Columnist Jeff German: Spying on cabbies is profitable

Friday, Dec. 17, 2004 | 11:06 a.m.

Suddenly, the greedy cab companies are excited about installing cameras in cabs.

Orders are being placed faster than a cabbie can run up his meter on a trip from the airport.

This isn't happening because the companies are concerned about protecting their drivers.

What the companies are concerned about protecting is their profit.

They have found the perfect management tool to eavesdrop on their employees -- a video camera with sound -- all with the blessing of the do-nothing state Taxicab Authority Board.

And if the millions of tourists who visit Las Vegas each year end up losing their rights to privacy along with the drivers, well that's just too bad for the tourists.

What's most important here is the bottom line for the money-hungry companies.

This week Desert Cab owner George Balaban said it was a coincidence that some companies found a brand of video camera that was just as good at spying on cabbies as protecting them.

Desert's cameras, Balaban said, will encourage drivers to take better care of company vehicles and likely save the company thousands of dollars each year in unnecessary wear on those vehicles. Why, the cameras one day might even pay for themselves.

A coincidence? I don't think so.

This was the hidden agenda of the companies all along. They set out to browbeat the Taxicab Authority Board into approving a camera regulation that would be so broad it would allow them to find a product that would pay dividends on the management front.

Sure enough, in October the sheep-like board -- a group of political appointees with no experience in the taxicab industry and no understanding of why privacy is important in a democracy -- passed the mother of ambiguous regulations. It simply rolled over for the cab company owners.

If Balaban and his industry colleagues were really interested in the well-being of the drivers, they would have supported the original proposal of installing still cameras, which have been proven to work in other cities with very little controversy.

And maybe drivers like Pairoj Chitprasart and Aberga Asmamaw would be alive today. Chitprasart, who was doused with gasoline and set on fire in his Nellis cab on Aug. 20, died four days later. Asmamaw was found strangled in the back seat of his Western cab in August 2003.

But money is the owners' love -- and bullying is their nature.

Balaban and friends are placing orders for their spy cameras before the Legislative Counsel Bureau has even finished reviewing what many have called a flawed regulation.

Civil libertarians, union leaders, resort industry bigwigs and certainly cabbies all have voiced concerns that the regulation doesn't even address the use of sound and what privacy safeguards should be in place.

"What is happening is one more step to the surveillance society, where people will be watched wherever they're going without any oversight of the information being collected about them," said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

"Very clearly the Taxicab Authority Board seems unconcerned about these very serious problems, and that's unfortunate."

It's more than that. It's unconscionable.