E-Tracking May Change the Way You Drive

frdmfghtr writes "ZDNet.com is running a story about a runaway idea of a tracking automobiles via GPS. Not to be confused with the Canadian project geared towards anti-speeding ideas, this one does in fact have the goal of tracking your vehicle. 'The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these 'mileage-based road user fees.' However, the article goes on to talk about how there is no provision in place to prevent the uncontrolled surveillance of motorists without a court order."

Comments

User fees are the way to go

[ReformedExCon]

Why shouldn't those who use a public facility more be also forced to pay more?

It seems pretty straightforward to me.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Propagandhi]

As an avid cyclist, I'd love to assume it will end at user fees. But just because that's what the system is designed for doesn't mean that's how this stuff will end up.

If this kind of thing goes live I'd say that it's just a matter of time before some desperate politician campaigns on turning this into an "anti-terrorism" device... similar tracking systems are already in place for trains and (obviously) airplanes. Between this and RFID I'd say that it's just a matter of time until either the government or our employer knows our location (give or take a couple meters) 24/7.

(Yes, I am paranoid.. thanks for pointing that out)

Re:User fees are the way to go

[GigsVT]

We already have mileage based tracking without GPS. It's called an odometer.

In states with annual inspections, it's trivial to record odometer readings too, and tax based on that.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shouldn't those who use a public facility more be also forced to pay more?

It seems pretty straightforward to me.

Of course. But why implement a huge, complex and expensive tracking system when there is an existing mechanism to charge road users based on usage?

It's called a gas tax. You drive more, you pay more tax. Simple and efficient. If you want to get a little fancier, the DMV charges more to register heavy vehicles (which damage the road more) than lighter vehicles.

The only reason to have this GPS system is to track the population, and they're trying to sell it as a "road-usage" fee.

It's almost time to vote from the rooftops.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[ZachPruckowski]

Odometers can be run back a bit (not recommended) if you want (between inspections). Also, they don't say where the driving took place. If I live in West Virginia and commute to DC, I'm using Virginia's roads, but West Virginia is the one charging me under your plan.

(I actually live in Virginia and have the roads clogged by the aforementioned commuters)

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Propagandhi]

And you care if the police know your location... why?

Because there are quite a few laws in this great nation which I (occasionally) ignore. I speed, I drink* (not at the same time, mind you), smoke illicit drugs... I don't feel I do any of these things in a reckless manner, and feel that my behavior is in line with the American spirit of freedom.

The ability to exercise my free will as mentioned above would be rendered impossible were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.' In short, I have no fear of being called a terrorist.. at worst I could be labeled a drug addict, unfortunately that would be enough to land me in jail (no voting rights, no freedom).

* a criminal offense because I'm not 21...

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Martin Blank]

Brothels are legal throughout much of Nevada. They make decent money and pay taxes, and mostly keep the girls clean. But there are a lot of people that would rather this not become available to someone randomly wandering through the database.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Martin Blank]

And hence it would be easily challenged and shot down in the courts. In the case mentioned, West Virginia would be charging for your activities in Virginia and DC, which is a violation of the Interstate Commerce clause.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[aussie_a]

The ability to exercise my free will as mentioned above would be rendered impossible were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.'

You'll still be able to exercise you're free will. You'll just be punished in accordance with the law whenever you do something that breaks it. There are no parantheses around crime. If the law says it's illegal, it's a crime.

The problem with law enforcement agencies becoming more efficient with enforcing laws, is up until now they haven't been able to get TOO efficient. So people haven't cared too much about things being illegal.

How about instead of attacking the law enforcement agencies for trying to do their job (protect and serve the people by enforcing the laws their representatives enact on behalf of their constitutents), you work towards changing the laws? But then again, that's much more difficult. It's much easier to simply break the law, and hope you don't get caught.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[littlerubberfeet]

So, if Oregon institutes this usage tax, and I'm a long-haul trucker with my truck registered in california, yet I do a regular Corvalis-> Sand Diego run, am I charged for the 85% of miles spent in California? How about people comutting across state lines? What about multi-use vehicles? I know a couple of orchardists who put over 7K a year on trucks driving on their PRIVATE land, and maybe 5K on public roads. Do they get taxed the same way?

Also, any halfwit which a Haynes manual can roll back (or forward) an odometer. These things are supposed to be tamper-resistant too. My friend once had a Chevy with 548,000 miles on it...just as a joke. He reset it to something reasonable when inspection time rolled around...

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

One great thing about having this power in the hands of the police, is that the police are always people you can trust. Same with the FBI. There aren't any corrupt cops, police power is never used discretionarily to harass people the local police doesn't like (or for that matter, political enemies of the federal government). As government agencies, they also have data security second to none! Just like the DMV, no-one will be able to misuse this information!

Sounds great all around!

Re:User fees are the way to go

[littlerubberfeet]

Meant to read: " So, if Oregon institutes this usage tax, and I'm a long-haul trucker with my truck registered in oregon,"

sorry

Re:User fees are the way to go

[grumpyman]

Yeah, who the hell flushed the toilet twice at city hall yesterday??? Oops... it's the mayor.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[User 956]

thing is, they already do this-- it's called the fuel tax. The only benefit the GPS solution has over the fuel tax is that big brother gets to track your every move.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[mcrbids]

The ability to exercise my free will as mentioned above would be rendered impossible were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.' In short, I have no fear of being called a terrorist.. at worst I could be labeled a drug addict, unfortunately that would be enough to land me in jail (no voting rights, no freedom).

I notice in this thread that everybody supporting privacy mentions doing so because of petty crimes they commit.

What's important to understand is *why* the concept of privacy is so classically important. Originally, we weren't a nation of laws, at all. Crimes were "against the people" and it was up to a jury of one's peers to decide if a crime had been committed, and if so, of what nature, and what the punishment should be.

Privacy was assumed, because you didn't commit a crime unless you injured somebody else in some way - either personally, or their property. Are you going to go to a jury and try to get them to arrest you for smoking a bit o' weed? Popping pills? Beating your horse? Where's the crime, if nobody gets hurt?

This all changed just after the Civil War, where the jury system fell flat on its face due to widespread racism, mostly in the south. How would a black fella get a fair trial in a matter involving a dispute with a white folk? Either 1) Jurors are white, in which case he'd hang for blowing snot on the boss' hankie, or 2) Jurors are black, so he gets off scott-free.

So, offenses and penalties were codified, and state constitutions all over the place were altered, introducing this new "Penal Code" that everybody was suppposed ta follow.

In this Penal Code, crimes were ratified as laws of the state, and had clear, definite actions to commit that were considered crimes, and penalties were clearly and definitely stated.

This is perhaps one of the biggest expansions of US Govt powers in its history - far, far greater than the DMCA, and the PATRIOT acts put together! It has resulted in a burgeoning swarm of laws, rules, regulations, and silly exceptions, as well as an entire horde of busy lawyers and paralegals.

Now, people worry about committing crimes without any directly hurt party, and a state busy executing its rights to your health. Introduce socialized health-care and/or health insurance, and suddenly, smoking clove ciggies costs other insured parties quite a bit of money. Now, hurting yourself DOES hurt somebody else, and there are numerous state/federal laws above and beyond the obvious.

Once laws are codified, they don't go away. It's rare that a govornment willfully reduces the laws on the books!

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Martin Blank]

Would you mind if plainclothes police officers followed you everywhere you went, for no particular reason than that you might commit a crime somewhere?

It's an extremely rare person who has never broken a law in his life. Never once jaywalked, went a mile/km an hour over the speed limit, passed on the right, changed lanes a little too soon after the last one, dropped a piece of paper and watched as it fluttered away out of reach...

If they police want to catch me doing something, then they can put eyes on me, not a GPS. If I see lights in my mirror, I'll pull over. If I see a government-sanctioned GPS on my car, then it will get blocked. It's their problem to figure out how -- especially since they'll need eyes on it to do so.

For that matter, cops will often look the other way on minor things. Someone going 5mph over the speed limit on the freeway is probably not going to get stopped. Someone parked just slightly outside of the lines is likely to get leeway. And if it was an honest mistake, the person might just get a warning instead of a citation. Automated systems do not allow for judgement calls that might take into account mitigating factors.

Cops have a rough life. One of my high school classmates is a cop. I grew up down the street from a SWAT officer, who had to retire after a leg wound from a gunfight with a suspect left him unable to run quickly enough. I admire what they do, and I defer to them. I don't argue the issue, and I treat them honestly and with respect. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to spill my entire life to them.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Luddite]

The jurisdiction I live in has HUGE taxes on gasoline. So yeah, you're right.

We already have a very effective user-pay program in place without GPS. The license and registration fees paid each year are _nothing_ compared to the non-stop user fees paid when filling up.

The more I drive, the more I pay. - If the gas taxes were being used for highway safety or maintenance rather than going into general revenue, I'd feel a little less screwed by the whole process...

Re:User fees are the way to go

[way2trivial]

if my residence is in California.
and I spend a month in New York
and order something over the internet from Illinois.

California wants it's use tax.

Interstate Commerce applies to Commerce, not Taxation.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[GigsVT]

If you buy all your gas in Virginia and drive to DC every day, they are taxing your activities in both, effectively.

If I buy a car in VA, I'm a resident of VA, and I park the car all year in Georgia, I still pay the car tax here.

I think a commerce clause objection could be defended against, since they already charge for the mere fact that you own a car. Scaling that tax based on mileage, I don't see how that changes the authority to levy the tax, it's still the same tax.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[chezmarshall]

And you care if the police know your location... why?

Because the police have been known to judge guilt by association based on a person's location. 1960s monitoring of groups with unpopular politics comes to mind, as does 1970s enemies lists.

It's easier for a government to crush dissent when it knows where the journalists are.

Try being a whistleblower on government impropriety when the government knows the location of every automobile to which you have access.

Good luck attending a meeting of the Sons of Liberty when King George has GPS tracking devices on your horses. Attention! The horse of suspected traitor REVERE, PAUL has shown up on the console as moving west from Boston. Stop and detain.

If you think the use of data from mandatory GPS units in privately-owned automobiles would be limited to collecting "user fees," you're being incredibly naive. Some well-meaning legislator would next decide that we ought to be keeping tabs on where sex offenders are going during school hours. Someone else will decide that we ought to know where people convicted of multiple DUIs are going.

Respect the temptation that power gives to well-meaning men. Respect the likelihood that given enough power, any of us would become a tyrant. Limit the power you, as a sovereign citizen, give to your fellow man.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said it was a public facility?

How about those of us in agriculture who drive more off public roads than on? We're supposed to pay higher fuel taxes than normal users (diesel), see higher wear and tear on our vehicles (because we actually use our trucks off road, but pay the extra taxes for those of you who don't), and pay usage fees for the roads we build and maintain?

On top of that, given the recent tendency in the US to make us fence off vernal pools (mud puddles), mandatory "resting periods" on the use of land we own (and in my family's case have lovingly maintained for over 150 years now, TYVM), restrictions on rural road maintenance, our public road-adjoining property being declared "scenic viewsheds" (so we can't change anything, including painting houses a different color)... On top of all of that, here are some of the things I expect them to use this for:

• To dictate where we can go on our own land.
• To dictate how often we can go on our own land.
• To prevent us from using any non-farm vehicle at all off-road.
• To prevent us from building any new roads on our own land.
• To prevent people from using the preexisting roads on public land.

From my experience in agriculture, I can tell you that the only reasons there aren't more laws directly restricting your otherwise lawful behavior are:

• Your voting power as an urban dweller.
• The lack of an enforcement mechanism.

The government is not your friend. My property rights may be what they're taking now, but they'll want your house to build an oil pipeline or landfill next. And to make you fence off your lawn for salamander habitat. Or create a vernal pool for fairy shrimp in your backyard. Or force you to give rightaway for a hiking trail.

And yes, they've tried all of that with my family. Wake up.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[rolfwind]

I already pay "mileage-based road user fees," it's the tax placed on every gallon of gasoline. The government gets enough money to do build roads, repair roads, and then some.

I live in one of the few states with a toll highway (PA and it's crappy turnpike) and it sucks in all ways possible. I live in Europe part time, with the highest gas-taxes AND tolls. And it sucks.

This is not straightforward but double taxation (probably an opaque way to pay for more non-related crap) and a way to track you, no less. The millions of dollars spent on this are already a waste of money.

To the parent poster and the government, fuck off.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[sumdumass]

I was told once by a cop, that if you follow some one long enough, they will eventualy commit a trafic violation. It maybe something as minor as not using a turn signal or failing to signal within the required distance the law dictates before you turn.

With this in mind, If i had it in for you, I could always find out were you were and then cite you for enought violations you license points out and get suspended oryour insurance get so expensive you cannot affors it anymore. If i was going to do somethign like this, I would target those with different political opinions or ideas that threaten my livleyhood. Maybe i would get borred and target minorities or just church goers. Maybe even the parrents of the child that beat mine up over a game of marbles at school the previous week. How about just screwing with someone who i gave a ticket to and they got out of it because i made a mistake.

The idea of using this to make sure road use taxes are being paid is idiotic. The fact is you pay your road use taxes when you buy a gallon of gasoline. You also contibute when the vehicle is registared and when you buy tires (yes there is a DOT fee on tires hidden in the price) As for big trucks or comercial vehicles, Well this is also taken car of with IFTA reporting and regular audits. Each shipper reports thier shipments so cariors cannot fudge the report. IFTA rules regulate you pay usage on Five mile to the gallon for class eight vehicles (even if you get better milage It changes acording the the use and weight of the vehicle) and every gallong of fuel except that marked for offroad use (noted with a die in the fuel) have the tax already in place when purchased. The drivers report the miles driving in thier log book, the company reports milage in thier IFTA statemnts or routing reports and also when reporting thier income statments as well as tax deductions. The states track comercial vehicles entering and leaving states as well as different parts of the states. Fuel reciept also track were the vehicle has been and is regularly availible to inspecters (fuel card transactions).

You even pay road tax to mow your lawn in most cases. The idea that a car might be driving too much without paying is a load bull. This is just some lame excuse to invade what was normaly considerd private. The problem is more fuel eficient vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles are using less fuel or fuel that isn't being taxed. This can be easily corected by charging a higher fuel tax at the pump or increase registration fees for vehicles that get more milage. For some reason the government want to know were you are, were you were and what time you were there.

Most people will look at the conditions of the roads around them and think this is neccesary. The problem is that road use money is being diverted from the roads and used for other things. Installing these devices are not going to fix that or the roads. It is only going to cost money and allow more money to be diverted.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[KiloByte]

Odometers can be run back a bit if you want.

Would you want to bet that if such a thing would be even considered in Congress/Sejm/Parliament/Duma/etc, the first act you'd see would be making electronic government-certified odometers mandatory; with each one costing $250+?

It's just like the case with cash registers. We even have a law in Poland that says you're not allowed to access your fiscal cash register by network -- each computer that's capable of printing invoices has to have its separate register attached directly. Guess who lobbied for this.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

The feeling here is we don't want law dictating morality down to the T. We have enough problems as it is with the law carving our collective rights and wrongs. Lawsuits are thrown about like a ticker tape parade in the US. Not to mention the great potential of abuse, what with things like the Patriot Act still around.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

We already do.

Haven't you ever heard of a gasoline tax?

Re:User fees are the way to go

[woolio]

So putting lives at risk, harming your body, and funding gangs and terrorists and etc is the American SPRIT of Freedom????

If you wish to speak idealistically, the PEOPLE aren't going to want you doing that... Thus the PEOPLE aren't going to allow you to ejoy this fond "freedom" behind bars...

Now more realistically, think about what "PEOPLE" are actually actively involved...

Clean up your act dude. I'm not saying its "unAmerican" to jay-walk, but you are doing several things, each of which could potentially have extremely serious consequences (besides the law).

The fact that you freely admitted to what you've been doing and freely admitted that you are doing so with the full knowledge that it is wrong, and you are doing this without posting as AC speaks volumes...

One other thing... If it is considered "American" to break a few small laws, then it is only fair to allow companies and law-enforcement to do the same... So its okay if a politican takes a little kickback in exchange for his hard work... Its okay if a governor hands a huge project to his best buddy without a public bidding process.

Whether or not these things occur today is irrevelant, if you allow these to be "occasionally" performed. How "often" must these acts occur before things get too bad? How many drinks before driving? How large a kickback for a politician? How much will you allow a biomedical company to get away with, for YOUR medication???

Yes, the US has a lot of laws... But your "justification" is a slipperly slope to chaos...
(Unless you believe that *some* people are so special that the laws don't apply to them)

Re:User fees are the way to go

[tarawa]

I agree, it is silly to think that Americans are going to go along with having to pay more tax based on how much we drive. We're already paying enough on gasoline, who's brainiac who thinks we are going to be willing to pay even more based on the amount we drive? The other question is, if these measurements suddenly show a large segment of the population has been overpaying, will we get a refund or a reduction in tax. :P I know, wishful thinking, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander. ;)

As far as the conspiracy theorists who think this is going to violate your privacy need to calm down. Even if this were to be come a common place device on all cars, you will be mearly a blip on some screen or in a computer in a large cloud of other blips. That hardly means that Big Brother is going to be staring into your life or mind 24hrs a day. You are going to have to do something to really standout in order for any law enforcement agency to take notice of your blip.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems pretty straightforward to me.

That's because you are an idiot. The people who use roads more already pay more via the fuel taxes on gasoline. If anything, the existing mechanism (those with heavier vehicle consume more gasoline and thus pay more taxes for the greater wear they cause) is as fair a system as could be devised, and those who advocate a micromanagement approach involving the tracking of users on a moment by moment geographical basis are either fools or tyrants.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are just a fool.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[AoT]

While I agree with the general gist of what you say, I must take exception to the specifics.

The jury system before the civil war was heavily biased against blacks in the same way it was immediately afterwards: They did not serve in significant numbers.

While I realize that this does not take away from your point, it is an important thing to note; racism was, and is, alive and well in our country; and no amount of law will change that.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[rale, the]

So putting lives at risk, harming your body, and funding gangs and terrorists and etc is the American SPRIT of Freedom????


Oh, so it's not ok for people to 'harm their body'? Let me know when cigarettes are banned.

Funding gangs and terrorists? Maybe if there wasn't an arbitrary list of substances that people were not allowed to buy legitimately, there wouldn't be a black market. Put some responsibility on the ones who feel the need to push their values on others.

Seriously, do you think that everyone who smokes a joint belongs in jail? We already have the world's highest documented prison population rate, thanks in part to people who think that way.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[AoT]

In Re: orchardists

I would assume they will get the same exemtion that agriculture/farms get now.
that or the stat will be able to tell from the GPS record that they mainly rode on their own land.

note: I am completely against this whole idea, only pointing out how they would get around they most immediate concerns.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[sumdumass]

As far as the conspiracy theorists who think this is going to violate your privacy need to calm down. Even if this were to be come a common place device on all cars, you will be mearly a blip on some screen or in a computer in a large cloud of other blips. That hardly means that Big Brother is going to be staring into your life or mind 24hrs a day. You are going to have to do something to really standout in order for any law enforcement agency to take notice of your blip.

The problem is what i need to do to stand out. I'm not aware of any laws regulating what situations require a search warent or what the police to just access. What if i was questioning the presidents political beliefs, could osme over zealous partyline officer or official start harrasing me? What if i am campaining to get some law repealed like the patriot act? could this information help those wanting to keep it?

What if someone dies, was found in an area I visited recently (for other reasons than killing someone), was stabed with a common kitchen knife that i happen to have one of, and the estimated time of death was around the time i was in the are? Am i going to get blamed for the death? How about when it was a relationship gone bad were some lover that rides a bike and has the same kitchen knives, found out they were being cheated on and went crazy. What about if it ws my girlfriend trying to frame me and kills some other girl i was fooling around with? she walked ot the area because she knew i would be on business there and stabed someone to make it look like it was me?

The possibilities could be endless but what frightens me most is the idea of political reprecusions for free speech. It could be anyhting from voting no on a tax levy someone in power supports to fighting to get jaywalking laws overturned. What would it take to make the blip on the radar become somethign to be watched?

Re:User fees are the way to go

[The Man From Sears]

Even if some of his points weren't the best, I know I would personally loathe the idea of having somebody constantly watching me. I don't do bad things. I hate being watched. If I'm left to my own devices, I'm going to remain an upstanding citizen. And who says that this tech won't be exploited by people worse than the government? Like the afore mentioned terrorists. Maybe they would scope an area they wanted to attack, find someone who drives a car they can easily buy somewhere else and trick the GPS into thinking that it is their neighbor's car. Then they go wild, shoot up the neighborhood, blow up a bank, whatever. While the cops are busy investigating the neighbors, the real terrorists make a clean break and run for the hills.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Discordantus]

The fact that you freely admitted to what you've been doing and freely admitted that you are doing so with the full knowledge that it is wrong, and you are doing this without posting as AC speaks volumes...

The question of "right" vs "wrong" requires a moral or ethical judgment on a topic, which is unrelated to the question of "legal" vs "illegal". I think it is obvious that the poster doesn't feel he is doing anything wrong in these illegal actions.

One other thing... If it is considered "American" to break a few small laws, then it is only fair to allow companies and law-enforcement to do the same... So its okay if a politican takes a little kickback in exchange for his hard work... Its okay if a governor hands a huge project to his best buddy without a public bidding process.

Moral issues, once again. Or perhaps ethics. There is a considerable overlap between ethics, morals, and law, but that doesn't mean they are equivalent.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[anexkahn]

Does anyone consider that there are state taxes on gasoline and diesel that help to cover the cost of the highway maintainance? Those who burn more gas will pay more tax. Typically those burning more gas are either using a heavier vehicle, or driving more miles.....sounds like they already charge those who use the highways more than those who barely use them.....why do we need GPS to do this? Not to mention that the large trucks on the road pay additional highway use taxes.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[el americano]

Unfortunately a lot of the abusive tactics of the DMV are created by ordinary bureaucrats not by legislators. At least the legislator traditionally has to worry about public anger. Remember when you could go to the DMV without an appointment? They actually had to attend to you? How about when you could explain that your vehicle was not being operated and you did not owe them any money for it. Now you have to inform them ahead of time that it is no longer in service, and you have to pay to do them this favor! Thousands of people wind up paying the DMV for *not* using their roads. And what about the price of tickets, when were those prices snuck through. Who figured out that $50 isn't enough deterrent for speeding or not wearing your seat belt? Why the fuck is not wearing your seat belt an offence at all!

They'll charge you whatever they want, they'll penalize you whetever they want if you're late, and in my state they can just go in without prior notice and take it out of your bank account. I think those DMV people must assume that the unwashed hordes that they see their building every day is representative of the public at large (it's frightening to visit that place isn't it?), or maybe they just see us as one big bank account that can always be tapped for a little more.

I don't take this proposal too seriously, because I don't think people will stand for it, but I'm sad for the lost millions that I will later being paying back to the government. If it ever does go public, expect mass civil disobediance. And with a car-mounted GPS jammer, I will enlist more people to my cause ;-)

Happy driving. It's a priviledge, not a right, you know. Don't get too uppity about it.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[1u3hr]

We already have mileage based tracking without GPS. It's called an odometer.

Has no one read TFA? The idea is not simply mileage, you can achieve that just with taxing gasoline, and encourage fuel efficiency at the same time; but to charge different rates depending on congestion; e.g. if you go into othe city in rush hour, you pay more than if you go in at 3 am, or if you go on a trip on a rural backroad. At least then those who can reschedule their trips have an incentive to do so.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This all changed just after the Civil War, where the jury system fell flat on its face due to widespread racism, mostly in the south. How would a black fella get a fair trial in a matter involving a dispute with a white folk? Either 1) Jurors are white, in which case he'd hang for blowing snot on the boss' hankie, or 2) Jurors are black, so he gets off scott-free.

