’S NOT un-fare for the city to track taxi drivers’ whereabouts using their cabs’ GPS systems, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
Cabbie Hassan El-Nahal sued the city and the Taxi & Limousine Commission in 2013, claiming the installation of a tracking system in his taxicab violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
The devices, which were installed in cabs in 2004, were used in a crackdown in 2010 that found that 13,315 of 21,819 drivers — or about 61% — had overcharged customers. Some gouged customers as many as 1,000 times.
El-Nahal, 57, who’d been a driver for over 20 years, was slapped with administrative charges stemming from the probe. The TLC said he’d overcharged passengers 10 times over a three-month period between 2009 and 2010 and revoked his hack license. The charges were later thrown out following a lengthy appeals process and he got his license back.
He then filed suit, charging his constitutional rights were violated when the “TLC mandated the physical placement of tracking devices in privately owned taxicabs.”
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling found he had no ownership interest in the cab and couldn’t argue the government had improperly intruded in his property since it was already installed at the time he used it.
A rep for the TLC, Allan Fromberg, said the agency is “very pleased” with the ruling. “The fact is that this technology, which enables the collection of trip data formerly captured with a pencil and a clipboard, serves a far better public purpose, supporting everything from traffic engineering improvements to market analysis,” Fromberg said.
El-Nahal’s lawyer, Daniel Ackman, said the ruling could wind up being bad news for all drivers.
“It could allow the government to require car manufacturers to install GPS devices in all cars to track individual drivers,” Ackman said. “They’d have no Fourth Amendment claim because they did not own the car when the device was installed.”
He said he and client, who is now driving a green taxi, “are looking into all our options,” including a possible appeal to the Supreme Court.