As a native New Yorker and a onetime (short-time) cab driver, I have very mixed feelings about cabbies. I usually defend their behavior because I understand the stress and challenges that the job entails, but I also understand why people get so angry at them.

But now that cabbies are getting together to say "no" to onerous new regulations that would force them to install GPS technology in their cabs, I am wholeheartedly behind them. A group of people who are largely immigrants, many of whom are not citizens, are defending our rights against unwarranted government intrusion. They are threatening to strike over the issue--a threat taken seriously enough that the mayor's office has agreed to meet with both the drivers and the TLC.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is forcing those rules down their throats, is trying to make this innovation, along with blaring TV screens installed in the passenger area, seem like a public service. Even if you put aside the Big Brother element for a moment, you have to wonder why the TLC thinks passengers want those ad-saturated screens at all. As for the idea that GPS will help people see their routes on a map, what will really happen is that paranoid passengers from out of town will force cabbies to take seemingly more direct routes that are either blocked by construction or otherwise poor choices--which most cab drivers would have avoided if left to their own, ahem, devices.

If the TLC really thinks that passengers need protection from devious cab drivers, that's government intrusion at its worst--forcing every citizen to adjust to punitive measures for the sake of catching a small minority of wrongdoers.

I know the cab drivers are not acting out of idealism; they're acting in their own self-interest. They don't want to spend the extra money, and they don't want someone looking over their shoulders. And we should laud them for that, because when the day comes that someone wants to plant a GPS device somewhere on our skins, on whatever pretext, we'll have their example to follow.