So, offenses and penalties were codified, and state constitutions all over the place were altered, introducing this new "Penal Code" that everybody was suppposed ta follow.

What the hell?! What are you talking about? You do realise countries have had Legal Codes for far, far longer than the United States even existed. Even before the civil war, the US and many other legal systems were already a quagmire of often contridictory laws beset with loopholes.

I don't know where you're getting these ideas from. Especially given that rasicim in juries is still a problem even today. The current US legal system has less to do with the civil war than it has to do with simple human nature and society. See legal and socal history, economics, and most of the rest of the Guide.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as anyone who doesn't have insurance or money to pay for the hospital is left to die when they don't wear a seat belt, I'll agree to not requiring them to wear one.

Oh, and if you don't have enough insurance or money to cover all medical bills, you're thrown out the second your cash runs out.

I don't think tickets are the best way to handle that, but they're better than nothing and I don't know what a better idea would be.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[TheRaven64]

If being a policeman is hard and does not come with a great deal of power, you will recruit policemen who wish to work hard to protect the public. If police work is easy and comes with a lot of power, you will recruit policemen who want a slack job that lets them intimidate people.

No matter how much you respect the police now, if you can't guarantee that they will still be worthy of that respect after the next generation of recruits (or the one after that, etc) is in the system, then giving them powers that are difficult to remove is not a good idea.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

As an avid cyclist, I'd love to assume it will end at user fees. But just because that's what the system is designed for doesn't mean that's how this stuff will end up.

It will be used to spy on people. Case in point, Germany recently introduced motorway tolls for trucks. The toll collection system is GPS based. In order to soothe public opinion, a law was voted ("Autobahnmautgesetz") that specifically forbids the use of the toll information for purposed unrelated to toll.

However, recently a truck was involved in a gruesome runaway accident. This was enough of an excuse for parliament to consider changing the law.

All these systems initially come with a guarantee that they won't be used to invade privacy. However, once a suitably moving event happens, that event will be abused to sway the public opinion and abolish the privacy guarantees.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

"I notice in this thread that everybody supporting privacy mentions doing so because of petty crimes they commit."

It's not just those who commit crimes (however petty) who have something to fear.

If people think they are constantly being monitored they change their behaviour. Let's say there was an anti-war march, and you just wanted to go along to see what was being said, you hadn't made your mind up one way or the other, but you knew you were being monitored? That would have a chilling affect on free-association. That's what we have to worry about.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[trurl7]

Because the legal system has, and always will be, hijacked for the benefit of those with money/power.

Proposals such as this "collect road toll" are nothing more than thinly veiled excuses presented by Homeland Security to spy on American citizens. It's not that the DHS will "eventually use it" - it *is* a DHS proposal. The only creative bit is how do you phrase it in an acceptable way to sell it to people first, and then escalate it as a security device afterwards.

I am certain the DOT has no interest in this matter as a "toll issue". Nowhere in law is there anything that says that people ought to pay for roads proportional to how much they use them. If this rationale held up, I should be able to avoid paying school tax because I have no children going to school.

I find it funny how people like the parent always bleat about "well, the law is the law", somehow managing to ignore 200 years of political corruption. That a bunch of political flacks in DC managed to go through the formal motions of putting the law in place doesn't mean we should enshrine the product of the movement of their political bowels as "Law" (though I admit, it'll get enforced as such). People like the parent always say "try changing the law". I believe that that criticism will become valid only when politicians are held accountable for the laws they pass.

Accountability for passed laws is actually something that doesn't exist. Consider: if Congress passes a law that is struck down as unconstitutional, then the politicians were trying to sneak by something that is technically illegal. Is anyone held accountable? Is any restitution paid to people who suffered under this unjust law? Of course not!

There's an even bigger problem - by most accounts, most Senators/Congressmen don't read the actual bills they sign into law. Supposedly, most lawmakers did not read the Patriot Act when it was signed. Wasn't that a wonderful little cherry the American people got. Frankly, the only job of the lawmakers is to create good laws. Not reading the proposals to me represents criminal negligence of the worst possible sort - these people are literally playing with people's lives, for the police/DHS will certainly use any bad law to its fullest extent.

Without any sort of accountability, trying to change laws is basically a semi-futile endeavor, because the very people you are appealing to for help ....just....dont....care. And recalling them is no help - they've had time to get bribes from lobbyists/whoever, made their connections, and can live happily thereafter. That's no punishment. So, until the day that actual accountability exists, crying "change the laws" is pointless.

America is heavily overburdened with laws. When we have the expectation that "Everyone is guilty of Something", then everyone is a criminal. This basically destroys any respect anyone has for the law. Consider - the modern attitude toward law is not "I am a good person for obeying the law. I am proud to obey the law because the law is just". The current attitude is more like "Today I didn't get caught doing anything wrong. Stupid f*cking politicians". Honestly, do you know *anyone* who is proud to be a law-abiding citizen. Not because of punishment. Not because of fear. Out of a genuine respect for "The Law"? Anyone? I don't, myself. People aren't stupid - they know most of the current law is bullshit. The part that's not bullshit is drowned in the lake of steaming excrement. In these conditions, enforcement must come out of fear, not out of a moral commitment to justice. And once you deal in fear, any attempt at being reasonable is doomed to failure - e.g. like your proposal to "change the law"

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Alioth]

Similar tracking systems (Mode S transponders) exist for planes, but they are not in widespread use and are unlikely to be in widespread use in the near future, because they are so expensive. You can take off VFR in a light plane in many parts of the US, and no one will see you or track you (there are great swathes of the US without even radar coverage, like most of the western US below about 12,000 ft).

Even where you have radar coverage, VFR traffic is only tracked if the pilot voluntarily calls up and asks for flight following (except for certain types of airspace).

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when you could go to the DMV without an appointment?

Yeah, it was way back in the glory days of last week.

How about when you could explain that your vehicle was not being operated and you did not owe them any money for it.

If you're not going to operate your vehicle, you don't need a license plate or registration or anything. It can sit under a tarp just fine without them. Or maybe you're upset because you can't get free registration anymore?

And what about the price of tickets, when were those prices snuck through.

About the same time that they put it on a ballot. Don't like it? Read the driver's manual and drive the way it tells you to. It isn't that hard.

Why the fuck is not wearing your seat belt an offence at all!

Maybe because the police are tired of scraping up the remains of all the dumbshits who didn't wear their seat belts?

They'll charge you whatever they want, they'll penalize you whetever they want if you're late, and in my state they can just go in without prior notice and take it out of your bank account.

All the fee schedules are well-documented and publicly available. If you can't afford traffic tickets, then maybe you should pay more attention to traffic laws. Despite what you seem to think, traffic laws are not there to oppress you, they're to keep people from getting killed in car wrecks. It's too bad that you'll most likely be killed in a wreck of your own before you understand this.

If it ever does go public, expect mass civil disobediance.

No, all that I'll expect is fuckwits like you getting better acquainted with public transport.

And with a car-mounted GPS jammer, I will enlist more people to my cause

You'll be on the side of the road trying to lie your way out of another ticket not three minutes after the GPS signal stops. Good luck with that.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[RITMaloney]

That hardly means that Big Brother is going to be staring into your life or mind 24hrs a day. You are going to have to do something to really standout in order for any law enforcement agency to take notice of your blip.

Its not just Law Enforcement abuse that we should be concerned about.

The records created by this system could be leaked and used to character assasinate. Good men/women who might run for office or take positions of influence will instead shy away from civic duty. We'll be left with even more leaders who have no shame of their past indiscretions, or those who were able to hide in their parent's bubble of privelage for the past 40 years. We'll have www.TheSmokingGun.com x1,000. Even if records are "secure" we know that they eventually get out. Just the fear of a past indiscretion coming to light, will be enough to disuade.

Imagine: "Contential Carriage Records leaked to TheSmotkingGun reveal that Thomas Jefferson, former secretary of state and Democratic-Republican Party candidate for President of the United States took a trip to Richmond, VA last year. CCR also shows that a Jefferson slave, Sally, also took a weekend trip to Richmond, VA at that time. Hospital records reveal Sally delivered a child aproximately nine-months later. We're working to get survillance tapes from the hotel! Check back in five minutes!"

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

So putting lives at risk, harming your body, and funding gangs and terrorists and etc is the American SPRIT of Freedom????

No, enforcing a prohibition that allows gangs and terrorists and the like an easy way to make millions of dollars is the American spirit of freedom.

Knee-jerk slippery slope arguments and other irrational responses to any suggestion that legality and morality might not be one and the same are even more American.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[GreyPoopon]

This is just some lame excuse to invade what was normaly considerd private.

Not really. We all know that the government is just looking for a new source of revenue. Think about it. As you already mentioned, we pay at the pump, and the DMV and when we buy new tires. Don't forget that we also pay local taxes, part of which are supposed to be used for upkeep of the local roads. You can bet that NONE of those taxes would go away if a per mile tax was instituted. The real goal is just to milk the taxpayers for even more money in a way that they would have trouble arguing against. Personally, I think implementation of this idea would be very dangerous for whatever government mandates it. At the very least, whatever political party was in force would most likely find themselves looking for work at the next election. And at the worst, the normally peaceful privacy advocates would stop being so peaceful.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you even felt you had to ask why someone would care whether the police knew their location 24x7 scares me, because it illustrates how so many people don't think about things like this. Unless there is an awfully good reason (for some definition of "good" outside of the context of just "generally knowing where all drivers are at") for doing this, it should never happen.

The fact that so many people don't think about and question these types of things is precisely why governments are able to grab ever-increasing amounts of power and control.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, racism is very much alive and well in our country. So is discrimination. In fact, a terrific example of discrimination is "Affirmative Action", which is nothing more than legally-sanctioned discrimination. Those who support Affirmative Action are nothing more than racists.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[dragonator]

To those who would support such a travisty I can only remind them of the words of one of our founding fathers.

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase
a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                                  -- Benjamin Franklin

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why am I taxed so heavily to provide for the welfare of the indigent? They use public facilites exclusively with little or no tax burden.

Not so straightforward after all, is it.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[SacredNaCl]

How about instead we overthrow this tyrannical government which is every daily finding new ways to impliment its tyranny and inflict a control grid upon us?

Re:User fees are the way to go

[SacredNaCl]

Not using violence of course... :)

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Eccles]

Seat belt laws actually keep the driver behind the wheel, rather than thrown out of one's seat or hard to one side. Often in an accident a driver can prevent an accident from becoming even worse by steering, braking, etc. after the initial contact. Consider seat belt laws to be like laws requiring you to maintain your brakes, brake lights, etc. It's for the safety of other drivers, not you.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[lowrydr310]

The PA turnpike there isn't all that horrible. I live in New Jersey and have to commute on either the Garden State Parkway ($1.40 roundtrip) or the New Jersey Turnpike ($2.90 roundtrip - 26 miles total). I spend about $70 a month in tolls, including my trips to Manhattan and weekend travel to go hiking/skiing/kayaking. How can a highway that's part of the federally funded interstate system can charge a toll? How can two of the only convenient ways to go North-South through New Jersey both be fairly expensive toll roads? (Your only other option are congested local roads with many traffic lights)

New York Commuting? Fuhgettaboutit! $4 to cross the GW Bridge or Lincoln Tunnel with EZPass ($6 if paying by cash). A friend of mine is a toll collector at the GW Bridge and told me he collects around $8000 per shift.

I understand part of the problem is that because New Jersey is small, you can drive across the state in no time. Many cars on the turnpike are from other parts of the Northeast simply passing through the state. When you don't buy gas in NJ they don't get any tax revenue. The only way to get this revenue to fix the roads is by charging a toll. I think they should do away with the tolls and just charge all the hundreds of thousands of large trucks that drive on the turnpike every day a HUGE road use fee (they're the ones damaging the roads and bridges, right?) On the other hand, I've heard rumors that a big percentage of toll revenue for the Parkway, Turnpike, and all NY bridges goes to the toll collectors' and turnpike/parkway workers' pension fund.

Why is the government wasting money trying to figure out how to track people? Most places already have this figured out. Have you ever heard of EZPass? It's a little transponder tag that mounts inside your windshield (RFID!!!) to pay your tolls. I'm the tinfoil hat type, but this little thing saves me from waiting 15 minutes in the cash lanes. The private toll roads in Southern California (and the fast lane on the 91 freeway in Corona) use FastTrack, which is just like EZPass. I know San Francisco has something similar as well for the Golden Gate Bridge.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[OnlineAlias]

At no time, ever, is the location of a commercial aircraft unknown. Sure, private small planes flying VFR no one really cares about. But all commercial planes (the vast majority of all traffic) are being tracked to the meter...

Re:User fees are the way to go

[atriusofbricia]

So that's a yes vote for the GPS enabled buttplug. We'll be sure to note that in your PERMANENT record.

Sincerely, The FBI

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

You should never, and I repeat NEVER argue against someone giving a courtesy flush...

If someone knows they need to and does, then everybody in the vicinity is a winner.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[atriusofbricia]

And those who can't reschedule for some reason, get soaked.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[roccomaglio]

If they are going to charge you for the milage shouldn't they also take into account the size of vehicle being driven. A huge SUV will cause much more wear and tear on the road than a mini.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[ddimas]

Seat belt laws actually keep the driver behind the wheel, rather than thrown out of one's seat or hard to one side. Often in an accident a driver can prevent an accident from becoming even worse by steering, braking, etc. after the initial contact. Consider seat belt laws to be like laws requiring you to maintain your brakes, brake lights, etc. It's for the safety of other drivers, not you.

That's the dumbest reason I have ever heard for invading my privacy. If you have been hit hard enough to knock you out of the car, I GUARANTEE that you are not in control of yourself, never mind the vehicle, seatbelt or no seatbelt. I can buy that seatbelts will save lives in such situations, but please don't insult people with that kind of mindless prattle.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[harryman100]

And you care if the police know your location... why?

You make the fatal assumption that everyone who works for the police, is law abiding themselves, and that the information will remain ONLY in the hands of the police. In a perfect world, tracking everyone and then using that information to solve crimes, is the perfect solution, BUT the potential for mis-use is too big.

Never trust anyone, apart from those who trust you.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[FireFury03]

increase registration fees for vehicles that get more milage

Yes, because penalising people for buying mroe environmentally friendly cars is a great idea...

Other than that, I agree with you about increasing fuel tax (which correctly penalises those who have less efficient cars). GPS tracking is a waste of time since it would cost a reasonable amount to put the infrastructure in place and doesn't do anything to discourage the use of inefficient vehicles.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Someone parked just slightly outside of the lines is likely to get leeway.

You don't live in London obviously :-)

Rich.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[ergo98]

Would you want to bet that if such a thing would be even considered in Congress/Sejm/Parliament/Duma/etc, the first act you'd see would be making electronic government-certified odometers mandatory; with each one costing $250+?

Most odometers are already made to be tamper resistant, and it is illegal to tamper with it. In addition to that, here in Canada it is the law that all repair shops (even oil change shops) have to record your VIN (the vehicle's GUID of sorts) and odometer reading on every visit. I don't know if it goes to some master database, but presumably it is used to catch odometer tamperers.

The purpose here, of course, is that a lot of people foolishly pin most of their auto valuation on the odometer, so it is an area of fraud.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Martin Blank]

They're taxing your purchase of gasoline in Virginia, which is allowed. Your registration is based on where you claim the primary location of the car, which is a single state and so also allowed. My late uncle split his time between Oregon and Arizona, and had a car in each location. He paid registrations separately.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Foobar of Borg]

They'll charge you whatever they want, they'll penalize you whetever they want if you're late, and in my state they can just go in without prior notice and take it out of your bank account. I think those DMV people must assume that the unwashed hordes that they see their building every day is representative of the public at large (it's frightening to visit that place isn't it?), or maybe they just see us as one big bank account that can always be tapped for a little more.

Since most of the DMV worker are a part of the unwashed horde, I think they just see us as one big bank account. The individual workers themselves probably get their jollies off of screwing with people's lives.

BTW, can they really access your bank account like that? I would have my doubts about it since I think under federal laws (which supercede state laws) they would need a court order (IANALawyer). If it is true, what state do you live in (so I can avoid it)?

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Martin Blank]

New York would want its use tax. California would have a weak claim for it at best. A few years ago, California charged $300 for out-of-state vehicles brought into the state when people moved here to compensate for the different smog equipment. It was declared an unconstitutional violation of the Interstate Commerce clause, because it was effectively levying a tax against an out-of-state purchase.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[skubeedooo]

Automated systems do not allow for judgement calls

Perhaps not as they are currently implemented, but it may not be too hard to do. If you have an automated system that detects all speeding infringements, then they can be programmed to only trigger (ie send you a fine) after a certain number of infringements has happened (weighted by their seriousness, and perhaps normalized by the average weekly mileage of that vehicle). This has the advantage that it is far less arbitrary than being pulled over by a cop who is randomly pissed off and wants to take it out on someone. It also excludes the usual /. argument of "but what if i'm trying to get someone to hospital quickly".

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Proc6]

Why the fuck is not wearing your seat belt an offence at all!

A safety belt is a simple and effective piece of the auto safety puzzle. Much like a bumper, you could declare having to use one violates your freedoms (as would doors, windows, anything else), the the value has been proven so effective that the general public seems to agree its worth requiring both in terms of safety and insurance costs.

When I cause an auto accident, which, as we are all human, can happen from time to time, rather than you being somewhat injured and my insurance paying for a $2,000 Dr. visit, now you've been dismembered all over the highway and I have to pay a $2,000,000 bill. In other words, wearing your seatbelt isn't just a personal matter like how you wear your hair, or what music you listen to. Your seatbelt choices now dramatically impact other peoples lives. Now you of course will say "But it's YOUR fault.", and yes that is the case, but as previously stated, we are all humans and some accidents happen regardless. It's just a matter of not making every accident unnecessarily severe because a little piece of fabric (or a bumper) somehow stifles your "rights".

Re:User fees are the way to go

[jasen666]

If it ever does go public, expect mass civil disobediance.

>No, all that I'll expect is fuckwits like you getting better acquainted
>with public transport.

And with a car-mounted GPS jammer, I will enlist more people to my cause

>You'll be on the side of the road trying to lie your way out of another
>ticket not three minutes after the GPS signal stops. Good luck with that.

I understand the anti-GPS sentiments. And I have no doubt that there will be hacks to disable any government installed system hours after it comes out. And I'll be one of them working on it, fuckwit or not. :)
I do obey traffic laws. But I'm not going to be tracked around like a tagged animal by the government nor will I willingly pay extra taxes, on top of my gas taxes, registration taxes, property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, etc. We already pay the government a premium just to own a car, even without driving it.
btw, some localities require all vehicles be at least registered if not insured, whether they are driven or not, rendering your tarp idea techically illegal in those areas.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[quantum bit]

e.g. if you go into othe city in rush hour, you pay more than if you go in at 3 am, or if you go on a trip on a rural backroad.

Geez, talk about adding insult to injury. Not only do you have to put up with getting stuck in traffic, but you have to pay more for the pleasure of it?

Re:User fees are the way to go

[SacredNaCl]

These things are coming down from the Federal level. In Texas they have a similar project planned, except its going to install RFID like transmitters on the license plates even though the people of Texas overwhelmingly voted against it. They know it will be used not only to turn all roads into toll roads, but to track them and to issue tickets for speeding and other offenses. No one wants this stuff. So ask yourself, why is it being implimented? The Federal money, and Federal power trip is driving this thing.

When this country was founded we made a pact to form a federal government that would basically exist for the national defense, and as a device to guarantee our rights. It has far far exceeded its purpose, and is now in the business of funding tracking grids on the populace, locking people up indefinitely without charge council or trial, rendering people to foreign lands to be tortured, making wars of aggression on sovreign nations, stealing property through imminent domain & other means of seizure, entering us into global trade organizations that rob us of our sovreignty as a free people. It has tried to turn the rights we hold dear in every measure into privileges -- the right of free travel (licensed and taxed..turned to privilege), ownership of property, right to bare arms, our personal sovreignty - it even tries to claim ownership of our children. There is not an area of our life, nor of our God given sacred freedoms upon which it has not encroached. It has even turned over the right to coin money to a private (for profit) corporation. Run us into ruinous debt, more debt generated by this administration that in all of our prior history as a nation combined.

Instead of the Federal government being servant of the people and the sovreign states, it has tried to make us the servant of the Federal government at every turn. It has sold us down the river and is trying to turn us into slaves. Slaves that need permission for basic human rights at every turn. To be tracked, tagged, taxed, chipped, spied upon, injected, herded like cattle to no end. At this very moment this venomous demon we have unleashed is plotting to end our country and merge us with Mexico & Canada - they even have a new currency set and ready to go "The Amero". The federal government has even failed to secure our own borders, the very purpose it was founded for! - Our border patrol agents are now guarding the southern border ...of Mexico! Our own Federal Emergency Management Agency is building clandestine camps with which it plans to imprison us. They are so brazen that they even talk of shadow government openly. Was the PATRIOT ACT not enough for you to show you its true nature? I ask you, does this beast now resemble in any way the servant we created as guarantor of our rights?

This beast has gotten out of hand, it has reached the level of intolerability and its far time we reign it in. It should never have gotten the power to tax, we should have added meaningful penalties to the Constitution for violating it - and perhaps that is where we went wrong. This 'experiment' has failed, by every measure it has failed for the purpose we have created it. Its time to rid our lands of this beast, and recall the federal government and start over again. We need a complete reorganization of our government. Its time for a new constitutional convention where we redraft this document aware of the reality of the mistakes that were made. Aware that the checks on the Federal government were completely inadequate to restrain it to the task for which it was created. It must include that we shall print our own money, that all laws violating it are expressly null & void, it must include meaningful penalty for those agents who violate it, and be expressly denied the ability to lay direct taxation.

As I see it, we either opt out, and go our separate ways returning to the sovreign states we were the full authority they are entitled - or set about fixing in dramatic way the compact on which this grea

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's two big problems with this:

1) The state's inspectors would have no way of knowing that all the miles on your odometer were driven in-state (ok, if you're 100 miles from he border and there's only 50 miles on the odometer, they would. Bear with me), and under the Dormant Commerce Clause of the US Constitution (Art. 1, Sec. 8) the federal government has the exclusive right to regulate interstate commerce/travel. Because the interstate regulatory power is exclusively reserved to Congress, the states do have authority to enact any laws that would restrict interstate travel.

You might be thinking 'But hey! The states could just colect the mileage information for the federal government! They're the ones who put the tax in place to begin with!' but that brings us to..

2) Under the principles of State Sovreignity (US Constitution, Amend. 10 - unless the Constitution says the Feds can do it, they can't), the federal government cannot require the state governments to act as their agents. If the feds require the state inspectors to remit mileage information on the vehicles they inspect, the feds would be exercising power not specifically enumerated in the US Constitution, which is unconstitutional, and thus illegal (The US Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land).

Consequently, government tracking of the citizen's driving needs to come from passive state sources (state gov. tracking instate travel via camera) or active federal sources (e.g., mandatory GPS tracking on all cars).

Re:User fees are the way to go

[FireFury03]

and encourage fuel efficiency at the same time; but to charge different rates depending on congestion

When will governments get it into their heads that charging people more _won't_ reduce congestion. Do they think I spend an hour sitting in traffic each morning for fun? No - I spend an hour sitting in traffic each morning because I have to get to work, if I could avoid it I would.

(And no, I can't use public transport - it'd take me 3 or 4 hours to get the bus into work... Hell, when I used to work in the city centre (you would expect that to have good public transport) it used to take over an hour for the bus to do the 5 mile journey (which took 15 minutes by car) if it bothered to turn up at all. For the record, I live in Southampton, UK).

The way to get me to use public transport is to provide a service that is cost effective and actually *useful*. Making it faster for me to walk than catch the bus is not useful. Taxing the crap out of cars is not the answer since it unfairly hits all the people who can't use the bus for whatever reason (no bus service, disability, needing to transport large objects, etc)

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an extremely rare person who has never broken a law in his life. Never once jaywalked, went a mile/km an hour over the speed limit, passed on the right, changed lanes a little too soon after the last one, dropped a piece of paper and watched as it fluttered away out of reach...

What a boring sheep.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[RageEX]

And you care if the police know your location... why?

History ... American History. Try reading it. If you've done nothing wrong you still have plenty to fear.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Thunderstruck]

So why don't we de-criminalize the whole issue. If you don't want to wear a seatbelt, you pay an extra fee when you license your vehicle, or renew your driver's license.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Eccles]

I didn't say thrown out of the car, dumbass, I said out of the seat. Try driving with the front seat passenger in your lap (who is also required to be belted). It's the same reason racing cars have bucket seats, which basically prevent the driver from sliding side to side, unlike bench-style seats.

You'll claim this is prattle, but I'm certainly http://www.ct.gov/dot/cwp/view.asp?a=1388&q=259430 >not the only one who claims what I have said. But if you want to be an organ donor, by all means, be my guest.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

If I live in West Virginia and commute to DC, I'm using Virginia's roads, but West Virginia is the one charging me under your plan

It all averages out in the end.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Overzeetop]

In this case it probably doesn't, as the large business centers have commuters from states without large business centers. Of course, WV has Sen. Byrd, and as a result already gets more than its share of federal dollars. This is really just icing.

Overall, though, I'd agree that it's probably close enough for government purposes.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[pla]

How about instead of attacking the law enforcement agencies for trying to do their job

Nuremburg?

"Just following orders" just doesn't cut it.

But no doubt I'll get modded to hell and back for the reference to a certain unnamed historical police state which no one seems to want to admit the US (and western world in general) increasingly emulates.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[letxa2000]

As an avid cyclist, I'd love to assume it will end at user fees.

You're assuming that they won't apply the same technology to bikes and charge you, too! Granted, probably a lesser fee but why would we think they'll exempt bikes?

Anyway, I oppose this across the board. The privacy concerns are obvious. But fee-based infrastructure is a really bad idea. National infrastructure is one of the few things that I agree the government should be involved in because it benefits all of us.

If they eventually go fee-based then I assume they'll cut the federal budget by whatever it is they currently spend on the transporation department, at least the hundreds of billions they regularly spend on highways? I'm definitely not going to put up with being double-dinged for this stuff.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I also agree. Mandating seat belt laws is a mandate on personal safety. I've often wondered when we'll get laws that tell you how much cholesterol you can consume in a day, daily limits on alcohol consumption, and not to run with scissors. I highly doubt what those websites tell me because they offer no scientific evidence to support their claims.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[SacredNaCl]

I agree, it is silly to think that Americans are going to go along with having to pay more tax based on how much we drive. Overwhelmingly in polls, and when given the chance to vote on it (Texas) they do not support these kinds of measures. It makes no difference, the government is doing it anyway. The Federal government is the wheel which is pushing this...

As far as the conspiracy theorists who think this is going to violate your privacy need to calm down. Even if this were to be come a common place device on all cars, you will be mearly a blip on some screen or in a computer in a large cloud of other blips. That hardly means that Big Brother is going to be staring into your life or mind 24hrs a day. You are going to have to do something to really standout in order for any law enforcement agency to take notice of your blip. Don't bet on it, and once people come to accept that the logs are a 'reliable indicator of where such and such is', it will be no problem to add entries to the log to place whomever they want at the scene of whatever they want. It also raises alarms about who else gets the data, the ability of the government to learn your habits, entire social network - so that should you ever become an enemy of the state all of your places of travel that you would go to would be known. Its about creating a climate of fear. You just wait till they get the ability to disable your vehicle remotely on top of it. Think I'm joking? They are talking about that as well.

I can think of thousands of malicious ways this can be used both by itself and in combination with existing and other serious encroachments on the table. Right now I'm thinking about the methods they used against nuclear protesting groups. If they had this system in place, they likely would have been disabling cars left and right and arranging for people to be stopped well away from the scene so they could disrupt their operations. The government went as far as to jam their phones, pagers, sabotage vehicles, install provocateurs to instigate violence (so they could arrest entire groups), they even distributed their own fliers with false dates - times - places for their events and rented a bus to take activist to a different location and cancelled the bus one group had rented. Couple this with things like MATRIX, REGENT and other databases (we have a national for fugatives that I can not think of at the moment), the TSA "NO FLY LIST", and cell phone and visual face recognition technology - and the potential to disrupt your life and be subject to a near complete control grid is endless. This is a government which disappears people, no trial, no lawyer, no hearings, no nothing. Indefinite detention without notificaiton. Somehow your "you must be doing something really important" assurance seems rather meaningless. One that is already so far out of control it threatens to declare martial law on a regular basis, herds protestors into pens miles away from events, and dresses its LEO's in all black riot gear with no name tags. It looks like a star wars episode with all of the riot gear, except they are in black and not white storm trooper gear at any major political event or trade conference. A government that calls us "civilians" instead of "citizens" like its an occupying force. Wake up already.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[SacredNaCl]

Remember when you could go to the DMV without an appointment? They actually had to attend to you? How about when you could explain that your vehicle was not being operated and you did not owe them any money for it. Now you have to inform them ahead of time that it is no longer in service, and you have to pay to do them this favor! Thousands of people wind up paying the DMV for *not* using their roads. And what about the price of tickets, when were those prices snuck through. Who figured out that $50 isn't enough deterrent for speeding or not wearing your seat belt? Why the fuck is not wearing your seat belt an offence at all!

The very first licensing was started in New York City, and it was sold as to apply to commercial vehicles only. When this was voted upon, it was never intended to apply to non-commercial use of the roads. The arguement was that trucks were tearing up the roads and making lots of money off of it, so we should regulate it. The very idea that this would lead to lead to a defacto internal passport, mandatory insurance, picture ID, vehicle registration for everyone, license plates, city stickers, or that the right of free travel would be turned to a privilege by regulation was not a twinkle in the eyes of the voters who approved it -- but it was on the mind of a few of those legislators.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Catbeller]

"And you care if the police know your location... why?"

Because it't none of their fucking business, frankly. If you don't understand why that's important, then, welcome to Big Brother.

They've rounded up plenty of people on a whim, called them terrorists, tortured them, found they were clean, and then deported them. It's already happened.

People LIKE fascism. It makes them warm and comfy. Safe streets; the wrong sort of people rounded up, or in this case, tracked like dangerous dogs; prosperous companies making useful systems for a government that increasingly is owned by the businesses themselves; voting machines compromised; election tabulation in private, secret, partisan corporate hands; wrong sort of people kept penned away in assigned neighborhoods, kept of of decent people's hair; a nice assortment of external enemies to blow up and excoriate; eternal war against a non-existent (at first!) enemy; lovely merging of fundamentalist church and state; science brought to heel, made to serve the needs of business and government; charismatic leaders; news media brought down like errant servants, dishing up only prescribed information, those refusing being brought down and ruined by either smear or executive fiat; lobbying organizations brought under the control of the ruling party; permanent suspension of constitutional liberties; secret laws; secret prisons; torture; questioning the omnipotent ruler is labeled violently as a lack of patriotism; the ruler is equated with the nation itself; the ruler is equated with the armed forces; opposition is clearly labeled as treason, madness, badthinking ... we've got it all. Fascism is the most popular form of government known to man. Democracy is HARD WORK, and America no longer has the patience or the education to maintain one, much less export it by means of rains of white phosphorus.

Fascisms only fall when they overreach themselves. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But rarely do they fall because the majority of those ruled despise it.

It's welcomed with open arms. And much waving of flags. As Jerry Pournelle actually said when Bush assumed super-constitional power, "Ave, Caesar". Hail Caesar, he who will protect us and tell us what we want to hear.

Remember, it's not what they'll do with their power right now. The power is new to them, and they are still men who remember what a democratic society is like. They'll go easy with it. What you have to know is that the next generation, the one that was raised with dog searches of their school lockers, with strip searches in 2nd grade, random drug tests, secret prisons, secret police searches and arrests, listening to police state crap on TV every day of their lives... THEY'LL bring hell to Earth, because they will think police states are the way things should be. They'll not understand why anyone would object. Slavery will be normal to them.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[rolfwind]

The federal government allocates money to states to pay for roads like this. States were paid federal taxpayer money to build the interstate system like the Turnpikes. So, regardless of gassing up in NJ or not, NJ gets money. Federal taxes are in every gallon of gas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_tax#United_S tates_of_America

If they really need more local money, all a state has to do is be reasonable relative to it's neighbors in gas price.

The reason I say the PA turnpike is horrible is that I often take the N/S 476 turnpike to route 80 and take that to ohio (travel west a lot) and get to the same destination faster and without traffic that the 76 for a fraction of the price. I understand the 76 is more traveled, but the free 80 is in better condition, with a faster speedlimit, less traffic, and sometimes is three lanes! The expensive turnpike is still 2 lanes like the 50s (the company owned turnpike probably has the money to improve it but no incentive, no one is going to take route 80 if their final destination is in southern PA) and has road repairs all the time and is monitored like crazy by the state troopers.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[arminw]

....were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.'.....

The problem with being able to catch and punish every offense from jaywalking upward is that soon the majority of the population would be locked up at worst, or at best broke from all the fines and penalties levied. I doubt that there are very many, if any, persons who have not broken some law every single day. When driving, do you REALLY come to a FULL STOP at every stop sign? Did you use your turn signals EVERY time you were required to do so? If your state charges sales tax, did you pay it on that out of state order on the Internet as would have if you had bought it downtown? When was the last time you got paid for a service you provided, but did not tell the IRS?

What if technology to catch "criminals" got even better, so that a mandatory annual "mind scan" transmittted every thought you had to a recording device, similar to downloading data from a computer disk drive? Such technology might get you to be "good" because of fear of punishment, but it would really make it so you would WANT to be good just because being good is the right thing? WANTING to be good requires a fundamental change in attitude and mind coupled with somehow the imparting of the ability to BE good. Of course if those making the laws could not exempt themselves from such a technology, it would probably not get implemented.

Defining what is good is another problem. Perhaps true adherence to and obedience to the "Golden Rule" is a reasonable definition at least for starters.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[ddimas]

First off the name is Dimas not dumbass. When you can learn to spell you may have a point.

Secondly, my points are equally valid if you have been hit hard enough to knock you out of your seat.

Thirdly, I've looked at the web sites you mentioned. So What? You still took a serious hit and will be stunned until everthing stops moving around. I'm not talking about 1 or 2 G's of lateral acceleration.

Your primary argument was that wearing a seatbelt makes it safer for other drivers. My point is that by the time the seat belt kicks in it is already too late. Any impact on driver safety is stricly for the wearer at this point. The other drivers are on their own.

Therefore your argument justifying seat belts as a safety device for other people is a false argument.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[AoT]

If you are so ignorant as to think that Affirmative Action is a major problem in race relations today then you need to pull your head out of your ass and start looking at the country.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[cayenne8]

"You'll just be punished in accordance with the law whenever you do something that breaks it."

The trouble is...with so many obscure laws and such out there...just about 99.999% of people break all kinds of laws almost daily. If someone with power, or connections to such wanted to just 'get' you somehow. If they track you long enough, they'll find something you did.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[cayenne8]

"Remember when you could go to the DMV without an appointment?"

Wow...that's a new one on me. I've never heard of a DMV that would take appointments!! Where do you live that they do this?

Frankly, if I could do that..I'd almost prefer it so you could know when to go to get in/out.

They way it is down here...you go, and it is a crapshoot as to how packed and backed up the place is. In LA, I basically take a whole day off work if I have to go to the DMV for almost anything...

Re:User fees are the way to go

[lowrydr310]

Ah.. I grew up not far from where 80 intersects the NE Extension (I-476, used to be PA 9 back in the day). I went to school in Pittsburgh and almost always took I-80. I took 76 once because I had to drop a friend off in Philadelphia over one holiday break and I agree with you that 80 is better. (more senic too!)

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think your problem is with their criteria on naming people terrorists. Not in them knowing where you were at 8:00 pm, Saturday 23rd of October, 2005."

That's not the point. The point is that it's none of anyones business where I was at 8:00 pm, Saturday 23rd of October, 2005. It's that kind of thinking that made Australia what it is today. A test bed for privacy intrusion practices.

The thing is, this kind of thinking will eventually lead to cameras in your home...you know...in case you decide to murder someone there.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Remember when you could go to the DMV without an appointment?

Huh?? where the hell do you live that you need an appointment to go to the fscking DMV???

Tell me so I never have to move there. Stupidest thing I've heard yet (today :-).

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the REAL reason for seat belt laws is that the insurance industry lobbies for them. You ARE less likely to be killed or injured in an accident if you are wearing your seatbelt, hence, wearing your seatbelt reduces the amount of $$$ your auto insurance pays out if you're in an accident. Of course, they pass those savings on to the customers and not directly into the pockets of their execs *snicker*

Re:User fees are the way to go

[mfrank]

They already have a gas tax. People who drive more or drive heavier vehicles pay more. So maybe you need to ask why they're not happy with an inexpensive, easy way to collect that revenue and want to go with something like this.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[SageMusings]

Hmm....this sounds an awful lot like the Patriot Act. It is amazing what the public will accept in times of (perceived) crisis.

More than my privacy, however, I fear having to pay $0.10 / mile as soon as they figure out how to monitor me.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Neoncow]

AC: Damn, those greedy bastards... Trying to save your life for a buck.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. To put another way, don't set a chain of events in motion that you can't control.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Eccles]

I highly doubt what those websites tell me because they offer no scientific evidence to support their claims.

And you have ones that prove otherwise?

Tell you what, let's try an experiment. You play Halo while I periodically shove you sideways, against someone else who gets pushed, but belts hold him in the chair. Who do you think would do better?

Question everything, sure, but that applies to your own beliefs as well.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[petermgreen]

hmm i'd think a typical shoulder belt would be pretty terrible at stopping sideways movement in one direction and possiblke quite destructive in the even of big sideways movement in the other

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus H. Christ, please learn some fucking grammar and spelling. Why the hell do you force us to read your otherwise interesting post with such a heinous english? Sheesh man, have some respect for your readers...

Re:User fees are the way to go

[toddestan]

At no time, ever, is the location of a commercial aircraft unknown. Sure, private small planes flying VFR no one really cares about. But all commercial planes (the vast majority of all traffic) are being tracked to the meter...

Likewise, why should they care about people's personal vehicles? Sure, tracking commercial trucks, buses, semis, etc. is one thing, but why should they be tracking my car?

Re:User fees are the way to go

[1u3hr]

The way to get me to use public transport is to provide a service that is cost effective and actually *useful*.

The general idea is to make public transport more cost effective, by comparison, by making cars less so. Ideally, the response should be more people using public transport, and that (with more income and demand) eventually results in more frequent and convenient public transport. Unfortunately this doesn't happen overnight, even if it works there will be a period of some years when you both pay more to use cars and still have poor public transport. I personally ride a bike whenever possible and avoid both options.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[toddestan]

I don't know about Canada, but in the US it is not illegal to tamper with your odometer. If it's your car, you can do with it as you like. What you can't do is tamper with the odometer and then sell the car without disclosing that the odometer is not accurate.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[el americano]

Maybe because the police are tired of scraping up the remains of all the dumbshits who didn't wear their seat belts?

Maybe police don't like breaking up domestic quarrels and directing traffic either, but it's their damn job! They are being paid by my taxes besides, so I don't want any grousing.

BTW, I don't have a problem with getting tickets, but I recognize that they are excessive (no, of course that was never on the ballot - get real).

<remainder of reply aborted due to your bad attitude>

Re:User fees are the way to go

[el americano]

Can I kick your ass after you don't stop shoving me? ;-) (I know. Internet bravado)

The answer is that both will miss badly. And we're not talking about a little shove either. Knock him over. Hit him on the head with a frying pan, and let's see how much better that belted player does.

The argument is specious and not even a significant reason for this parental legislation.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[el americano]

Can I assume that you would outlaw motorcycles then? As a former rider, I can tell you how vulnerable we are out there. Let's start the parade of curtailing rights, because state money could possibly be involved - but take a minute to realize just how broad of a criterion that is. I think you could justify pretty much anything.

Personally, I think you should get thirty days in county lock-up if you don't wear a sweater outdoors in cold weather. We can't let these scoff-laws burden our government infrastructure.

Hint: Replace "scoff-law" with "ordinary citizen" to get the sarcasm.

I was so sad to witness the paid promotion of our local click-it or ticket campaign. When the police think it's a good idea to victimize ordinary citizens commiting no other offense, instead of pursuing more reckless behaviors or even...ahem... serious crime, then we have definitely gone down the wrong path. Do you feel bad about that misspent money? Or is it just medical expenses that piss you off?

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Eccles]

Yes, because every contact between automobiles *ever* results in both vehicles exploding instantly.

Believe it or not, *sometimes* you get clipped slightly. *Of course* if you get t-boned, there's no more driving to do. But when Joe Cellphone cuts it too close and tags you in the corner and you start to spin, you being held better in you seat does help hold you behind that wheel. That's why NASCAR drivers can keep off the wall when they get clipped at 180; the same applies to Mr. Average at 40.

You want a test? Get a car with a vinyl bench front seat, and put on some nylon track pants. Go to a parking lot, and set up some cones to make an autocross course. Try doing the course with your seat belt on, and without. Betcha get better times with the belt on.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[sumdumass]

I''m not sure were the problem realy is. If your not wearing a sesatbelt, you are more likley to just die in the crash and the medical bills would be less then if you wore the seatbelt.

It is a freedom thing. Helmets are the same way. I wonder what the position would be if you factor in the other driver being at fault. and what should happen when thier insurance or money runs out.

I guess requiring everyone to wear a helmet while outdoors might be a good thing too. Cars have been known to hit pedestrians in the past. I guess those medical bills amount to a large sum too.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[sumdumass]

Most people i know consider seat belt laws to be just there so the cops know who to blame. If every one gets tossed around the car, it is hard to tell who was driving or at fault for the accident.

In my defensive driving course, they did say the reaosn for wearing a seatbelt was to keep control of the vehicle if possible. The idea was as the parent stated, it keeps you in your seat to do whatever possible and keeps the passenger out of your lap and interfereing.

I would consider you correct though. In the majority of situations, this reasoning is mute. I have however been saved because i wasn't wearing a seatbelt in an auto accident. I was shoved sidways and pined under the dash while the top of the car was peeled off from sliding on the roof. A seatbelt would have caused my head to grind against the asphalt and metal as it passed through the car. (BTW the accident wasn't my fault)

Re:User fees are the way to go

[FireFury03]

The general idea is to make public transport more cost effective, by comparison, by making cars less so. Ideally, the response should be more people using public transport, and that (with more income and demand) eventually results in more frequent and convenient public transport. Unfortunately this doesn't happen overnight, even if it works there will be a period of some years when you both pay more to use cars and still have poor public transport.

Well, there are several problems with this approach:

1. The UK government raises taxes on fuel to make cars more expensive. Of course, busses also run on fuel and have to pay the increased tax so they raise their prices to compensate - the only winning party is the government who now gets more cash from taxing everyone. Maybe public transport should be allowed to use red diesel?

2. What if there's no sensible bus route and there's never likely to be (e.g. rural areas)? Why should I be charged a prohibutive amount of money to use the only form of transport available (car)?

3. Certain activities *can't* be done by bus - for example, I can't take all my windsurfing kit from my home to the beach by bus. Why should I be charged a prohibutive amount of money for the only sensible form of transport for the activity? (I already pay a crazy amount of money to the council for parking at the beach anyway).

And it doesn't just stop at busses - I will be going skiing this winter with 3 other people via the channel tunnel. The return train journey from Southampton to London Waterloo (the terminal for the channel tunnel) is going to cost us 120 pounds. The only reason this is even worth considering is because we're going for a week so have long stay parking to consider. If we were going for a day it's way more cost effective to take a car rather than using public transport (taking a car would probably cost about 15 pounds in fuel).

If public transport is so much more efficient than a car it _should not cost 10 times as much_ in the first place, if it does there's something very wrong. Raising the price of using cars is not the answer because it hits everyone who has no choice, fixing the public transport system is what needs to be done.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[ddimas]

Sorry about your accident. I hope the aftereffects are behind you.

I usually wear my seat belt, I consider it more of an advantage than a disadvantage. The thing I was objecting to was the idea that giving up rights would somehow make me safer. The idea that seat belts must be required because they make it safer for other drivers is a toxic idea. The level of safety increase for others is so miniscule that that argument if it is accepted can be used to justify almost anything.

I was actually more concerned about the erosion of civil rights, particularly privacy, than I was about the safety issues. The argument as advanced could be used to justify putting everyone under 24/7 survaillence in the name of keeping them from performing some act that may unintentionaly harm or inconvienience others. Basicly a police state.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[ray-auch]

Why bother to go to all the hassle of rigging gps devices when you can just steal a car. Change vehicles a couple of times in a busy car park [one in a nice steel framed building might be good if you suspect gps...] and the cops are way off the scent.

No criminal with any sense blows up a bank and drives off in their own car - even now (gps or not).

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP is probably not a troll, mods.

The whole purpose of a state gas tax in the United States is to charge people more for using their cars more. If you want to increase the amount of funding for road systems, you hike up the gas tax. You dont start charging people money just for using the roads. If people want to pay less gas tax, they buy a more fuel-efficient (and newer) vehicle.

The article mentions Washington State as one of the proponents of this law. I live in Washington, and find its policy of punishing drivers for driving while not providing convenient and economical public transportation laughable. We replace lanes of the highway with HOV lanes, and consistently avoid building and expanding new roads. Then we suggest that drivers carpool(admittedly, a good idea), and take the bus.

Public transportation in Pierce County is an uncomfortable, disgusting mode of travel for the most part. Buses are consistently late, and the smell from all the smokers gets in your clothes, even if you are a non-smoker. I've been on bus routes where the bus spends 30 minutes on the side of the road in order to properly connect with a station, and then ends up late to that station.

The whole problem with discouraging drivers through tax is that it completely ignores people who need to drive a car to get where they're going. I attempted to find bus service to my community college for an 8-o'clock class.

  It normally takes an hour and fifteen minutes for me to drive to school in the morning. That means I have to leave at 6:45am. The bus route that runs by my house doesnt start running until 7am. So I either dont take the chemistry class that I need to continue my education and take the bus, or I get charged a toll for using the roads in my personal vehicle? Fucked up reasoning.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[sumdumass]

Thank you for your concern. I am fine with it, sometime a little loopy in the head but i think that more normal then because of the accident.

was actually more concerned about the erosion of civil rights, particularly privacy, than I was about the safety issues. The argument as advanced could be used to justify putting everyone under 24/7 survaillence in the name of keeping them from performing some act that may unintentionaly harm or inconvienience others. Basicly a police state.

I can see your point and clearly champion it. I'm all for laws that directly stop some one from intentionaly or accidentaly hurting someon else because of carlessness or negligence. These law might be somethign like not discharging a firearm within the city limits or driving on a certain side of the road or asaulting someone. But as you said, the "You might have a chance at making an accident slightly less horrid by wearing a seatbelt" or "it protects the other guy" argument is going over the top. I can see the laws that require people to wear helmets when walking down the street being passed under the same guise.

It might not be long before someone says you need to either use a condom or have a current medical examination clearing you of any STD before having sex with anyone other then your spouse. Could you imagine having to pay the state $160 fine for having unprotected sex? Your chances of hurting yourself or someone else while having unprotected sex seems greater then having an accident were a seatbelt would make that kind of difference. So whats stoping a law like this from law form being passed? The fact nobody thinks having sex is a priviledge given by the government so they don't see them as a regulating authority maybe? We don't need a police state.

You are right. It is like the "its for the children" argument that makes anyone aposed to some view seem like a child hater that should be ignored or demonized. If you apose the "it might save someone elses life argument, it might mean you are a killer waiting for a victom. The entire "we need to protect you or some one from you" attitude can go along ways into stealing privacy and rites.

Re:User fees are the way to go

[Alioth]

Firstly, the vast majority of the traffic is not actually big-jet-commercial (they are just more visible because they are bigger and make an awful lot more noise). Not all commercial planes are 'tracked' either. Those flights around the Grand Canyon are below radar coverage, pipeline patrol is generally VFR and outside of radar coverage, helicopter flights taking workers to platforms in the Gulf of Mexico usually aren't talking to anyone either. There are also still areas (albeit limited) that passenger flights are out of radar coverage, for example, during the approach phase for the commuter airliners going into somewhere like Victoria Regional in Texas which doesn't even have a control tower.

Where airliners are getting radar cover, it's hardly tracking to the meter either - the radar just isn't that accurate. The radar also relies on the airliner's transponder returns for altitude which is only accurate within 100 feet at best.

I'm not worried...

[Propagandhi]

This just means my car will get a tin foil hat, too...

Re:I'm not worried...

[Bananatree3]

Ahhh, you haven't heard about the proof against tinfoil hats' effectiveness, have you?

Re:I'm not worried...

[Hrodvitnir]

I would actually like to see something like this implimented, for traffic and road maintenance reasons, but only under the condition that my GPS ID can never be traced to me or my car.

Re:I'm not worried...

[gregory_may]

I would actually be interested in not just a Hat, but a Hack to reposition my car driving round the block at off peek hours. The Hack needs to watch were I really drive and keep my car positioned in the Garage. Then at night, send out signals to make my odmiter match the GPS log (Driving on the cheapest streets possible ... gravil or dirt), then I get the best tax break possible ... or maybe even tax credits for blazing new roads to and from China. Sound like an open source project?

Sounds good

[Brantano]

This is a great idea, it would help with drunk drivers, crimes, and speeding. If you dont have anything to hide you really shouldnt be against it. This would definetly be great for the police who are trying to track a stolen car or track down someone who has just murdered someone. The possibilities are limitless.

Re:Sounds good

[miskatonic alumnus]

Why stop there? I'd be willing to pay more taxes so that the government could install surveillance cameras in every room of every citizen's home. It would help with illegal drug usage, private gambling, prostitution, wife-beating, child molestation, and a whole host of other problems. If you don't have anything to hide you really shouldn't be against it. The possibilities are limitless.

Re:Sounds good

[Propagandhi]

The possibilities are limitless.

They are, and that's what makes some of us nervous.

If you dont have anything to hide you really shouldnt be against it.

But most of us do have something to hide. As it stands now almost all of us are criminals in our own way (whether it's 'forgetting' to pay all of our taxes, smoking a little pot, or cruising at 5 over) and I, for one, don't mind that one bit.

A government which observes its populace's every move is the ultimate nanny state... /.er's complain about the death of personal responsibility every time there's a stupid lawsuit, how is this any different? Either way, citizens are expecting someone else to prevent them from exercising their free will.

Re:Sounds good

[miskatonic alumnus]

Also, there's a big difference between tracking you when you're in a public space (like a road) and installing a camera into your home so policemen can watch you jack off.

And there's my beef: the slippery slope. If we let this fly, watch the "big difference" between them disappear. It isn't anyone's GOD DAMNED business when and where I go. I like to keep it that way.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I don't need Joe, my police officer neighbor, knowing everything I do and everywhere I go?

"You have nothing to hide, so this is good" is NO EXCUSE FOR THIS KIND OF BULLSHIT.

Im not a terrorist. But I don't support anal cavity checks at the airport. Hmmm.... I have nothing to hide in my anal cavity... Maybe I should be a big fan of that too?

Re:Sounds good

[Daverd]

Also, there's a big difference between tracking you when you're in a public space (like a road) and installing a camera into your home so policemen can watch you jack off.

There are lots of places you can drive that aren't public. I own my driveway, for example. Any given parking lot is probably privately owned. What if you drive to Canada, or Mexico? A lot of ships will even let you bring your car along with you if you travel overseas. Is it ethical for your government to track you even if you're in a different country? Surveillance along public roads is one thing, if the surveillance was attached to the road, and not to your car (that you own), although I would have a whole separate set of reasons why that's a bad idea too.

Re:Sounds good

[Vellmont]

If you dont have anything to hide you really shouldnt be against it.


Yup.. because the federal government *cough-McCarthyism-cough* has such a great *cough-Watergate-cough* history *cough-Guantanamo Bay-cough* of not abusing it's *cough-Japanese internment-cough* power..

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

"Instead of posting rhetoric why don't you say what your problem with this system actually is?"

His "rhetoric" as you put it, is the same "rhetoric" the OP used to justify his support:
"This is a great idea, it would help with drunk drivers, crimes, and speeding. If you dont have anything to hide you really shouldnt be against it."

Why is it okay to "argue" like this in favor of big brother, but not flip it on it's head against big brother?

You and the rest of the pro-big brother crowd are fools. You have no concept of where this is all heading. You think governments are a bunch of selfless public servants only looking out for our good. If you didn't think such a naive stupid thing, you wouldn't argue for this.

9/11 happened, and what was the result? We passed the patriot act which would not have stopped 9/11. This is a government that views us a threat and because of that, any sane and rational person who has any love of freedom needs to recognize that they are a threat to our freedom and individual autonomy.

You want a non-rhetoric reason for why this shouldn't pass? I'll give you one, though I think the OP hit a homer with his reply... I don't want to live in a god damned police state where my every move can be tracked. It isn't because I have something to hide, it's because I'm not a fucking inmate in a prison. I haven't violated any laws that should require me to be under surveillance all the time. That's bullshit. I don't want to be under surveilance. We have better technologies to deal with car theft, drunk drivers, and speeding, that don't require putting us all under defacto surveilance.

Why aren't the other options explored? For the same reason we got the patriot act in response to 9/11, instead of secured borders... POWER.

Re:Sounds good

[aussie_a]

You think governments are a bunch of selfless public servants only looking out for our good.

You know who the government is? You! And the second you stop caring about what your government is up to, is the second you stop being part of the government. I'm seeing people complain about lots of different things. None of them really have that much to do with monitoring where your car is, and more to do with lots of other bad issues. Instead of attacking this one particular issue, why not address what your real problem is. Why don't you want to be monitored? Because of crooked cops? Then your problem is with the crooked cops, not with being monitored. Because your government might send you to guantanamo bay? What are you doing to protect your fellow citizens from getting sent there?

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Just FYI, but most police officers I know, and I know quite a few being a pizza delivery driver in the area, don't mind you 'speeding' up to around 10 over the limit. Usually they won't bother you too much unless traffic is heavy or you are not maintaining a steady speed.

In other words, the speed limit is meant to keep you safe. If you look like you are not driving safe for yourself or others, it doesn't matter how fast you are going... they will pull you over. If you have questions with this, find a cop and talk to them about it. 5 over is really no big deal unless you pass through some three-house town that gets it's revenue from traffic tickets. I know there are anal cops out there too... really, I know.

I don't see how different this would be from tracking someone through the current GPS in Onstar or the GPS found in some mobile phones. I think this is making widespread the power that the government already has.

I don't have a problem with this, but I do see a 'need' to restrict the govt. in some way as well. Perhaps a court order to constantly track someone... or at least probable cause of some kind, like the kind the Police need to pull you over.

Just because they are 'checking in on you' doesn't mean you aren't responsible for what you are doing. You just feel nervous about the certainty of being caught, not the penalties. Look up the panopticon to see this as behavoral control. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon ...If you're being watched, you will most likely not 'break the law' regardless of consequence.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of posting rhetoric why don't you say what your problem with this system actually is?

What rhetoric? If you have nothing to hide in your bedroom, then why in the world would you object to me placing a camera there? Answer the question, citizen.

Re:Sounds good

[tekrat]

You know who the government is? You!

No it is not. The government is a bunch of rich white people who were elected by corporations. There are no "common people" in government anymore, and there have not been for quite some time. Does Tom Delay really care about the common citizen or his next big fat corporate check that he can money launder into his pocket? The government is about POWER, not about people.

The current administration has been way more blatent about their theft of government money than any previous administration. They are also less apologetic about it as well. They steal, lie and then are arrogant about it as well. In the meantime, they distract us with the Iraq War and debates about gay marriage while they plunder us.

Sure, you can believe that the government is *you*. Just try running for office one day and see how hard it is to become part of the ruling class. Unless you're a member of the skull and bones, you're never going to be accepted nor will you ever get a foot in the door. And unless you start accepting brides and become corrupted and essentially are "bought" by lobbiests and corporations who will control you forever like a puppet, you're never going to get the money to win an election.

Just where did you ever get the idea that the government was for the people, of the people and by the people? And you bought that crap? Man...

Re:Sounds good

[publius_jr]

Also, there's a big difference between tracking you when you're in a public space (like a road) and installing a camera into your home so policemen can watch you jack off.

What's to stop the government from seizing all space as theirs, via their recently expanded eminent domain powers? Couldn't they make the case that it's in the public welfare to monitor all the space all the time? They could even 'lease' it right back to us so that everything would be as before, except the government could legally monitor you 'jacking off'.

Re:Sounds good

[photon317]

But those same cops would probably all be glad to bust your ass for smoking pot at home on a your day off and not bothering anyone. Even if in some fantasy-land the vast majority of all policemen suddently became reasonable, honest enforcers of American law (which means constitutional laws - a great number of current federal, state, and local laws are blatantly unconstitutional these days) that really matter, is that a good reason to put so much power in the hands of the government? Can you reliably predict that the next generation of policemen or politicians will be so nice? You can't, so you're rolling the dice with the fate of the world your children will live in.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is what it's supposed to be about. If you're not directly infringing on someone else's ability to live a free and happy life of their own, there should be no law against anything one chooses to own or do. I'd paste a bunch of quotes from the authors of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, the founders of this nation, that back this up, but you know, if you're reading this, either you're of a violently different opinion and could care less, or you can google it your damn self, because my paste key is all worn out. Anti-gun laws? Unconstitutional. Anti-drug laws? Unconstitutional. Standing Army in times of Peace? Unconstitutional. The Constitution doesn't say anything about speeding in a car of course, but I feel that speeding laws are certainly against the spirit of the Constitution. The prosecution of a victimless crime on the premise that a certain behavior is stastically likely to lead to a real crime with a victim is unconstitutional. It's the early shades of the Pre-Crime stuff that PKD predicted, that we all saw in Minority Report on the tube. Stop it before it gets out of hand.

Re:Sounds good

[QuantumLeaper]

I wouldn't call it rhetoric. Benjamin Franklin - They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security...

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

You know who the government is?

Yes. The Halliburton corporation, Gilead corporation, the oil industry, the weapons industry, the christian religion industry, and many others who grease the palms of power. That's who the government is right now.

None of them really have that much to do with monitoring where your car is, and more to do with lots of other bad issues.

No, they tie in. But you're intentionally putting blinders on in order to "win" the debate. Either that or you're a sucker. Ones born a minute, you might be the one.

I gave you a valid complaint. You have no right to put me under surveillance unless you suspect me of a crime. I'm married with children, I don't have a girlfriend to cut up, and I would kill anyone, including myself, if anyone ever laid a hand on my wife or god help them, my kids. So don't give me that shit about having something to hide. I don't do drugs, I don't drink and drive, and make it a point to drive the speed limit, though I find myself speeding in some areas with jacked speed signs. I have nothing to hide, so your argument is bullshit.

I don't want to be watched, I don't want to be tracked. If you think I'm doing something wrong, then you go to a judge and make your case with a judge. If he agrees that there is a good reason to put me under surveillance, then fine, put me under surveillance then. But not a SECOND before. That's the way I want it. If I'm the government, as you assert, then why do you have a problem with that?

What are you doing to protect your fellow citizens from getting sent there?

Not that it's any of your god damned business, but...
1) Speaking out.
2) I've written letters.
3) I do NOT vote either democrat or republican, BUT I DO VOTE.
4) I've contributed substantial(for me) sums of money to independent and third party candidates I believe would best represent me. I don't play that "lesser of two evils" retard game.
5) Flaming big brother lovers like you whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Another poster brought up "white". If that poster reads this, please don't go there. This isn't about race. Is Condi white? Was Powell white? This is equal opportunity corruption and you can be a part of it too if you don't mind selling out the rights of yourself and your fellow man. I am white, and you know what? I'm "upper class" by most economic standards. But I came up poor and worked my way here, and I didn't sell out. I am free and I intend to stay that way. Stop bringing race into this. It is divisive and really, I'm on anyones side who is for civil liberties. Period. I'm not even married to a "white" person.

That blaming "white" people shit has to stop if we're going to win the fight against the corruption that has infected our government. Because really, "white" people are PEOPLE too, and SURPRISE, the "white" guy in the street doesn't want a corrupt government either.

Re:Sounds good

[sumdumass]

I don't have a problem with crooked cops as much as i have a problem with enabling them. People are dishonest be nature. Sometimes they don't even know it. A kid picks an apple from the tree down the road realy just stole the apple form the owner of the tree if he didn't get permision first. How many times has somethign like this happened. People by nature look out for themselves.

A crooked cop is like a crooked citizen. If you keep the doors locked they have alot of incentive to not break into your house. If you keep them unlocked, most of that incentive is gone. Granted lock usualy only keep honest people out but at the same time they keep people honest. I know a kid who to the neibors bicycle and road it across town with the intention of bringing it right back unharmed. He only did it because it was there and it beat walking. If the bike was locked up he wouldn't of barrowed it. He never made it back because the bike was reported stolen and he was picked up on it two blocks away from returning it. He now has a police record and is labeled a thief in the comunity. He wasn't even thinking he was tealing it, just barrowing it. If it was locked up or put away, it would never have happened.

Cops are the same way. They are honest as long as the temptation isn't there. Once it is availible, more and more will become crooked or misuse thier public trust. It would be impossible to do otherwise. I know better. I even know of an example were people will cheat on tests if the answer are redily availible. It has been proven, when somethign becomes easy, the esy path will be taken.

Re:Sounds good

[Maxo-Texas]

Hell yes.
I think there should be constant audio and video survellence both inside and outside your car (put a camera on each seat) as well as a monitor on your speedometer- if you happen to go 1mph over the speed limit .. or more than 10mph below it then automatically send you a small ticket. If you are talking on the cell phone while the car is in motion- send you a ticket. If you forget to buckle up before the car is put in gear send you a ticket. If you engage in carnal acts in the car- well that's basically a public place (I mean you are doing them on camera!) so you should probably be arrested- you know I'm sure there are still many states where oral sex is still considered sodomy and illegal (and if not now .. perhaps in a few years when the baby boomers start to get too old to enjoy sex).

Why stop with the car? You should have total surveillance at work (I mean if you are doing your job, you have nothing to fear right?) as well as in the house in case you show terrorist tendencies they can backtrack all your contacts.

In fact, every time you meet or talk to someone, it should send record that fact so they can backtrack all your contacts in case you later do something bad. You shouldn't have any problem with this unless you are doing something bad of course.

Wow- we could eliminate all crime if we just put people into 10'x10' rooms under constant supervision and surveillance! It's a good idea since we know that people are going to eat and drink unhealthily and get sick on OUR DIME. Since we have to pay for their illness we should have complete control of them (and they of us!)

Re:Sounds good

[Belseth]

If you have nothing to hide how about the next logical step. You shouldn't have any problem with no court order reading of mail, e-mail and regular, phone taps and cameras in your house tied to the local police department. I mean it's not like you have anything to hide? It's called privacy and it's it's in the constitution, for the moment anyway. Unreasonable search and seizure means you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I'm sick of everyone trying to give away my rights because some sleazy government official says you'll be safer if you give up just one more right. We gave up a lot for the so called Patriot Act and yet the government just got a failing grade on what has been done to avoid terrorism. Since little has been done to stop it we are at a far greater risk than before 9/11 since now we are viewed as the evil empire by much of the world including parts of Europe. Hey we didn't need those pesky rights anyway. Hey more criminals will be caught because we can trace their cars. Guess what, more innocent people will be questioned and accused because they happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. What was your car doing parked outside a murder scene at 9pm? Across the street getting ice cream, likely story. Can't happen? I got pulled over for driving past the scene of a crime. The excuse was I was driving too fast but that wasn't possible since the street was a washboard and we all had to crawl down it or trash our suspensions. It was an excuse to search and detain a vehicle. If I had happened to be parked there when it happened and they traced it I would have likely gotten a night in jail with a bright light in my face. We are over regulated and under the microscope as it is. If you use a credit card they can already tell where you had breakfast and filled the car as well as where you did your Christmas shopping and how often you bought your wife flowers. The government doesn't own us we own the goovernment and it's damn well time we reminded them of that fact.

Re:Sounds good

[staev]

I'll never understand why people who state that they're 'not guilty of anything' don't realize that authority can stop you for anything from mopery through treason on a whim or substandard evidence. Why make it any easier for them?

Re:Sounds good

[Meadlin]

The problem with that statement is that it is possible to require devices to be installed in vehicles, at least in California. This is because it is a PRIVILAGE to drive NOT a right. If one wants to maintain their privilage to drive on California roadways, they must comply with the requirements.

However, one has the right to be secure in there person and property, so devices like this cannot be required to be installed in ones' home without a court order.

Re:Sounds good

[ultranova]

Standing Army in times of Peace? Unconstitutional.

To be fair, you aren't at peace. You are fighting a War on Terror, remember ? And before that, a War on Drugs. And the Cold War, World Wars, indian wars, Civil War, more indian wars and finally Independence War. And Korean war, Vietnam war, Iraq wars...

Face it, the US is always at war against someone or something. There is no "times of Peace" for your country.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

The government is a bunch of rich white people who were elected by corporations. There are no "common people" in government

You've shattered my image ... I was sure I was common.

Re:Sounds good

[matth]

And there's my beef: the slippery slope. If we let this fly, watch the "big difference" between them disappear. It isn't anyone's GOD DAMNED business when and where I go. I like to keep it that way.

Really? Then why are you using public roads? You pretty much pay a road usage fee each year to the DMV. By using their roads you agree to abide by their rules.. just like if you were at my house, you agree to abide by my rules for my house, or I can put you out. Nothing prohibits you from making your own roads and doing whatever the heck you please on them at whatever speeds you like.

My wife's hunting cabin has miles of roads that are private roads up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. No police enforce speed limits up there or pull you over for having "un-inspected" vehicles.... infact there are several camp owned vehicles which are not road worthy/inspected by the state, but are used up there to get around, because they still run.

Re:Sounds good

[PrescriptionWarning]

I think it would just be easier to take the control of the car away from the driver, like in minority report. of course then they'd just bombard you with personalized ads from the moment you step into the car to the moment you get out :(

Re:Sounds good

[uncmathguy]

By the way, it sounds like you have a beef with the fact some things are illegal in your state (I'm going to hope the beef is with private gambling and NOT child molestation). Your problem shouldn't be with the laws being enforced, but the laws themselves.

This is exactly the point! There are some unjust laws. Always have been, and what's worse, there always will be. So if we allow complete surveillance of our lives by those who make the laws, there is potential for those lawmakers to make any law they desire. And once the law is made, there would be no way of changing it. Even if you don't believe that the government of today is corrupt (and I would agree with you), there is no reason to believe that government will never be so.

Re:Sounds good

[miskatonic alumnus]

However, one has the right to be secure in there person and property, so devices like this cannot be required to be installed in ones' home without a court order.

And no one would EVER dream of changing the law so as to require the installation of cameras in your home, right? I mean, our government representatives are the GOOD GUYS. Aren't they?

Answer me this --- Just who would be in charge of monitoring this data? Would it be farmed out to some corporation, who could serve advertisements? Or maybe a terrorist/serial killer/psychopath could get access to this data and track his targets. Yeah. The possibilities are endless. This is a bad, bad, bad idea.

Re:Sounds good

[miskatonic alumnus]

By using their roads you agree to abide by their rules.

Excuse me ... whose roads? Oh, the roads the taxpayers (myself included) paid for (and continue to pay for).

Nothing prohibits you from making your own roads and doing whatever the heck you please on them at whatever speeds you like.

Oh, like murdering people on them, or driving on them at high speed from a bank robbery. Yup. Why I could just pull over on MY ROAD and stick my tongue out at the law man. Get real.

If you aren't trolling, and want to see some ligitimate arguments against this government intrusion, read a little further down the thread.

Re:Sounds good

[anopres]

It would probably be outsourced to companies in India, Pakistan, Mexico or China where the monitoring dollar goes much further.

Re:Sounds good

[Aumaden]

Ah ha! I get it! You want to breed a smarter humanity! Just add a camera in the bedroom (basically a public place (I mean you are doing them on camera!) ) and arrest anyone who is not bright enough to hack the video feed. Very clever!

Re:Sounds good

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

How the hell did this get modded Insightful?

Here in America, we have something called the "burden of proof." Because of this principle, the government cannot restrict our rights until it has been proven that we have done something wrong. Because I have a Constitutional right to privacy, according to the United States Supreme Court, I will allow this sort of police-state only over my cold, dead body, and so should you.

Unless, of course, the "utopiae" in fiction such as Brazil and 1984 appeal to you.

Re:Sounds good

[matth]

I'm neither trolling, nor do I want to see an argument.

By running away from a bank robbery, or committing a murder you are doing something illegal... but it has nothing to do with your private road! You are doing something that is illegal regardless if you are on a road or not.

My point is you can drive unlicensed vehicles at any speed you'd like on your private road... OBVIOUSLY if you kill someone at that speed you may be responsible for it... however until you do something illegal you are within your bounds to do whatever you'd like on your private roads.

Oh yeah.. those taxes? You pay those for the rights to drive on the road... in fact I just got done paying $60.00 worth of road rental fees for this years driving rights.

Re:Sounds good

[Pollardito]

By using their roads you agree to abide by their rules.

Excuse me ... whose roads? Oh, the roads the taxpayers (myself included) paid for (and continue to pay for).

not the first person to forget that the "they" implied in "their [stuff]" is really "us" when we're talking about the government

Re:Sounds good

[mpe]

Why stop there? I'd be willing to pay more taxes so that the government could install surveillance cameras in every room of every citizen's home.

Do you really think they'd do this in everyone's?
No doubt that those which a certain Mr Twain implied might be America's criminal class would live in camera free homes...

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Another poster brought up "white". If that poster reads this, please don't go there. This isn't about race. Is Condi white? Was Powell white? This is equal opportunity corruption and you can be a part of it too if you don't mind selling out the rights of yourself and your fellow man.

Ditto gender not being of much relevent.

Re:Sounds good

[android32]

oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

The purpose of the war is not a means to an end, it is the end in itself. the ruling class wages war on its own subjects, and its goal, is not the annihilation of the enemy, but to keep the very structure of its society in tact.

- a libertarian socialist named George Orwell

Re:Sounds good

[halltk1983]

Yeah, but so do the bribes...

Re:Sounds good

[Shakrai]

Anti-gun laws? Unconstitutional

Depends on your definition of 'militia' and 'well regulated'. Disclaimer: I'm a bleeding heart liberal and I'm still against most gun laws for the simple fact that criminals will always get them anyway. I'm not against sane laws like background checks or hunter safety courses -- just laws that restrict your rights to possess firearms if you are a law abiding citizen.

Anti-drug laws? Unconstitutional.

They make the argument under the interstate commerce clause. Of course I don't see how that gives them the right to arrest somebody for growing pot for their own personal use. I hate the war on drugs.

Standing Army in times of Peace? Unconstitutional.

Where do you get that? I agree with your other two points -- but this one? What passage of the Constitution prohibits a standing army? The United States has always stand a standing Army and Navy -- though not to the degree that they exist now.

The Constitution doesn't say anything about speeding in a car of course, but I feel that speeding laws are certainly against the spirit of the Constitution.

Speeding laws exist for the public safety. I don't think the Founding Fathers meant "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to mean that you could drive your Corvette through a school zone at 85mph while the buses are loading. If you want to talk about bullshit laws against victimless crime then maybe you should point out seat belt laws. They make sense for kids (they can't legally consent to give up their rights) but adults? C'mon!

The only reason seat belt laws exist is because the insurance industry wants them. Perhaps they should abolished as unconstitutional and the insurance companies should just have the right to refuse to pay if you weren't wearing one and the accident was your fault. Of course you could probably also make the argument that seat belt laws (like speeding and other traffic laws) fall under the 10th amendment and are "reserved to the states" to decide.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't want to live in a god damned police state where my every move can be tracked."

Do you own a cell phone? Do you take it with you where ever you go?

If so, your moves are constantly being tracked right this very minute. Not just where your car goes, where your body goes. Through this technology "They" can tell who you talk to and even listen in if They want. Consistent physical proximity of two or more cell phones can reveal hidden relationships.

Re:Sounds good

[SacredNaCl]

I'm going to tell you what socialism really is. Its a chance to put a hell of a lot of public money in a pot to give to corporates and cronies. The goals always sound great, free health care for all, free education for all, free ...whatever.. until you realize where the money comes from and feel the lightness of ones wallet. Then you watch how it is distributed.

In this case they are using "fair taxation" and "public safety" as the "feel good fuzzie wuzzie fluffy bunny". Behind that fluffy wuffie lies the truth, more money into the government coffers = less in your back pocket, more people "in the system" = more money in state coffers. This will do both of those.

In my state, the tax rate isn't that bad, about 6%, if you make $40,000 a year you pay a little over $2,400 in state taxes, and probably a grand total of $5,800 by the time you pay property and vehicle taxes (a small amount more if you have a nicer home than I). If the state puts you in prison, it gets $40,080 from the federal government to keep you there. You are worth 6.9 times as much to them in prison as you are just going about your business paying taxes. This is part of why the prison industrial complex is the fastest growing segment of the economy. Not to mention that (like China) it can make extra money selling your labor in prison to other companies, while it pays you only a few pennies for it. They even used to sell prisoners blood/plasma for profit, but because of AIDS/Hep were forced to cease. Blood cow for the state indeed. You are worth more to them in the system than out of it. The same is also true of our foster care system, it has incentives to seize as many children as possible - it pays. Just as it pays to set child support amounts ever higher - there are matching dollars for every dollar collected.

This thought ought to put a chill down your spine. You are worth more to them incarcerated or otherwise in the system than being a productive member of society. When the incentives are such, what do you think they will do? In Europe their socialism only keeps you poor and provides you with a few services while trying to keep you out of it. In ours, the socialism takes the most punitive form, a custodial blood cow.

Re:Sounds good

[tricorn]

A kid picks an apple from the tree down the road realy just stole the apple form the owner of the tree if he didn't get permision first.

That's not strictly true. Some/many/most (?) places have laws regarding fruit trees growing over public right-of-way - that it is, in fact, ok to pick fruit from such trees.

Re:Sounds good

[Solitude]

In my state, the tax rate isn't that bad, about 6%, if you make $40,000 a year you pay a little over $2,400 in state taxes, and probably a grand total of $5,800 by the time you pay property and vehicle taxes (a small amount more if you have a nicer home than I). If the state puts you in prison, it gets $40,080 from the federal government to keep you there. You are worth 6.9 times as much to them in prison as you are just going about your business paying taxes.
----------

Damn dude if only I had mod points. I was just having a discussion this weekend about prisons and I never thought of this angle. That is some scary stuff there.

Re:Sounds good

[GuyverDH]

Until you are the one under constant surveilance.

Then you'll cry "foul" and raise holy hell.

**Rant**
**Soapbox**
The problem isn't that we don't have ways to prevent (or reduce) most of these problems already.
The problem is that our society has grown too lax in prosecution of the existing laws.
I mean come on folks. 3 Strikes to get locked away for life?

Someone who rapes someone should be locked away for life.
Someone who beats or sexually abuses children should be locked away for life.
Someone who drinks and drives, should have their license revoked for life, and their vehicle crushed and deposited on their front lawn. (as long as there wasn't an accident involved) If there was an accident, and someone was killed, then life in prison, no chance of early out.

Now, any of these people who are given life sentences, will now, no longer be eligible for training, classes or re-education. What's the point? They'll never leave prison. Give them no priveleges.
No books, no TV, no work-out time.

They get put to work, and the income produced from their labor is used to pay for their keep, and anything left over sent to the victim, or the victim's family(ies).

Now, will these types of enforcements cause a swell in prison populations?
Only initially. Once the idiots realize that they'll never get to leave, or never get to drive, they'll stop. The remainder would be considered to be *sick* individuals and society would be better off with them locked up and forgotten.
**Soapbox**
**Rant**

Of course, you're not tracking the driver .....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the car. How can anyone object if they have nothing to hide? And, for the record, I would just like to welcome our new, all-surveying, masters ....

Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. People need to start seriously questioning the goverment's authority. This stuff is getting out of hand and it's going to get worse if people remain complacent.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life
  Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
  I don't want to spend the rest of my days
  Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

  I don't want to spend my time in Hell
  Looking at the walls of a prison cell
  I don't ever wanna play the part
  Of a statistic on a government chart

I only got one thing to say about that...

[SealBeater]

Here

SealBeater

Re:I only got one thing to say about that...

[ZachPruckowski]

Every criminal is going to know how to jam it. And a smart criminal will figure out how to change it, and screw with the codes. That'd make it so easy to frame anyone you want. Cars with the devices disabled/reconfigured/removed will be available on the black market. I'm sure there are plenty of mechanics (not that I'm dissing the profession in any way) who'd prolly love to supplement their income with a few quick "house-call" repair jobs.

Re:I only got one thing to say about that...

[User 956]

I'm sure there are plenty of mechanics (not that I'm dissing the profession in any way) who'd prolly love to supplement their income with a few quick "house-call" repair jobs.

Dude, I'm hearing you. It's easy enough to find a mechanic who will "fix" the SMOG test. Imagine how easy it will be for criminals to circumvent this GPS tracking.

The only people this will hurt is law-abiding citizens. Criminals will get around it.

Re:I only got one thing to say about that...

[atriusofbricia]

New law screws over the honest citizen, criminals unaffected!

Film at 11!

Re:I only got one thing to say about that...

[mpe]

Every criminal is going to know how to jam it. And a smart criminal will figure out how to change it, and screw with the codes. That'd make it so easy to frame anyone you want.

Or to use the system to help with crimes. e.g. tracking police cars, blackmailing people for beng places they shouldn't, making sure that someone delivering a ransom dosn't stop off at a police station, etc.
Being able to tract people is something highly useful to criminals. It's also a virtual impossibility to keep criminals out of such a system.

Fees and Acceptance

[ZachPruckowski]

mileage-based road user fees.

Didn't we pay taxes to build the roads in the first place? Will these fees be accompanied by the reduction of taxes, since they are getting transportation funding elsewhere?

This could be useful in figuring out which roads need expansion, and it could help with traffic routing. Imagine the effect on stoplights. They'll know which way has the biggest backup, etc. Of course, they could do most of this non-invasively.

Of course, this'll be touted as an anti-theft thing or something, and everyone will jump all over it.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[scsirob]

Will these fees be accompanied by the reduction of taxes, since they are getting transportation funding elsewhere?

Yes, there will be a reduction in taxes. Unfortunately the politicians always have a way to translate a reduction into "less increase"..

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[FatRatBastard]

Didn't we pay taxes to build the roads in the first place?

Yes we do. In fact, we already pay a pretty damn effective "milage based" / SUV tax. Its called a gas tax. The more you drive, the more you pay. The bigger the gas guzzler, the more you pay. The "milage based road user fee" is a warm and fuzzy way of saying "we're going to tax you fot the same thing twice."

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[way2trivial]

yea, and in 50-30-10 years- when their is insufficient oil to power cars? and 50% of the population gives up driving, and the other 50% start driving electric vehicles? how to tax the electricity consumption? maybe the gubermint is just getting ready for the next phase.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[spauldo]

They have tools for figuring out what roads need expansion and how to route traffic. You've probably seen them - they're these little black wires attached to a box chained to a random road sign. They'll stay there for a couple days and then be gone.

Those count how many cars roll over them. They're not 100% accurate, but they don't need to be - you're looking for a ballpark figure anyway. You can have someone check the box at certain intervals to see how traffic varies during different times of the day. Best of all - your privacy is perfectly safe - it can't tell the difference between your tires and anyone elses, unless you drive with sawblades on your hubs.

Of course, then there's little shits like I was when I was a kid, bouncing a bicycle tire on the thing. Dunno if it actually counted it, but I did notice they reworked the street a few months later...

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[sumdumass]

All they have to do is mandate a meter be placed at the charging recepticle. Figure the amount of energy being used per mile and then charge it as a tax on the electric bill. Comercial charging stations will already have this stuff in place. Going green right now should have a tax break. There aren't enough electric or alternative fuel cars on the road to make a dent in the current amount of road use taxes colected.

They do this already in some places for cars that run on LP or natural gas.

One thing this will do however, is let the consumer know how much they actualy pay in road taxes. This will incite citizens to not put up with the lack of care and maintinance given to the roads currently. It will also make it more dificult if not impossible to funnel monay awy from the raod funds like they currently do.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[way2trivial]

and the folks who recharge at home- always-- like the diesel owners who use home heating fuel in their cars?

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[sumdumass]

Well, first, they need a special adapter to plug into for the charge. They could pace the device in this and require it to be read regularly.

How many people actualy use karosene as diesel fuel? I would say it is so minor it is pathetic. Also the newer desiel motors will not run corectly without the extra phosporus in the desiel (it acts as a lubricant). In other words, manufactuers have already solve that problem. Besides, the amount of milage a desiel get would raise the interest of regulatory parties. They alread mandates short fuel hoses with blockes at the pumps so you couldn't reach the nozel into a vehicles fuel tank.

I would bet the amount of people cheating on diesel fuel would only be cheating a fraction of taxes compared to the cost of this system. In other words, The money expended would be greater then the money saved by colecting the actual tax. That seem just iresponcible.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[FireFury03]

Didn't we pay taxes to build the roads in the first place? Will these fees be accompanied by the reduction of taxes, since they are getting transportation funding elsewhere?

A similar system has been proposed here in the UK - the government wanted to reduce fuel tax and use GPS tracking to charge per mile instead. Which is a plain stupid idea since fuel tax effectively charges per mile, plus:
1. Discourages use of inefficient vehicles
2. Doesn't require a vast tracking infrastructure costing vast amounts of money
3. Doesn't have any legal or civil rights implications to do with tracking people's whereabouts.

Of course, the US government can't get away with a huge tax on fuel because there is outcry from the Americans if it costs more than $10 to fill their huge SUVs. (I currently pay about 89 pence per litre of unleaded).

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[mpe]

They have tools for figuring out what roads need expansion and how to route traffic. You've probably seen them - they're these little black wires
Or sealed rubber tubes
attached to a box chained to a random road sign. They'll stay there for a couple days and then be gone.
Those count how many cars roll over them. They're not 100% accurate, but they don't need to be - you're looking for a ballpark figure anyway.

If the sensors are hooked up to something more sophisticated than just a counter it's possible to gather approximate data on speed and traffic density according to time.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[kalel666]

Of course, the US government can't get away with a huge tax on fuel because there is outcry from the Americans if it costs more than $10 to fill their huge SUVs. (I currently pay about 89 pence per litre of unleaded)

You'd think so, wouldn't you? The facts speak otherwise:

From 1977 to 2004, federal and state gas tax collections have totaled more than $1.34 trillion, the report said - more than twice domestic oil industry profits during that time ($643 billion).

Or:

"in recent decades governments have collected far more revenue from gasoline taxes than the largest U.S. oil companies have collectively earned in domestic profits." In fact, "since 1977, there have been only three years (1980, 1981, and 1982) in which domestic oil industry profits exceeded government gas tax collections."
(source: http://www.freemarketproject.org/news/2005/news200 51102.asp)

Keep in mind also that this does not include federal taxes on those companies profits! Remember that next time you fill up and curse the oil companies for their "obscene profits".

Granted, you're right and wrong. There is very little outcry from Americans about this, but the government does put a huge tax on our gas.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[mpe]

and the folks who recharge at home- always-- like the diesel owners who use home heating fuel in their cars?

If they get caught they are likely to have to pay both an estimate of the tax they have evaded plus a fine. The latter probably being partly used to fund a bounty to encourage tip offs.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[FireFury03]

There is very little outcry from Americans about this, but the government does put a huge tax on our gas.

I keep hearing Americans whinge about the extortionate fuel prices and that they can't afford to fill up their cars, and yet fuel prices in the US are a _fraction_ of the price of fuel in Europe.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[dptalia]

One problem with the current transportation taxes is that they're levied on gallons of gasoline. As more fuel efficent cars and hybrids take off, governments are losing their gas tax money. California is actually looking at having some sort of device put into cars that records how many miles you drive and then charges you for those miles every time you gas up... Since fuel efficient cars are "cheating" the government.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[leonardluen]

darn right! that is the way it should be! heck it should be even cheaper than it is!

you should be appalled that you let your greedy govts in europe beat you over the head with the tax club every time you fill up your tank.

americans hate taxes...we went to war with england over taxes. damn right we aren't going to let any tax go on our gas without complaining

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[Pragmatix]

You don't need anything in your car to do this kind of analysis. Road-side sensors can tell you about traffic volume and flow.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[Rude Turnip]

What an utter load of horseshit.

Gas taxes are a revenue figure. "Oil industry profits" are just that...profit, which is equal to revenue less expenses. Oil industry revenue would be the proper figure to look at...which are obviously more than the tax revenue. TFA loses all credibility in my view on that quote alone and appears to be a shill piece for people that don't know the difference between revenue and profit.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[Ironsides]

All they have to do is mandate a meter be placed at the charging recepticle. Figure the amount of energy being used per mile and then charge it as a tax on the electric bill. Comercial charging stations will already have this stuff in place. Going green right now should have a tax break. There aren't enough electric or alternative fuel cars on the road to make a dent in the current amount of road use taxes colected.

Here's an easier way, but the one way it fails (probably not by much) is when people cross state lines. Have people report their odometer to the DMV. Take the distance between the last measure and the current. Bill based on miles traveled.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[Doctor Memory]

Actually, falling gas tax income is what spurred this development in Oregon. One of the state senators decided that people who drove fuel-efficient cars weren't "contributing" (read: being taxed) enough, so he dreamed up this scheme to supplement the gax tax.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people drawn a correlation between number of miles a person drives and the benefit they derive from the roads? There's a huge public interest in having all points connected by public roads, even if you never get in a car. Your food is shipped in from farms. Fedex/USPS/UPS bring you packages. Dodads are import/exported. Your municipality provides trash collection and other services (think emegency response). Rural children can be publically educated.

All of these things provide economic and standard-of-living improvements for you, even if you never get in a car. In fact, I would argue that this sort of shared, public benefit far outweighs the personal benefits derived by most people. Certainly some people and industries derive benfits more directly, but between our modern, diversified economy and the inherent value of maximizing the number of nodes on the network, the benefits are hardly isolated to heavy road users.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[smithmc]

  One problem with the current transportation taxes is that they're levied on gallons of gasoline. As more fuel efficent cars and hybrids take off, governments are losing their gas tax money. California is actually looking at having some sort of device put into cars that records how many miles you drive and then charges you for those miles every time you gas up... Since fuel efficient cars are "cheating" the government.

Why not just raise the tax rate to remain revenue-neutral? This has the added benefit of making the worst polluters pay an increasingly large share of the taxes.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[smithmc]

  I keep hearing Americans whinge about the extortionate fuel prices and that they can't afford to fill up their cars, and yet fuel prices in the US are a _fraction_ of the price of fuel in Europe.

What does the price of fuel in Europe (most of which is tax) have to do with the amount of tax we choose to levy here? If you want Europe, you know where to find it. This is not Europe.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[FireFury03]

My point was that if Americans complain _now_ despite the fuel being relatively cheap, there doesn't seem to be much chance of raising taxes on fuel without massive public outcry.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[mikerozh]

This could be useful in figuring out which roads need expansion, and it could help with traffic routing. Imagine the effect on stoplights. They'll know which way has the biggest backup, etc. Of course, they could do most of this non-invasively.

They do it today in many big cities by using regular cameras on big intersections that often have traffic problems. They look which was has more backup and allocate more time to it. However it does not solve the general traffic problem as there are more cars than roads.

So I don't think that this GPS thing will help traffic problems.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[japhmi]

My point was that if Americans complain _now_ despite the fuel being relatively cheap, there doesn't seem to be much chance of raising taxes on fuel without massive public outcry.

There isn't much chance of raising it much.

However, a town nearby recently added a $.03/gallon increase without a massive public outcry (of course, most gas stations raised their prices $.05 to compensate, and then blame 'the gas tax'). Sure, if someone tried to add a $1/gallon tax they would be run out of town, but gradual increases may go mostly unnoticed.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[aaronl]

Then you pay for roads the same way you do now. Most of your road maintanance is paid for from local revenues in municipal government. Taxes that you pay for gas and tolls don't tend to end up back with local govs. Gas tax goes partial to State and partial to Federal. Federal does no road maintanance. State maintains state and interstate roadways, many of which also have tolls. A combination of income tax, partial gas tax, and tolls pays for these roads. Also, the Federal gives some monies back to the States in return for doing what they are told.

If you wanted to maintain status quo, you could levy an additional tax on electrical consumption. The government is not getting ready for this "next phase" as you say, they are simply expanding their power to fill available space. If the citizens will allow them to monitor their vehicles at all times, the government will try to do so.

You are highly unlikely to get 50% of the population not driving some vehicle in the US. There is no infrastructure to allow that to function, and it would take much longer than 10 years to put such in place. I'd be surprised if it could be done in 30 years. The way that the country has developed does not lend to massive public transit networks. You would have to either build an unmanagable amount of infrastructure, which would require a whole lot of land takings, or you would have to attempt to get most people to live in and immediately around cities. Neither is likely to be workable.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[aaronl]

Americans complain because it's additional tax. We don't want to be Europe, in theory. Who cares if Americans are complaining about gas prices. You live in Europe, where you are taxes very heavily. We live in America, where we are taxed less heavily. We don't want to do it the European way, and so we whine, complain, and fight when the government tries to force such.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[TWX]

How about just leaving vehicle registration taxes like Arizona's in effect? Here, plates are based on vehicle worth, depreciated from the time the car was new something like 16% per year until down to $20. A new Escalade could cost a couple grand to put on plates, while that Hyundai Accent might only be $200 new to register.

This eliminates the entire problem of cost/miles when miles could be in different states, without having to track individual movements. If you don't like the tax, drive an older vehicle or cheaper one. If you try to pull a fast one by not registering your car in-state then you'll be cited and fined $500, plus the cost to register.

Enforcement is starting to go up against our seasonal "visitors" who move here for six months, let 'em get burned and have to register. They're the ones polluting our air every winter anyway.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[tricorn]

You still end up paying for it, in increased price of services that use the roads. Part of what you pay to Amazon goes to FedEx, which pays fuel taxes which pay for the roads, for example. Part of your cost of food is the cost of the fuel which got it to the store, and part of that is the tax which pays for the road.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[dptalia]

California has the same rules - registering you car can run up to a k or so, depending on which model you have. But that's not enough... Politicians spend money far faster than it comes in, so we need more revenue streams.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[dptalia]

Because gasoline taxes disproportionately hurt the poor and middle class. You know, the people who need to drive to work each day? The people who often are driving an older, gas guzzling car because they can't aford a hybrid? Upping the gas tax punishes them as well as people who choose to own Hummers.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[palndrumm]

That isn't necessarily a good idea for other reasons though - it encourages people to drive older cars which, apart from having lower fuel economy and higher emissions, are less likely to be as roadworthy, and don't have the safety features of modern cars, so you'll get more people suffering worse injuries in crashes, which puts more of a strain on hospitals and the like.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[smithmc]

  Because gasoline taxes disproportionately hurt the poor and middle class. You know, the people who need to drive to work each day? The people who often are driving an older, gas guzzling car because they can't aford a hybrid? Upping the gas tax punishes them as well as people who choose to own Hummers.

I don't know about you, but where I live (Long Island NY), people in the poorer classes tend to own small Japanese cars, like older Civics and Corollas and Sentras, not big old American-iron gas guzzlers. That is, if they own cars at all. As a group, they would probably be hurt less by a gas tax increase than any other socioeconomic segment.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[dptalia]

New York is one of the few exceptions in the US because it a actually has a public transportation system. And the working poor there make more than the working poor in other places. Now I have lived in several states and have found this to be true - the working poor normall have a car that's 10-20 year old and is not very fuel efficent. They also usually drive 30+ miles (more like 90+ in California) for work. A gas tax hurts them a lot more than it hurts me.

Re:Fees and Acceptance

[TWX]

Does it? There's no shortage of new cars on the road here, despite the levy on using them on public roads. The auto industry has historically done an impeccable job of convincing people that they need a new car every few years anyway, even if it would still be cheaper to repair and maintain their current one.

Powerplants in automobiles really haven't changed over the last 40 years compared to other industries' technological improvements. The Chrysler 318 was produced from 1967 to 2003 with only minor revisions. The physical block never changed, save for the lack of drilling out an oil galley when they switched to oiling through the rocker arm pushrod instead of oiling through the rocker shaft. The Chevrolet 305, 350, and 454 are still in production if memory serves, and those are staples of the '60s as well if again I'm thinking straight. If the federal government created evolving standards for increasing fuel economy and forced automakers to support their products by creating retrofit assemblies that would allow for me to put new, inexpensive better burn cylinder heads, ported fuel injection, and better post-combustion emissions lowering equipment that could fairly easily be installed on older vehicles then I don't think that it would be a problem. I'd love it if I could keep driving my '78 Chrysler Cordoba for another 20 years because an emissions-certified upgrade could be performed that would be easy to maintain and would provide power equivalent to the modern 360 engines used in Dodge trucks through 2003.

As for safety features, seatbelts were mandated in 1964 or thereabouts. Airbags weren't standard until the 1990s, and passenger airbags, side airbags, and other things are still new or reasonably new. Disc brakes have been standard on most cars and trucks for the front wheels since the early seventies, and we still use drum brakes on the back today on almost all standard-duty vehicles. Yes, older cars don't have cab-deformation hinderances like new cars, but as the driver of an older car I know that and I try to be careful. I also know that if I'm really worried about it, I can go to a frame shop and have front and rear sub-frame connectors put in, which will strengthen the car through the middle. And without crash statistics compared to hospital statistics I can't make the blanket statement that more people are injured in older cars than newer ones. I won't say that it's not true, but I won't say that it is true either.

Cars are supposed to be durable goods. With as much as they cost, they should be in service for at least a decade, and with proper maintenance potentially a lot longer than that. It's dumb to spend $20,000 or more on something only to get rid of it in a couple of years for another. We could save a lot of money by not playing the fad replacement game.

No tolls!

[Anonymous Coward]

No THANK you! I *LIKE* living where there aren't any toll roads...

Unauthorized tracking.

[baryon351]

> However, the article goes on to talk about how there is no provision in place to
> prevent the uncontrolled surveillance of motorists without a court order.

Cue the "well if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" government apologists.

Re:Unauthorized tracking.

[kfg]

I'm not doing anything wrong. That's why I hide it.

KFG

Same effect with preserved privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Introducing a GPS-based method for collecting money is just an excuse to keep track of people or the politicians are bought by the companies selling the tracking equipment.

There is a much cheaper way to get money based on how much a person drives - it is called tax. Just increase the tax on gasoline, no investments in new technology is needed and peoples privacy isn't invaded.

What happened to our rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am outraged. Just another reason to keep taking care of your old car. Privacy is a right, not a privilege. The only reason it is not enumerated in our (U.S.) constitution as such is because our founding fathers never dreamt of its violation on such a grand scale.

Similar to Alistair Darling's idea?

[inputsprocket]

Maybe, they plan implementing it like the proposed plans for England and Germany which uses GPS to charge per mile road usage?

Re:Similar to Alistair Darling's idea?

[inputsprocket]

...insomuch as it proved a right fiasco in Germany, who now "plans to [scrap the idea and] reintroduce a sticker system for collecting tolls, which it had abandoned last August."

But then again, Americans can succeed where others have failed.

cant they?

Re:Similar to Alistair Darling's idea?

[imdx80]

the uk's plans stems from the when more and more vehicles use alternative fuels, its easy to stick 70%+ tax on petrol/gas but they can't tax electricity by the same amounts (i hope)As soon as the system is in place it will be abused by those in power or by people with the responsibility to run it or most probably both.If you've got nothing to hide you haven't looked hard enough yet

Re:Similar to Alistair Darling's idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another application of this - pay-as-you-drive car insurance. The insurance company knows how far you drive, on what roads, and at what time of day, and charges you accordingly.

http://www.norwichunion.com/pay-as-you-drive/

hmmmmmmmmmm.....

The Canadian Story

[ergo98]

The Canadian anti-speeding technology has been completely misrepresented.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170150&cid=141 81251

I'll just hire Sony and...

[surfdaddy]

use their $sys$gpscloak.

Meter Reader

[TheStonepedo]

Why not just check the odometer? Most if not all cars have odometers, and few people tamper with them. Most drivers could simply get their mileage checked whenever they have their vehicle inspected and/or renew the vehicle's license plates. Any taxes based on emissions could be assessed on fuel rather than based on mileage. I could drive my car 45 mph to my parents and take 20 hours and use far less gas than my friend who drives there at 80 mph in 12 hours.

Re:Meter Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of old cars have broken odometers. I guess you could force people to fix them, but it would be easy to fake very low usage: put the broken one in for 10 months out of the year!

Re:Meter Reader

[FS]

Good idea, but say I live in one state but spend most of my time driving in other states. The state I'm living in would like it, but other states would not.

I think this would be a great idea if it in turn reduced state and/or federal taxes and eliminated the tax on gasoline. At least you could see all your taxes in one place for once. If Bush is serious about simplifying tax law, this would be a simple thing to simplify.

The fact of the matter is though that this has less to do with taxing and more to do with tracking. The federal and state governments already charge us tax on our gas. This tax has the same effect as a tax on our odometers as you propose, and the current method even gives discounts to users who chose good gas mileage cars. If they just wanted more revenue, they would raise the tax on gas.

Re:Meter Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

This works great if the miles are all inside one government's road system but chances are you'll take vacations out of state, drive on private property, etc.

The idea is for the GPS system to monitor miles you drive in a specific government's domain and pay an amount based on those miles to that government. I'm not sure how one state could enforce its fees on citizens of another state, however. To that end, gasoline taxes at present may remain a better choice.

[If you take a look at the taxes you pay on gasoline, a portion is federal and another portion is state-specific (state with possible local taxes).]

Re:Meter Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

us 'gasoline' is government subsidised, not taxed.

a fuel tax would be the most efficient way to charge for road usage/emissions.

Re:Meter Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

few people tamper with odometers NOW, imagine what would happen if they were used as a basis for taxation.

backstreet garages would be 'fixing' odometers everyday, to help people evade their tax. the second hand car market would be in serious trouble, and more regulations would have to be brought in to detect or try to prevent this tampering.

a fuel tax would seem to be the best answer. you can't drive without fuel, heavier vehicles (which cause more damage to roads) require more fuel, and as a side benefit it'd encourage people to drive more efficient cars. fuel taxes can generate a lot of revenue too, which could be used to fund the roads, with the heaviest users (generally) paying more. it'd also serve as an emissions tax.

tracking peoples driving is too complex & expensive, too open to abuse, and unecessary, even if it wasnt expensive or open to abuse, it'd still not be the best method of road taxation.

Re:Meter Reader

[surprise_audit]

whenever they have their vehicle inspected

... in states that *have* annual inspections... For no reason that makes any sense to me, Oklahoma dropped state inspections a couple of years ago. So now any random car on the road could be a rolling deathtrap, with inadequate brakes, or loose steering, or no tire tread, etc... I suppose it made sense to someone, and I hope that whoever it was gets sued into bankruptcy by the families of people killed in/by unsafe vehicles.

Re:Meter Reader

[cloudmaster]

Amusing that you mention that. It snowed a lot here last Thursday, and I had to drive 40-45 MPH on the way to work, and on the way home, due to the road conditions. Normally I run about 60-70 on that road. It took over twice the amount of gas for me to get there. That's because the engine was running below its optimum powerband, and therefore wasn't as efficient as it would have been at a higher speed. It took quite a bit more fuel to propel the car the same distance, though it was probably using a little less fuel per unit time.

Anyway, emissions don't have much to do with mileage. A flex-fuel vehicle running on ethanol will have fewer harmful emissions than the same vehicle running on gas, but it'll also get lower mileage. An old car without a cat could get better mileage than a new one with a cat, but there might be more emissions from the carb'd car (or there might be less). Measuring fuel consumption would require 1) a dyno and 2) a way to interrupt the fuel system to insert a flow rate measuring device. The dyno would need recalibrated, and the fuel interrupt would have to be set up by a qualified mechanic - and I can tell you that I darned sure don't want some jackass mechanic who's "done this a million times, sure" screwing around with *my* fuel system. It would get rather expensive to install devices like this at every DMV and to pay more employees / train them - probably requiring an increase in the gas tax to pay for it. :)

Re:Meter Reader

[DreamerFi]

Why not just check the odometer?
 
because in congested area's they'll want to vary the "tax" based on the time of day you're driving somewhere.

Re:Meter Reader

[fatcatman]

... in states that *have* annual inspections... For no reason that makes any sense to me, Oklahoma dropped state inspections a couple of years ago. So now any random car on the road could be a rolling deathtrap, with inadequate brakes, or loose steering, or no tire tread, etc... I suppose it made sense to someone, and I hope that whoever it was gets sued into bankruptcy by the families of people killed in/by unsafe vehicles.

Why don't you sue the asshole who chose to operate the unsafe vehicle? You know, there's this thing called "personal accountability." The government doesn't need to hold people accountable, people can hold one another accountable. If you rear-end me because your brakes were bad and you didn't bother to fix them, I can sue your ass.

Anyway, the "unsafe vehicles" line is bullshit. The area I live in has never required vehicle inspections. I've lived here most of my life and can't recall a single reported incident where a poorly maintained or otherwise unsafe vehicle cause an accident. Unsafe drivers, all the time. But vehicles failing and killing somebody? Never.

You have to remember, the people driving the vehicle don't want to die, either. Granted, there are a lot of stupid people in the world, but even they have an incentive to keep their vehicle's systems in some reasonable form of "working", for if they don't, they hurt themselves first. Even a complete idiot knows this.

I thought..

[js92647]

I thought criminals we're supposed to be one revolution ahead of the law.

Guess not :/

Re:Why would they want to?

[MrApples]

"But yes, it is in the constitution that they can't do that, so it shouldn't be allowed. But that's the only reason against it."
Actually, it is not expressly protected, and courts have (in a round about way) ruled against citizens in related cases. However, if it was protected by the Constitution, it should not be reduced to "the only reason," because, in the US, that's a big reason.

"It's not like your wife can log into the satellites and find out you've got a gay lover."
Obviously not, but they did mention the information being subpoenaed, which is quite possible and would have similar results.

"The only bad thing about it is, it's against the constitution."
Again, it's not against the Constitution under its current interpretation, but if it is found to be in the courts, it won't be for some trivial reason. You say this as though if it was not in the Constitution, people would have no problem with it, but that is not the situation at all.

Invasion of Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

When I walk around with my GPS, the only one who knows where I am is me. Can't we implement this tax system in such a way that it only tells how many miles I have driven, not where I have been?

Re:Why would they want to?

[aussie_a]

You say this as though if it was not in the Constitution, people would have no problem with it, but that is not the situation at all.

Well I can't think of anything bad about it.

they did mention the information being subpoenaed, which is quite possible and would have similar results.

What sort of civil matters can it be subponaed in?

And who's going to make me?

[pair-a-noyd]

How do they propose to install one of these devices in any of my vehicles??
There will be no such device ever installed in any vehicle I ever own.
BTW, all of my vehicles are over 20 years old and long ago fully paid for in full.

They'll have just as much luck installing one of these things in my vehicle as they will inserting a RFID chip under my skin.

Re:And who's going to make me?

[sadler121]

Most (all?) states require that you pass *enviromental tests every year before allowing your car on the road. No GPS tracker, No pass on the test, Your car is now illegal to drive. If you get pulled over, it's the pound you in the ass prison. *enter any other reason for the state to grab more money from your wallet

Re:And who's going to make me?

[takochan]

They'' just put the RFID'ish technology in your license plate.

And of course if you don't have one of those when you are driving around, guess what happens..... uh, yes officer..

Re:And who's going to make me?

[Osty]

They'' just put the RFID'ish technology in your license plate.

Washington (mentioned in TFA), like most (all?) states, only requires that you update your tabs every year, not your license plate. Go ahead, put RFID in my tags. Nothing's stopping me from nuking that in my microwave for a couple seconds ...

And of course if you don't have one of those when you are driving around, guess what happens..... uh, yes officer..

Oh, I'm sorry officer. It must be defective. Okay, I'll take that 10-day-or-$30 fix-it ticket, get a new tab, "prove" that it's working, and then go home and nuke the damn tag.

Front license plates are required in many states as well, but you're not going to prison for not having one. You'll get a fix-it ticket to put the plate back on, which you then have to prove (show the cops, or the courthouse, or however they have it set up). Then you take it back off again, and when you're pulled over again you must've "lost" that plate (damn road debris! Can't you use my tax dollars to keep the roads clean? :).

Re:And who's going to make me?

[cloudmaster]

What you really mean is that "most" large metropolitan areas have some kind of testing required, wheras "rural" areas in many states do not have that crap to deal with. Furthermore, if you get pulled over, you get a warning and maybe a fine - no one goes to federal high-security prison for failing to obtain emissions certification.

Besides, somehow I think the tracker will get poor reception in my cars. The wiring may also suffer from some rather poor connections which, darn it, just keep coming loose. Oops. Must've been a poor ground...

Re:And who's going to make me?

[pair-a-noyd]

Not in my state.

And I'll drive "illegally" if I have to.

Re:And who's going to make me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most (all?) states require that you pass *enviromental tests every year

I lived in IL forever, now I'm in a different state.

Neither require(d) this.

Re:And who's going to make me?

[mpe]

How do they propose to install one of these devices in any of my vehicles??

Most likely by only allowing vehicles so equipped to operate on the public roads. Unless you are claiming to have "stealth cars"...

Re:And who's going to make me?

[smithmc]

  Most likely by only allowing vehicles so equipped to operate on the public roads.

What about the dozens of millions of cars already on the road?

Re:And who's going to make me?

[Syberghost]

It's "most", but nowhere near "all", and I know that Oklahoma recently dropped theirs.

In many states, there are metropolitan areas that require them, but the state as a whole does not.

Re:And who's going to make me?

[joranbelar]

Make it required for insurance purposes. I'm sure the federal government would have no problem "suggesting" to the insurance companies that they require this as a condition of receiving coverage. Especially if it means they can then charge extra "monitoring fees" that cover nothing and are just an excuse to wring more money out of you.

Re:And who's going to make me?

[WoodieR]

you took the red pill? and had a full body x-ray by someone you thought you could trust, to review same ?

Just adding fuel to the fire.

[nexcomlink]

Not only is this completely unnecessary but let me get one thing straight. We do not have the right to abuse our power as citizens but the government has the power to go beyond it's boundaries and watch our every move? What is this bull. There is no point in monitoring someone's progress in car. In order to solve a problem you need to find the root cause of it. If you want us traveling at a slow 50-mph then there should be no cars in the united states which can go beyond that limit. So why do we still see GTO's, Porsche and other cars which are never designed to go just at 50MPH. Your wasting money on this crap. Also GPS cannot work where it does not get a signal. So in some states this would simply be useless. For then you come up with another thing out of your @@@ which is less reliable than the other. Good Job. Keep screwing us over.

Re:Just adding fuel to the fire.

[Anonymous Coward]

we are the government, remember? don't you want to see yourself on tv?

Re:Just adding fuel to the fire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see your moon-bat monkey-ass run for office. Unless you've got massive corporate backing you'll make it no farther than your local city council. Dumb ass.

Re:Just adding fuel to the fire.

[smithmc]

  Also GPS cannot work where it does not get a signal. So in some states this would simply be useless.

Huh? In which states would the satellite-based Global Positioning System not work?

Re:Just adding fuel to the fire.

[sapped]

Huh? In which states would the satellite-based Global Positioning System not work?

In states with tall trees close to the sides of the roads. For example, in parts of Kentucky I always lose signal on my GPS unit.

Trust Issues

[rhyskegtapper]

I'm sorry as great as this would be for road planning, we have horrible, congested roads where I live, and other important and completely valid projects. I just have trust issues with the local, federal, and state governments. I don't want to put more of my rights within their immediate control. Whether or not they actually act on their newfound abilities doesn't really matter. What matters to me is that if I had a GPS in my car and they were actively tracking me there is the POTENTIAL for abuse. As I said, I don't want to give a group of governments I do not trust the tools they need to infringe upon my rights down the road.

Can they go all the way down to your phone?

[shanen]

Actually a related topic, but I've been wondering if they can go all the way to tracking you (including while you are driving) by keeping tabs on the location of your cellular phone. The GPS-capable phones could of course do quite a bit better than that. Does anyone know if these phones have capabilities to quietly report their locations even when they aren't in use?

No, I don't have any concrete evidence, but the ones I know about tend to run down the battery after about a week, even if no call is made on the phones. Just listening quietly for a wake-up signal ought not to take that much power, and you'd think they wouldn't draw much more than a digital watch. Given the much larger batteries in the phones, they should be able to sit quietly for a couple of months if that's all they're doing. So maybe the reason they run down more quickly is because they are emitting some "Here I am" chirps?

Re:Can they go all the way down to your phone?

[tedrlord]

My phone has a setting for its GPS ability to toggle location tracking either always on or 911 only. I guess they could be secretly tracking me anyway, but I doubt it.

Re:Can they go all the way down to your phone?

[LardBrattish]

You mean like this http://www.childlocate.co.uk/

or this http://www.mapamobile.com/

or this http://www.verilocation.com/

or this http://www.wayhey.com/

Re:Can they go all the way down to your phone?

[linuxgurugamer]

Many years ago, (probably before you were born :-) when cell phones were first introduced, batteries would only last from 1 - 6 days before being run down. What you don't realize is that the phone is always transmitting a signal, just to let the cell phone network know where you are. Not as in your physical location, but which cell tower you are closest to. This takes power, and is one of the primary uses of the power. Try going to a location where there is no cell phone service, and see how quickly your battery will run down. The weaker the signal from the cell tower(s), the more power the phone will put out in an attempt to contact a tower.

Re:Can they go all the way down to your phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

>So maybe the reason they run down more quickly is because they are emitting some "Here I am" chirps?

Bingo!!!

Give the man a cigar!

Of course it is emitting, otherwise nobody will be able to call you.

Re:Can they go all the way down to your phone?

[badspyro]

Yes, they can in the US. It was all done very quietly, but I know some inside men, and all the new mobile phones in the US can be whached by the big bad state. I know because I know of the guys selling the kit to the phone companys to do it, and that was over 2 yrs ago now. nobody is safe from it (except if you use a GPS blocker). I think my idea for a fradey cage in my bedroom with a mesh of about 4/5 of an inch (or 2cm for us brits and non imperial people), as they are going to put up a phone mast outside my house and my mum didn't tell me... well, it should stop the GPS now as well!

Re:Can they go all the way down to your phone?

[MooUK]

Exactly.

It's a very noticeable difference. I don't get a good signal, for instance, in my current bedroom, so my phone runs down quite fast. Back home, I get a good signal, and it lasts several weeks. In the mountains, it barely manages a week.

I'd rather walk!

[ghostinthamachine]

No offense friend, but you trust the Government too much. Haven't you learned anything from 1984? Could you ever imagine technology like this if Hitler was in power, after all, he was elected. I think people think just because they live in what they believe to be a free Country, such as America, that you are immune to these types of realities. No me, no way, I'll walk.

Re:I'd rather walk!

[halleluja]

No me, no way, I'll walk.

Don't forget to wear your GPS Pro dog-collar honey!

Re:I'd rather walk!

[quantum bit]

Don't bother. You'll pass enough scanners that will pick up your government-mandated RFID "health" implant anyway.

Re:Why would they want to?

[MrApples]

"What sort of civil matters can it be subponaed in?"
From TFA: "No rule prohibits that massive database of GPS trails from being subpoenaed by curious divorce attorneys..."

Satisfied?

Just get OVER it already

[BigLug]

I don't drive where I'm not supposed to.
I don't drive over the speed limit (well, not much :)).
I use the roads, but not all of them.
I hate congested traffic.

I can't see that the negatives possibly outweigh the positives. Steal my car and the police and I will just watch where you're going and intercept you. Hacker-turned-car-thief turns it off? You'll get pulled over by the police for not properly identifying your vehicle (just like a rego plate).

My wife has only just got her licence. Imagine if when she's later home than she was going to be if I could just check her car position and realise that she's caught in traffic without having to make her answer her cell phone while driving!

I phone the automobile club because I've broken down and they KNOW where I am because they have my rego.

There's invasion of privacy, and there's useful technology ... PLEASE learn to spot the difference.

Re:Just get OVER it already

[Anonymous Coward]

How about those of us who drive more off public roads than we do on? As in, all ranchers and farmers in the US, a $1 Trillion+ industry.

You're going to charge us for using the roads we build and maintain?

Re:Just get OVER it already

[Martin Blank]

Just because it has some potentially useful features does not mean that the invasion of privacy is worth it. OnStar works just fine to notify someone that you've broken down, and it provides location without being on all the time, or providing this to law enforcement. AFAIK, it's only available in the US and Canada, but could be rolled out elsewhere.

If you could check her position, what are the chances that I could? If you have a car I want, I might be able to wait until it's at a mall parking lot during a heavy shopping season, and then disable the GPS and run it to a chop-shop. You're out a car and your privacy. Or maybe I wait until she's in a darker location. Then you're out a car, your privacy, and your wife.

Re:Just get OVER it already

[BigLug]

Actually, no. I'd prefer not to. I prefer to primarily tax people according to their income for the roads we all use. But secondarily, I'd prefer to tax people FOR THE ROADS THEY PERSONALLY USE. In your case, you're buying petrol for your ute which includes 'road tax' for roads you don't use, but taxing you for the roads/tracks you BUILD. Surely this will HELP you by only taxing you for when you actually USE a public road?

Re:Just get OVER it already

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see that the negatives possibly outweigh the positives. Steal my car and the police and I will just watch where you're going and intercept you. Hacker-turned-car-thief turns it off? You'll get pulled over by the police for not properly identifying your vehicle (just like a rego plate).

I can't believe that you're suggesting that government tracking of all vehicles become mandatory. That's where the line between "useful technology" and "invasion of privacy" should be drawn. You're welcome to track your wife, your kids, and anyone else who uses the car. You're welcome to give the police the ability to track your car. But why should I be required to let the police track my car?

In case you're still having trouble, here are some more negatives for you:

1. You park for 2 minutes on an emergency snow route (or on the wrong "alternate side" or in a handicap spot) to aid another driver. A $300 ticket is mailed to your house.
2. Your stalker/harassing cop/ex-wife/etc. hacks the system and follows you 24/7 from the comfort of their computer.
3. Your car is parked in your front yard while you're moving furniture. A $200 ticket is mailed you your house.
4. Your car is parked outside a print shop that is also used as a meeting place for terrorists/pessimists/any-other-ists. You are flagged as security threat and not allowed to board flights without extensive security checks for the rest of your life.
5. Some punk hacks his tracking system to broadcast your code, goes on a crime spree, then ditches the car. You're arrested and charged with his crimes; It already happens with stolen cars, but at least with cars you *know* that it's been stolen.

Re:Just get OVER it already

[ScottCooperDotNet]

It would be easier to understand your position if current American police policy wasn't to use speeding tickets, under the guise of safety, as a revenue generator.

Re:Just get OVER it already

[Tuirn]

You're assuming that there can't be a technology which is both usefull sometimes and an invasion of privacy other times. These aren't always either/or issues, those seem to be getting rarer and rarer. Why do you assume that the autmobile club will be able to see your tracker, or that you will be able to see your wifes tracker. If they can, so could I with a little bit of work. It opens up so many possiblities.

I'm worried...

[TubeSteak]

I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

Re:I'm worried...

[mpe]

I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

Or there may be worst possible abuses than have been guessed. It's also intersting how infrequently such concerns appear to be voiced by legislators, when critical examination of proposed legislation is should be part of the job description.
An even better example would be Tony Blair claiming that laws for "Prevention of Terrorism" would never be used for supression of political speach a short time before such laws are used to remove a member of a political party from that party's annual conference.

Re:I'm worried...

[phaggood]

As a rule I never post w/o RTFA, but in this case...

For personal automobiles, no way in hell. This is a Very Bad Idea (TM) and I hope it goes down in a blaze of pyro. OTOH, with the vulnerability of our trucking industry, specifically the potential of converting a medical, chemical or other waste truck into a vehicle of mass destruction by a terrorist, enemy combatant or pissed-off soccer mom, i think tracking trucks should become mandatory (yes, I know there's limited truck transponder tech used for things like weigh stations, but I'm looking more for "hey, why did truck 45X3-2322, carrying spent fuel rods from the navy base just pull off I-80 next to the convention center?")

Re:I'm worried...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, something like spent fuel rods and the like are usually escorted aren't they?

Refresh me

[Council]

I work on cryptography and information theory, I read Bruce Schneier, I have secure passwords and am suspicious of everything. I dabble in paranoia, read things like Free Culture and 2600, and am generally anti-The-Man.

That said, sometimes I can't really remember why I care if someone is gathering information on me. Sure, if a company or government monitors my browsing habits or watches where I drive, they can make ads targeted or develop a psychological profile, but what's the real downside? Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive? Sure, if I were running for office, it might help with a smear campaign, but other than that, what does it matter? And that's really the only example that comes to mind sometimes, Hoover threatening to release tapes of MLK having sex. But at that point, they're focusing on you as a public figure and breaking the law to gather particularly embarrassing information. For other stuff for the average Joe, what's the problem?

I'm sure everyone has examples. Remind me why I care if they're gathering databases on where we drive or what we do or who we are.

Seriously, remind me why I need privacy. I forget sometimes.

Re:Refresh me

[laughingcoyote]

Please post your full, real name, home, school/work, and cell phone numbers, unaltered email addresses, home and school/work address, job title, vehicle descriptions and license plate numbers, and a link to a recent photograph of yourself.

Or, admit that privacy has its benefits after all.

Re:Refresh me

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all fun and games until someone breaks into (or abuses) those databases and steals your information for the purpose of identity theft.

Re:Refresh me

[Anonymous Coward]

"For other stuff for the average Joe, what's the problem?"

How about: this will be used to strongarm, threaten, and oppress those of us who sue or protest the government when they break the law, overstep their authority, make egregious and preventable errors, attempt to take property which is not theirs, imprison people unjustly, etc, etc.

Which includes, as you said, people like MLK, but also the thousands of individuals and organizations who sue the local, state, and Federal governments each year.

Our Executive Branch wants to legitimize torture. Really, it shoudn't be that hard to remain paranoid these days.

I have an Irish friend who was visiting Washington D.C. He has a long (and shining) employment history with a reputable technology company within the United States and has a valid work visa. While taking pictures of landmarks in the Capitol he was detained and questioned for 72 hours.

The precendent is in place for this to become common practice. Witness spot checks for subways, full body searches for getting on an airplane, random ID checks, and now GPS units which will track you wherever you go.

Re:Refresh me

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to expand your reading a little. Have you actually read 1984? I can't believe how many people quote and borrow from Orwell without having read him.

Likewise, Solzhenitsyn. Spend this winter reading the Gulag Archipelago, and notwithstanding global warming, it will be the coldest of your life.

The ultimate lesson of the twentieth century is that governments really, really suck, and you can't be too paranoid about them. Any abuse you can imagine has been and will be committed, and most likely by your own government.

Re:Refresh me

[FireFury03]

Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive?

What happens if the tracking shows that you were near a terrorist bombing... and the tracking also shows you were at the garden centre buying fertiliser. Maybe you weren't guilty, but with enough tracking there may well be plenty of "evidence" that makes you look guilty. And since the law enforcement authorities seem to be able to get away with *anything* at the mention of the "T" word you could well find yourself banged up in jail even though there's no solid evidence against you.

This is my problem with national databases - given enough data, innocent parties can look guilty. I.e. contrary to popular belief, DNA and fingerprints are *not* necessarilly unique - looking at the fingerprints of a small number of people who are already suspected of a crime is one thing, but given a database of *everyone's* finger prints I worry that innocent people will be dragged through the courts (and possibly convicted) purely because the database showed a match.

Re:Refresh me

[nanoakron]

>>Seriously, remind me why I need privacy. I forget sometimes.

Try my 2-step program to making you care again:

1) Give me your name, address and phone number.
2) Give me two weeks.

-Nano.

Re:Refresh me

[NickFortune]

At the moment, I get the bus into work. The bus company are doing one of their periodic company surveys where they send a bunch of people round in company livery and ask where you're going. Most people mistake them for ticket inspectors and answer the question. Then they want to know where you're going after that, if you use any other form of travel, how often you make the journey... that sort of thing.

This happened to be the other day. The conversation went like this:

Marketdroid Can I ask where you're going please?

Me Are you an inspector?

Marketdroid No. I ask where you're going please?

Me Are you an inspector?

Marketdroid No.

Me Then that's my business.

Marketdroid Fair enough, sorry to bother you.

Now there are a couple of things (other than the fact that I can be an obstreperous bastard) I'd like you to note from this.

Firstly, I wasn't up to no good. I didn't have any sinsiter motive for concealing my travel habits. All I was doing was going to work. A couple of days later I had the same conversation on the way back. No sinister motive then, either.

Secondly, I have no reason to believe that the bus company are up to anything sinister. They may try and tweak a little extra profit perhaps, but on the whole I expect all they want is to know where they need to run more busses.

Thirdly, and taking the above points into account, where I choose to travel and when is still my business, and none of theirs unless I choose to make it so. I have the option of sharing that information. And that's the way I damn well want to keep it. Being grumpy first thing in the morning is not yet a ciminal offense.

So really, the question is not "why should we keep it?" The question is why should we relinquish our hard won rights to privacy. I'm going to need a better argument than "what would be the harm" for that.

Re:Refresh me

[mzwaterski]

http://www.whitepages.com/

Have your pick of lots of names, addresses, and phone numbers... These are already public records.

Re:Refresh me

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Aside from all of the logical arguments already posted, there is also a moral argument to consider. Is it right - or, to put it more succinctly, can it be morally justified - to monitor people who have done nothing wrong?

Ask yourself that question, and, unless you happen to be a Nazi or Communist, I think you will agree that the answer is "no."

Re:Refresh me

[mpe]

That said, sometimes I can't really remember why I care if someone is gathering information on me. Sure, if a company or government monitors my browsing habits or watches where I drive, they can make ads targeted or develop a psychological profile, but what's the real downside? Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive? Sure, if I were running for office, it might help with a smear campaign, but other than that, what does it matter? And that's really the only example that comes to mind sometimes, Hoover threatening to release tapes of MLK having sex. But at that point, they're focusing on you as a public figure and breaking the law to gather particularly embarrassing information. For other stuff for the average Joe, what's the problem?

Whilst members of government might only care about "public figures" ordinary criminal types tend to be a lot less picky.

Re:Refresh me

[mpe]

This is my problem with national databases - given enough data, innocent parties can look guilty.

Including due to "innocent" mistakes in the database. Let alone the likes of identity theft being involved.

I.e. contrary to popular belief, DNA and fingerprints are *not* necessarilly unique

In many cases what is being looked at are fragments of fingerprints and DNA.

looking at the fingerprints of a small number of people who are already suspected of a crime is one thing, but given a database of *everyone's* finger prints I worry that innocent people will be dragged through the courts (and possibly convicted) purely because the database showed a match.

IIRC this has already happened.

Re:Refresh me

[Council]

Dear Slashdot: Way to moderate me 'troll' when I post a serious question on a topic of great interest to me and am eagerly awaiting responses and discussion. Thanks.

If you’ve got nothing to hide...

[BandwidthHog]

Then you need to get out more!

Re:If you’ve got nothing to hide...

[tuxette]

And the other 50% of those who have nothing to hide really ought to cover up a little...

Re:If you’ve got nothing to hide...

[BandwidthHog]

Oh SHIT, did I leave the webcam on again?!?!?!?

Re:If you’ve got nothing to hide...

[tuxette]

Yep, you did. Now please hande me that jug of brain bleach over there...

Typical

[uspsguy]

The government pushes economy cars until they happen. Then gas tax revenue drops or its growth slows. Every spending politicians impose a new tax so they can do more stupid stuff with our money. Bah, Humbug!

Aren't our taxes user fees?

[skitz0]

I don't have a child but pay for schools. I never go to the park but pay for its upkeep. etc. etc.

Re:Aren't our taxes user fees?

[pair-a-noyd]

That's called taxation without representation.

Here where I live they have what they call the "Robin Hood Law"
What it does is rob tax money from wealthy towns, cities and counties to fund schools in poorer counties. Like where I live, it's a small but wealthy town. They take tax money from the people here to fund the schools in a much larger poverty city a few miles away. The schools in this town receive less income from the local tax payers than the schools in the poverty city one over.
Because of that, the schools here suffer, repairs are not done, books are not bought, needed people are not hired.

It's completely unfair to the people here. Why should we have to pay for the ills of another city? It's not our problem that the city is in such a terrible state. Let them take care of their own problems and leave us to take care of ours.

I've heard that the Supreme Court ruled that the Robin Hood Law was illegal but I haven't seen it in print yet. If so, our tax dollars will go where they belong, in our schools for our kids.

No taxation without representation.

Re: Aren't our taxes user fees?

[BigLug]

pair-a-noyd (594371) said:

It's completely unfair to the people here. Why should we have to pay for the ills of another city? It's not our problem that the city is in such a terrible state. Let them take care of their own problems and leave us to take care of ours.

Well aren't you lucky to have been born outside such a place?

Taxes are there for this very reason, and are indexed for this very reason. There are many people living in such places who are as bright, cluey and intelligent as you and me, but they're stuck there through circumstances over which they have NO control.

This means it's my job, and it's your job, to help provide what ever we can for them, and make their life just a little better. Don't ever begrudge the opportunity you have to help someone out because one day, you'll need a hand too.

For such a selfish post, you are hereby fined 1% of this weeks income from all sources, to be paid to the charity of your choice in that neighbour city. (Alternately, you can take the 'community service' option and go and talk to some of the people who live there, get to know them.)

Re: Aren't our taxes user fees?

[linguae]

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! It is amazing how leftists want to use taxation to enforce egalitarian ideologies. Let's tax those cold, greedy, evil, heartless, selfish, Paris Hilton-loving rich and middle-class exploiters to the poorhouse, and reward all of that money to the poor. That'll show those evil capitalists a thing or two about poverty. It's all about the great "class struggle," after all. It starts there, and then soon breeds into communism unless somebody saves the day.

Redistribution of wealth is not what taxes are for. Taxes are used to pay for essential government services, such as military, Interstate highways, and other essential federal services. States and communities may add more things to the mix, such as schools, health care, parks, state- and locally-owned roads, and other community services. Taxation is not supposed to be an engine for egalitarian redistribution. It can work, but this form of equality does eventually end up destroying liberty.

If people want to donate money to help poor people, then they should do that voluntarily. Compassion is when you do things from your heart. Compassion and empathy is needed in a society in order to survive. But it should never be enforced by law. It's not compassion when the government is telling you what to do with your money. It's not compassion when your community's tax dollars for their schools are being siphoned off to another community's, and your schools are left to rot because you're not in a low enough income bracket. It's not compassion; it's theft.

Re: Aren't our taxes user fees?

[Anonymous Coward]

Waitaminute, why exactly are those people still living in the poorer town? It's obviously proven to be an economically disadvantageous place to live, so they should move to somewhere they'll have more opportunity.

Oh yeah, except people like you don't want them moving to your town, so you pay just enough money and provide just enough governmental assistance to keep them poor and oppressed, but not so poor and oppressed that they move into your neighborhood.

I grew up in one of the poorest places in the U.S. Because of my own experience, and that of dozens of my friends, I can assure you I will never mistake a governmental "assistance" program as anything but a tool to opress poor people. They're just there to keep people fed, but not well-fed, educated, but not well-educated, and gain job skills, but only the ones the government wants you to have (as in, secretarial work and auto repair, but not accounting and engineering -- those are for white people).

Re:Aren't our taxes user fees?

[eLamer]

I think you are talking out your ass to create evidence for an opinion you hold which just isn't true. You say that money is taken to fund schools in other counties? Since when did school taxes move above the local level? My original home is nassau, new york... and none of our school taxes go to poor schools in nyc which is right next door.

Re: Aren't our taxes user fees?

[pair-a-noyd]

Do you honestly believe that it's MY responsibility to provide for others that aren't as well off as I am??

Show me where in the Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights it says that..

Does the pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness include MY INCOME that I WORKED FOR and that I EARNED?? Did these disadvantaged people come out and help me do my work, did they do their part to earn a part of my paycheck? I think not.

LOCAL taxes are supposed to take care of LOCAL issues. That's what was being discussed in the OP. It had nothing to do with federal taxes..

No matter who imposes the taxes they still have no right to take MY money and GIVE it to someone else simply because they are worse off than I am.
The welfare system promotes and propgates a society of people addicted to welfare. It rewards them for staying in the system. The reward is "get paid for not working". There is no incentive to break out of that system and better oneself or position in life because it's much easier to do nothing and remain in the system and get paid to do so.

It's a BAD concept that needs to be done away with. Doing away with such nonsense systems will improve *everyone's* lot in life.

Communism failed in Soviet Russia, it's failing in Red China, it's an utter failure in Cuba. The concept of "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need" may be the passphrase of the day but in the end it fails.

Re:Aren't our taxes user fees?

[pair-a-noyd]

It's called "The Robin Hood Law" and it's a fact of life in Texas.
They take LOCAL property tax dollars from Town A and GIVE it to Town B.
Town A suffers so that Town B can have more.

In this case, where I live, a town of about 12,000 people are totally supporting the school system of a town next door of 80,000 through local property taxes.
The local property taxes here are much higher than they should be because not only do the people in this town have to pay for the schools and city services of this town, they have to pay for the school system in the other town.

Why? Because the other town is extremely poor. There are NO jobs there, there are NO businesses there, there is no work for anyone because EVERYTHING shutdown and moved out. Why? Where did they move to? I don't know but it wasn't to our town here. So the other town has a 60% or higher unemployment rate and it's spiraling downward out of control, poverty begats poverty. It's sad but it's fact.

They are saying now that if they strike down the Robin Hood Law that those schools will have to shut down. What then? Send them to our schools?
Our schools can't hand that many people, no way, not to mention the distance is too far. Where will they get the money? Most likely the federal government will take it from people and give it to them. Bad idea but probably is what will happen.

What would be the best thing? That the people that live there get off their butts and revitalize the area, reopen the closed businesses and become masters of their own destinies rather than subservient slaves to a "no can win" system.

Re:Why would they want to?

[aussie_a]

Well yeah, that should be ammended (or, y'know. YA COULD just stop cheating on your wife). The police having information so they can enforce the laws is one thing, my wife knowing I'm sleeping behind or back, or my insurance company knowing I'm drink-driving is quite another (okay, despite my sarcastic comments, yes I do think that anyone but the law enforcement agencies having access is bad).

Too late: already RFID's in every new tire

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless plan on buying pre-2002 tires for the rest of your life, you are already being tracked by RFID'ish tags. This was put into law a while ago, tire manufacturers don't publicize it: http://www.underreported.com/modules.php?op=modloa d&name=News&file=article&sid=702

Re:Why would they want to?

[MrApples]

"Well yeah, that should be ammended..."
My thoughts exactly, it is not right in its current state.

why do you need GPS to track mileage?

[merfer14]

If the whole point is to track the mileage that people use and levy the taxes based on the mileage one drives, you don't need GPS to do so... everyone has to have a registration, an inspection sticker, etc... So why not get the mileage from the car when you renew it? I'm sure there are a small (relatively of course) number of people that drive interstate often and would not have their mileage correctly applied to the correct state, but it should even it self out... To me this sounds like a really bad idea under the guise of "fairness"...

Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[FFFish]

I just read with comments set to level 1. It was alarming: many of the people in the low-ranked comments are in support of this idea. These are your fellow citizens!

If there is some sort of plan to turn Americans into a passive, watched population, it's working. People actively want to be spied upon. It makes them feel "safer."

If you, like me, think this is a step toward the loss of our valuable ideals of freedom, you sure as hell had better start speaking up. These gullible, frightened people are driving our government. We need to stop them and the only way to accomplish that is to become more politically active.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[tuxette]

If there is some sort of plan to turn Americans into a passive, watched population, it's working. People actively want to be spied upon. It makes them feel "safer."

Oh, the irony, huh? People don't want to be babysat by the big bad government, they want "freedom" and "non-interference," but what is this? Really?

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever Stallman dictates to you. Pretty simple huh? "Follow me or be a slave!"

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Kris_J]

Look, if someone can produce a reliable way of my car automatically not speeding on any given road unless I really jam my foot down, I'm all for it -- so long as there's no loss of privacy and no safety risk. When you're having to juggle a squiggly road, lots of idiots trying to change lanes to get one car ahead, poor visibility and a downward slope it's easy to miss that the speed limit just dropped by 10 Km/h according to the sign behind that bush back there -- particularly when everyone else is speeding.

I don't ever want to speed, but having to monitor your speedo all the time is a crappy solution. It only takes you looking up from the speedo to see a kid chasing a ball across the street infront of you once or twice before you'd really like a better solution.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[rolfwind]

Welcome to the future. I see this type of thinking in Europe all the time.

Actually, there they want to control what you think too (limited freedom of speech IIRC disguised as other laws) so it's not so bad here yet where they merely try to but can't.

What many people don't realize is that books like George Orwelle's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World" are slight rip-offs from Yevgeny Zamyatin 1920's "We" who was a communist but was disillusioned and had a falling out with the leaders (Lenin) and in turn was punished.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

Like the other two books, this one had a futuristic setting and in this general genre of books, many people assumed it was a generic warning about the future and what it could turn into when in reality (that book) it was a contemporary look at (Russian) society with criticism not very subtly veiled with the futuristic plot. Even the title of 1984 was a playing with the reverse of publication year, 1948.

It's a warning that it can happen to any society anywhere regardless of technological level.

What's more dangerous is the type of herd mentality that goes along with the thinking. Bush and his administration, along with the media, has been sowing fear into the populace in one hand and offering the "solution" with another. Sadly, most politicians would try this, but I'm sad about how many people bought into it, especially in the mass hysteria that followed in 2001. Now that most people are accustomed to these measure, the government and ease further and further into this type of thing since it's "normal."

Ah, well, time to read some Thomas Jefferson to get me out of this funk.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[rolfwind]

I don't ever want to speed, but having to monitor your speedo all the time is a crappy solution. It only takes you looking up from the speedo to see a kid chasing a ball across the street infront of you once or twice before you'd really like a better solution.

If you are too stupid to drive, then don't. Please don't spread FUD and evangelize the "better solution" forced upon others. If it were a solution that people wanted, they would be paying car manufactures to have this OPTION in their new cars - not have it forced upon them.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Anonymous Coward]

"We need to stop them and the only way to accomplish that is to become more politically active"

Drats. I was hoping the solution involved firearms.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Seumas]

I don't even care anymore. Tax me on my paycheck. Then, tax me on my gas. Then tax me on the distance I travel on the roads that my gas tax was supposed to pay for in addition to my state and federal tax. I just don't give a flying fuck anymore. There aren't enough decades in a life to fight big brother. Roll over and take it in the ass. It hurts initially, but once you've gotten used to it, it's no big deal.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Kris_J]

If you have a point, feel free to come to it.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Lando]

Consider this... If they can tax for actual road usage they can get rid of the tax on gasoline and thus the poor people with SUV's won't have an unfair tax burden.... ;)

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[mpe]

If there is some sort of plan to turn Americans into a passive, watched population, it's working. People actively want to be spied upon. It makes them feel "safer."

Safer in what way? Not only is there often no proof that those doing the spying are trustworthy there are even situations where there is preexisting evidence that those doing the spying are untrustworthy.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[mpe]

Actually, there they want to control what you think too (limited freedom of speech IIRC disguised as other laws)

Which is probably why the first part of the first ammendment to the US Constitution is written the way it is. So as to void a catagory of laws according to their effect, as opposed to "intent" or even title.

What many people don't realize is that books like George Orwelle's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World" are slight rip-offs from Yevgeny Zamyatin 1920's "We" who was a communist but was disillusioned and had a falling out with the leaders (Lenin) and in turn was punished. Like the other two books, this one had a futuristic setting and in this general genre of books, many people assumed it was a generic warning about the future and what it could turn into when in reality (that book) it was a contemporary look at (Russian) society with criticism not very subtly veiled with the futuristic plot

Similarly "Animal Farm" is a thinly disguised history of the Russian revolution and what followed. This time presented as fantasy.
Doing these kind of things (as well as using humour and satire) is a way in which authors, poets and (more recently) screen writers have presented political issues which are either highly controversial or where not holding the "correct" viewpoint is dangerous.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Cro Magnon]

I'm sad about how many people bought into it, especially in the mass hysteria that followed in 2001

It's also ironic that many of the people who shrieked about government oppression under Clinton are now following Bush like lemmings. Wake up, people! It's not a Dem vs Rep thing! Either party will gladly led us off the edge of the cliff if we let them!

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right, the SUV polution tax will show up about 1 week later.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Lando]

No, no, no... The pollution tax is based on how many miles you travel not how much gas you use... After all we can't have those pesky hydrogen, electric, etc cars getting off without being taxed.

Re:Read at "1" -- it is alarming!

[Lando]

On a more serious note, you do know that SUV's are classified as utility vehicles and as such are charged only 25% of the normal rate for cars in most municiples. Plus, since it is a utility vehicle and not a car, you can write of a portion of the purchase price on your federal taxes. Why would our freely bought congressmen and women do something to hurt their political base?

won't it cost more to operate than it'll bring in?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't a gas tax more cost effective and realistic for this sort of road usage tax? The more you drive, the more gas you use. That seems pretty straight forward. The bigger your vehicle the more road wear you cause (large tractor trailers can cause a lot of road damage). Hmm, a large truck will use more gas than a regular car too...

Everything just works out and you don't have to implement or maintain a multi million (billion?) dollar system to know that i drove over to grab some TP.

Why the surprise?

[twicepending]

Other governments around the world have been looking at this for some time now, I know here in the UK we drivers live in fear of Her Majesties Government trying to introduce such a scheme. Further details of the UK progress of this system can be found in the BBC news article linked to below...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/3903347.stm

Gas Tax is good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't a gas tax based system much simpler? It seems like a lot of money to install GPS's in every car just so we can do this. Isn't the gas tax acurate enough?

Re:Gas Tax is good enough

[BigLug]

Isn't the gas tax acurate enough?

No it's not good enough. If you live on a farm, you do a LOT of driving that isn't on public roads, but you're still paying 'gas tax' the same as a city commuter who uses them exclusively. Seems fairer to charge you for the roads you actually travel on ..

Re:Gas Tax is good enough

[s-orbital]

Which is exactly why farmers get special gas tax rebates. This is especially true for farm diesel fuel, which has been dyed a certain color to prevent usage in non-farm equipment.

Re:Why would they want to?

[uspsguy]

Simple: Because they can! If they can, they will. That's essential human nature.

mileage-based road user fees

[FredThompson]

'mileage-based road user fees' aare already in place. They're the 40-60 cents per gallon tax for fuel. The more you use, the more you pay. There are also toll roads which continue to collect tolls well after the project has been completely reimbursed. This is just more bs tax.

gas taxes?

[Mike_K]

Aren't gas taxes basically a pay-per-use fee for motorists for infrustructure building?

Gas taxes have the advantage of being anonymous, plus they promote lower gas-usage vehicles. The only reason I can think that anybody would consider using GPS in favor of simply taxing fuel is that they want to LOWER the taxes on gas, thus prices at the pump. You lower gas prices, and you're GUARANTEED to get re-elected.

m

Re:gas taxes?

[farnz]

The other advantage of gas taxes that you missed is that they tend to hit the richest hardest (it's not completely even, as the bottom end of the car driving spectrum drive cars that are barely running, and therefore consume a bit more fuel). Even if everyone buys cars with identical engine efficiencies (taking regenerative braking and other hybrid gains into account), all those luxury items the rich like have weight, and therefore need more fuel to shift (extra suspension, large music collections - CD changers and the like - high end air conditioning etc).

Re:gas taxes?

[sc0nway]

Unfortunately that makes too much sense. It always seems that given the choice between a simple tax that hits the the ones who are the most wasteful or the one who uses the system the most vs a highly technical, loophole generating, heavily bureaucratic system system... well all you have to do is look at the IRS and the fights in congress to prevent a flat tax system to know which way our government leans. I guess they justify it by saying they are providing jobs to bureaucrats that could not find useful work. sigh.

Re:gas taxes?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Revenues from gas tax are falling slightly. More fuel efficient cars burn less gas. Less gas = less revenue. Somehow, that "shortfall" needs to be made up. There are two ways to do that.
1) Have a more efficient state govt, that uses less money (Ha!)

or 2) get people to pay more money. They can't just raise the per gal tax, so somehow, they have to convince people to pay more, without letting them know they're paying more. So, change the way it is calculated. By mile.
And just reading the odometer won't work. A lot of people live in one state, and drive primarily in another. Who gets the revenue from that? With a GPS, is can be determined where you actually drove, so the money can be extracted from your wallet and go to the right people.

Of course, the other main reason for this is to actually track people.

Re:gas taxes?

[mpe]

The only reason I can think that anybody would consider using GPS in favor of simply taxing fuel is that they want to LOWER the taxes on gas, thus prices at the pump. You lower gas prices, and you're GUARANTEED to get re-elected.

How long after the election do you expect these taxes to stay lowered though? Even if they do it's unlikely that the total level of tax will have gone down.

Re:gas taxes?

[evilninjax]

As Georgia found out recently, lowering Gas Taxes will NOT lower the price at the pump. It will only increase the profits of the oil companies.

-goro-

Re:gas taxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who fight a flat tax do so because such a tax would DRASTICALLY increase the tax burden on the poor and middle-class, and lessen it on the wealthy. I know which side of that debate I want to be on.

Re:gas taxes?

[Forbman]

Well, Illinois tried this out as well. Personally, lowering the state gas tax seems stupid.

What is stupid about the GPS-based tax is that it assumes that all vehicles "use" the roadways the same per mile driven. A Honda Insight, Toyota Echo, etc. does not use up the road surface like an H2, Ford Excursion or Cadillac Escalade (but the true road eaters are semi-trucks and buses).

And even in Portland, how many more minivans, SUVs and trucks (i.e., F250, Dodge 2500, etc) do you see compared to Toyota Prius or Honda Insights? What are the sales volumes of these two different classes of vehicles?

They should raise the fuel tax (or go back to a car value-based registration fee, instead of flat per-vehicle registration fee).

Neither are "fair", but they are probably the least unfair to the largest number of people, especially regarding the ability to abuse the data gathered by the states and the costs to implement.

Re:gas taxes?

[AlinuxNCSU]

Actually, the gasoline tax, like most use taxes, is regressive because poorer people spend a greater percentage of their real income on gas than rich people do.

Bring it On

[geoffrey crawford]

I'd be stoked--just the sort of thing I'd like to tamper with/disable.

As London did

[Naught From D to F]

That's a fairly poor way to ration roads. You ought to pay according to traffic load; driving on rural roads shouldn't cost as much as driving on urban throughways. GPS is fantastic for tracking positions of cars and trucks for this kind of thing. Such a carrot-and-stick approach to traffic distribution would go a long ways toward improving allocation of our public roads.

Re:As London did

[GigsVT]

London is not a role model. They don't give a shit about privacy, what with the cameras. You also might get shot in the back of the head if you look like a terrorist.

That's like saying we should copy the chinese penal system because crime there is so much lower.

Re:As London did

[Overzeetop]

On the contrary, you should pay more for rural roads, as the cost per driven mile is higher due to construction difficulty and the greater impact of environmental degradation over the life of the road. We could even match the driven roads to the most recent per-mile cost estimates for reconstruction and maintenance. Gosh, we could make this so complicated you would never be able to figure out what the most efficient route is, or whether your tax liability was calculated correctly. This should have all the politicians licking their chops (pork chops, that is)!

Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[MDMurphy]

The initial impetus for this was alternate fuel vehicles. An electric car you plug in at home now pays no road taxes like a car at the pump. The same goes for propane or natural gas vehicles you fill at home. As vehicles go away from filling at a gas pump that collects taxes per gallon another model is needed.

Coming up with the mechanism for billing by gallon, watt, therm, amp, whatever and separating what you use in your car vs what you use in the oven isn't practical. So to assign the taxes based on use mileage ( or even "hours on the road" ) needs to be figured out. It's got to happen.

Even with an odometer, a mechanism taxing for mileage by state would be needed. Especially with the smaller states in the northeast where people live in one, work in one and transit a third to get to work each day. As long as you're figuring out which state you might as well figure out things like toll roads, bridges and time of day congestion usage.

It's going to be GPS. Anything else requires a more elaborate infrastructure.

What it doesn't have to be is privacy-hostile. Rather than uploading your entire driving history, the "road tax road map" could be uploaded into the unit in the vehicle. With the schedule of tariffs for your particular vehicle onboard, all you really need to reveal is the taxes owed. No need to reveal whether you went 1000 miles in a high-congestion area or 10,000 miles of night time interstate driving, just that you owe $5.95 in taxes. ( Expect this to be used as a by-use insurance tool as well)

There has to be a way to have drivers pay for use of the roads. Ideally we won't be limited to gasoline engines, so charging $ per gallon won't always work. An alternative is needed. Arguing about privacy impacts of a GPS receiver in the car is fine, and appropriate. But better would be to come up with a viable alternative to bill users for road use that is independent from fuel delivery.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[linguae]

It doesn't have to be GPS. You know the stickers that you put on your license plate every year that you buy from the DMV? They can just raise the prices on those stickers for hybrid and electric cars to fund the roads.

I am against the idea of forcing people to put tracking devices in their cars. If the government can't pay for its services without trampling over people's rights to privacy and property, then it should privatize those services. I'd rather pay a toll each time I go on a freeway than to install government tracking devices in my car.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[DigiShaman]

That's really the dirty little secret isn't it? I mean Big Brother doesn't give a damn about YOUR rights or the protection of the enviroment. Most politicians will say or do anything gain more control and power. But, this takes money and lots of it. So naturally we will feel the squeeze in all directions as we become more taxed.

Feeding Big Brother is a bitch huh? It LIES, CHEATS, and STEALS just stay fed. It's a hungry bastard and always getting fatter. Yet, he is so big that everyone around him will eventually become too afraid to NOT feed him. As such, Big Brother will turn into an authoritarian regime. Worst part is, picking political party sides wont change this fact. voting for the right people in office only slows down the inevitable.

This of government like any life form. It starts off small and grows bigger. Eventually, it gets to old and bloated to become effective and dies (revolution). Later on, a new life form is born in its absence.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[MDMurphy]

The problem is that peope don't understand.

Sticker for the car, fine. Do you charge the same for the grandma who only drives to church on Sundays as the salesman with the 5-state region he drives?

A GPS receiver in the car does not equal a tracking device, that's what most people are ignorant about. My car navigation system tells me where I am, it doesn't tell anyone else where I am.

  The speedometer in cars now will tell you how fast you're going. The clock tells you what time. But when you look at the odometer at the end of the month all you see is miles traveled. Even though there was information in the car that knew what time you left the house, how long you drove, how fast, average speed, number of trips per day, longest trip, shortest trip, time spent idling... all anyone looking at the dash later will see is miles traveled. It shouldn't be so hard to imagine the device for determining road taxes owed doing the same thing, using lots of information to determine the tax, but only outputting the final value.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use lots of information ? Keep It Simple Stupid just use the mileage. In your example the grandma who only drives to church on sunday isnt going to accumulate very many kilometers, the salesman will.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's going to be GPS. Anything else requires a more elaborate infrastructure.

That's only true if you believe that the government must precisely measure and collect road taxes. If we all take a step back and consider just how fucked up government budgets are, it should become obvious that accurate measurement of road use is not going to benefit the state because any level of accuracy will be quickly lost in the chaotic noise of the overall system of government budgeting.

So, instad of coming up with some super-elaborate, fascist's wet-dream to measure and collect the exact road use tax down to the penny, how about we just stick to basic measurements:

1) The odometer
Pay a road use tax that is based on odometer readings when you get your car's yearly inspection or registration renewal.

2) Average traffic flow between states
Bordering states can fairly easily estimate average daily traffic flow across their boarders, they use that information to negotiate sharing ratios between states for the collected road-use taxes.

There - problem solved in a fashion that is more than "good enough" with minimal cost overhead and minimal loss of privacy.

If it turns out that a state is not getting enough compensation to cover road upkeep, then they can raise the road use tax rate and possibly renegotiate the sharing ratios with their neighbors until their road maintenace costs are appropriately covered.

Only the big car/people tracking corps will lose out because there will be no reason to pay them (waste) barrels of federal pork to implement a piece of big brother. Oh, and the GPS receiver makers will also lose out on an otherwise captive market (you know their CEO's are spooging over the thought of forcing all cars to incorporate at least one GPS receiver).

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[MDMurphy]

Can't keep it simple since the problem isn't simple.

If you bill the salesman for NY taxes for every mile he drives, NY will love it. But if he drives in CT, VT,NH and RI as well he'll probably be paying road use taxes on the gas he buys there also. Go on a cross-country trip, pay more to your home state in taxes.

Congested area fees as in downtown areas like London and Singapore also need to be addressed in other ways. The same for toll roads, bridges. These aren't covered with a mileage only scheme. The current RFID passes for tolls are very privacy-intollerant, logging the date, time and direction of travel for every bridge crossing where a toll was collected. A scheme where the car just reports: Taxes owed: $22.00 wouldn't differentiate between a few bridge trips or a long trip in the country.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[Cyno]

I know!

Charge per road you drive on. A monthly fee. If you want to use the highway you have to pay more because it costs more to maintain and stuff.

Nothing's free. Don't ever give 'em anything for free! They'll just ask for more.

And socialists suck balls.

Motorists must pay!

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[masdog]

Or it should cut other services. Or not spend money on foolishly rebuilding a city that exists below sea-level. Or not start a war. I can think of a million things that they shouldn't do.

If the government has to start tracking my movements under the guise of collecting money to pay for the roads, then I think its high time we started working to replace the current government.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have to be accurate. If you forget about the inter-state problem and just charge where you live for the odometer reading it IS simple. If you say "but what about interstate?". Well, unless there is a discrepancy in benefit per state, this will even out. If it doesn't, then the only reason for a change is that it is cheaper for a person to live a distance from work, but cheaper for the work to remain in the state it is in. One gets the person to tax, the other gets the company to tax.

This is what happens to corporations outsourcing or offshoring accounts. We don't then have legislators saying "we have to account for tax being lost to other countries" do we? So why here?

Then if you deduct the star-up costs for the GPS system, then deduct the running consts for that system, you have managed to put more actual money on where it needs to be (the road) than where it doesn't need to be (the operation of the collection system).

What's the problem?

As for congestion fees, this is because comanies are based in places like London. So increase the taxes to cover the congestion. Either you get a bunch of money to upgrade public transport for workers, some companies move out, along with the workers who made the problem and you don't need the money for transport. Maybe make some changes to ensure prompt running trains/busses (how much is lost in productivity because of train delays?).

See? Sorted.

Unfortunately, the size of your budget is the civil servant equivalent of the expense of your car. All willy waving.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[lowrydr310]

Pay a road use tax that is based on odometer readings when you get your car's yearly inspection or registration renewal.

Why bother? As stated previously in this discussion (and as I have believed for a long time) the gasoline tax effectively accomplishes the same thing, and has the added benefit of rewarding (or maybe just not punishing) those who drive fuel efficient vehicles).

I moved to NJ from CA a few months ago. Gasoline in New Jersey is much cheaper than in CA and it's full service! Unfortunately the savings don't come close to covering the additional expense in tolls that I pay every month (over $70 a month). I now understand why they're called "Freeways".

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[mpe]

The initial impetus for this was alternate fuel vehicles. An electric car you plug in at home now pays no road taxes like a car at the pump. The same goes for propane or natural gas vehicles you fill at home.

How many people have sources of propane or methane on their own land? Even if your house was built on a landfill, would there be enough methane leakage to be useful?

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[mpe]

1) The odometer
Pay a road use tax that is based on odometer readings when you get your car's yearly inspection or registration renewal.

Remember that a lot of work has gone into making tamper resistant odometers. If this check is done as part of a vehicle inspection there are likely to be signs if the odometer has been tampered with.

There - problem solved in a fashion that is more than "good enough" with minimal cost overhead and minimal loss of privacy.

The less technically complex the system the less ways in which it can go wrong.
The GPS approach would require not only a GPS reciever but also a mechanism to store both where the car had been as well as the infrastructure to securely download this data. There's plenty which can go wrong 9and be made to go wrong) with GPS reception, in car data storage and downloading of data from a car.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[EllisDees]

All you really need is a device (RFID?) that is tied into the odometer that records how many miles you have travelled whenever you enter or leave the state. Then, when you renew your registration, you could also pay the tax on the number of miles travelled in state in the past year. No need (or ability) to know where you are at every moment.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Why bother? As stated previously in this discussion (and as I have believed for a long time) the gasoline tax effectively accomplishes the same thing, and has the added benefit of rewarding (or maybe just not punishing) those who drive fuel efficient vehicles).

Gas tax has the characteristic of rewarding those who drive gasoline-efficient vehicles, but not necessarily all around efficient vehicles. As the GP post said, these schemes are being driven by the expectation that alternative-fuel vehicles will become popular enough that the gas tax will no longer be sufficient.

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[lowrydr310]

As the GP post said, these schemes are being driven by the expectation that alternative-fuel vehicles will become popular enough that the gas tax will no longer be sufficient.

And as long as the government keeps allowing GM, Ford, and Chrysler to manufacture gas guzzling trucks and SUVs, this will never be an issue.

Of course GM, Ford, and Chrysler aren't the only ones who manufacture big trucks and SUVs - Toyota is just as guilty, though it is my understanding that Toyota isn't directly asking for any special breaks, rather they take advantage of the loopholes that are created to satisfy the big 3.

BTW, GM recently released a Hybrid pickup truck. Better watch out, the states might lose a lot of gasonline tax revenue! Instead of getting 15MPG, the hybrid truck gets 16MPG!

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[Anonymous Coward]

There has to be a way to have drivers pay for use of the roads?

Why? The taxes I pay support all kinds public services that I do not personally use, both specifically and categorically. But I do not worry about this, per se, because I realize that many services provided by my government that directly support other people's endeavors boosts society as a whole, and comes back to boost me eventually. The roads are an integral part of our society. Whether or not you drive on the roads, you benefit from the roads.

So, I think this idea of requiring gps in order to more accurately bill people for road use is bullshit. Its a solution looking for a problem. Who asked for it?

Re:Alternate Fuel Vehicles are Driving This

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

All you really need is a device (RFID?) that is tied into the odometer that records how many miles you have travelled whenever you enter or leave the state.

How is this better than my proposal?

It costs more, a lot more, because of the mandatory requirement to outfit all vehicles with this "device" as well as the almost impossible task of outfitting all border crossings with the complementary device plus the maintenance and up-keep of all devices installed.

The point in my original post is that "close enough" is more than "good enough" when it comes to collecting road use taxes. Thus there is no point in spending public money on any new gadgetry at all. Instead, keep the money that would have been spent and use it to reduce the cost of road upkeep.

Let me put it in perspective...

[gQuigs]

In the field of computing, this would be called spyware. Do you want spyware?

actually,

[way2trivial]

most states require older cars to pass at the levels from when those cars were new.
grandfathering.. look it up..

Why should I care?

[Sithech]

Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive? Sure, if I were running for office, it might help with a smear campaign, but other than that, what does it matter?

Maybe you don't have a reason to care, but lots and lots of your fellow citizens do have reasons.

Anything like this would be likely to have security leaks. Probably big ones. So what if someone with $1000 in hand could find out where your car is right now? Let's say it's:

1. Your ex-spouse, who has a grudge, a temper, and a .44 magnum.
2. The leader of the gang whose homey was just sentenced for a robbery that you were a witness to.
3. That person you met in the bar last week who just won't leave you alone.
4. The burglary ring who's looking for people more than 500 miles from home so they can have a nice cup of tea and a sit down while they are stripping your digs.

I'm sure everyone has other examples. And, by the way, not every person in law enforcement is unfailing honest and upright. Sometimes they fit right into scenarios like those above. Or worse. Just Google ' "Ramparts Division" Scandal' for an example.

Why universal surveilance is bad

[j1m 5n0w]

Seriously, remind me why I need privacy. I forget sometimes.

Well, even if you aren't concerned about someone blackmailing you using data gathered from in part from vehicle GPS data, your life is affected by many other people (politicians, businessmen, etc..) who could be blackmailed in ways that may be (perhaps indirectly) detrimental to yourself or society in general.

Meh, I'll take my

[antifoidulus]

Mr. T GPS any day!


Of course, I submitted that as a /. article, but it got rejected(different news site than msnbc though, but I can't find the site I used right now)...ah groussing!

how bout if...

[suprmario]

...we fix the speed/traffic laws we have first? How bout we fix the road systems so the speed limits are relavant?

Living in southern California, this would go over really well (hi sarcasm!), considering the average speed on our interstates here is about 10 over posted, with a significant portion of drivers as much as 20 over the posted limit (posted in most areas is 65, traffic moves at 75 to 80 in most areas of the 5, 15 and 8, except when they are overly congested).

Personally Ive wondered for a long time why cars dont have some sort of login mechanism, maybe a swipe of your license or something...that a police officer could then access when seeing you in traffic. Why? So that we could have skill based enforcement/graduated limits. A good driver who have X experience and scores X rating on a test at the dmv should be able to drive faster than a driver with a history of accidents/problems...use of lanes could be restricted accordingly, with the far left lane reserved for the highest rated drivers...at least selective enforcement would follow some logic, as it is now, Ive been ticketed twice in the last 3 years for going the same speed (or slower) as every car around me. One of the incidents the officer passed me on the left, then slowed to pace my speed....what the hell is that?

Additional factors for license ratings...the vehicle...a big ass suv should not be permited to travel the same maximum speed as a sports car or even a compact car...you say those big suv's are safe at 65, i say ok, but my car is safe at 90, with the same (or shorter) stopping distance as your escalade from 65.

So if you are a top level driver in a top level car, you get the highest limit, though that speed should be restricted to the far left lane (or multiple left lanes on wider freeways), weaving and other unsafe behavior would still be a violation and should be punished/enforced seriously.

anyway...lets fix whats already broken before we spend money on other crap that has huge potential to invade the privacy of good citizens.

Re:how bout if...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's well accepted that speed differential causes more accidents than just excessive speed. Your plan would increase speed differential among vehicles sharing the road and therefore contribute increased accidents.

Re:how bout if...

[lowrydr310]

I recently moved from CA to NJ. When I lived in CA and wasn't driving in rush hour traffic I never went slower than 75. 80 was about average. I've never seen a problem with this because most people knew to stay to the right if they weren't going fast, or at least knew enough to get over if someone wanted to pass them. People also know how to leave some distance between cars, which makes merging and changing lanes a lot safer.

In New Jersey, the average speed is the speed limit. Half the cars are going 20 under, and the other half are going 20 over. In New Jersey though people don't understand the concept of 'slower traffic keep right'. We have five lanes of traffic with someone going slower than the speed limit in each lane. Then you have people going 20 over and weaving in between the slow cars. When someone is going 50MPH in the far left lane and someone wanting to pass is tailgating them, most people don't even consider moving to the right to allow the tailgater to pass. Also, most New Jersey drivers either don't use turn signals at all or use them at the instant they're changing lanes. I thought the whole point of turn signals is to alert the people behind you that you're going to change lanes. Using them at the moment you change lanes is pointless.

I think the police should focus their enforcement efforts on laws other than speed limits. Instead of pulling over the guy who's going 70 in a 55 zone when there isn't much traffic they should go after the guy who is going 50 in a 65 in the far left lane and won't move over. Better yet, go after the Escalade who's going 80 miles an hour weaving in and out of traffic.

Re:how bout if...

[quantum bit]

Why? So that we could have skill based enforcement/graduated limits.

I'm sorry but that's a horrible idea. Different vehicles going different speeds on the same road just creates chaos and makes it more dangerous. We used to have truck speed limits in Texas but they have all but disappeared in the last few years.

I visited Houston in 2002 when they had reduced the limit to 55 on all highways for "environmental" reasons. Everyone ignored the new limits and continued driving 70-80. Attempting to drive 55, in ANY lane, was extremely dangerous. Needless to say, the 55 limit didn't last very long before it was repealed.

Privatize the roads, then.

[linguae]

If the state and federal governments are going to put tracking devices in our cars in order to have us pay up for our roads, we might as well privatize them. That would save the state and federal governments a lot of money, since they don't have to deal with the funding of roads at all. I, for one, would rather pay a toll to use a road and pay a private corporation for upkeep of the road than to have the government forcibly install tracking devices in my car. Tracking devices installed by governments installed on your property are evil (who gave the government the right to track your car?), and whoever thought of this horrible idea should read Nineteen Eighty-Four and see what this can lead to.

I'm not a strong advocate of road privatization (even with my libertarian views on most issues, I believe that good, interstate roads are essential to a federal government, and the states should maintain their own network of roads; cities and counties, too, not to mention road networks fall under natural monopolies). However, if the government wants to invade our privacy for the name of maintaining roads, then I feel that the roads should be taken away from the government and be sold to private corporations. If they can't even ethically fund the roads, why should they be able to maintain them?

Let's just hope that they don't through with this tracking crap, though.

Re:Privatize the roads, then.

[DavidHOzAu]

If the state and federal governments are going to put tracking devices in our cars in order to have us pay up for our roads, we might as well privatize them.
But if the private company decides to keep charging motorists tolls and let road maintenence slide in the name of Bigger Return To Our Shareholders, I can't stop them since to them I am only Mr Private "Scapegoat" Citizen. Where's the accountability?

On the other hand, I can fire the government.

Re:Privatize the roads, then.

[linguae]

The privatized roads still have to compete against rail transportation, airports, and city- and county-maintained roads (not all roads will be privatized; just the Interstate and state highways). If the maintainers of those private roads rest on their laurels, then commuters and travelers will switch to other forms of transportation that don't require those roads, which means that the roads will lose money until they improve their conditions.

The government, on the other hand, can't be fired. Sure, the government can change leadership every four years, and new Congresspeople can be elected every so many years, but you still can't fire the government. If there are some potholes on the government road, then it may take a while before they get fixed. If the road is congested and needs to be widened, the government now has to deal with lengthy bureaucratic processes of getting the funding, securing right of way, dealing with NIMBYs and environmentalists, and it may take many years to widen that road. And even then, the tax dollars quickly add up. If a private road wanted to be widened and if profits are going strong, then they would widen it, one way or another (even if they had to double deck it or build underground; whatever's good for their customers and their wallets).

This is a nice (but long) essay about privatizing our roads, and some of the efforts that have already been made in building private roads. Once again, I'm not a huge road privatization fan, but it is feasible if push came to shove.

Re:Privatize the roads, then.

[DavidHOzAu]

Hmm, this might be my first post that gets snipped. I wonder if I should add more. ;-) The government, on the other hand, can't be fired. Sure, the government can change leadership every four years, and new Congresspeople can be elected every so many years, but you still can't fire the government.

Oh, okay. I'm not sure how you work Over There, so thanks for the info. I was going from how we work in Australia.

IANAL and IANAP (I Am Not A Politician) but the head honchos of the Queensland Transport are appointed by the State Transportation Minister. When the balance of power swaps side, we get a new Transport Minister who naturally wants the dept run by people who won't stab him in the back, i.e. that won't bludge through the workday and overall make the govt look bad because they "voted for the other guy". It is really good because the people maintaining the roads want to keep a good image which means good roads.

Our roads are separated into different divisions of power: Local, State and Federal. If a road isn't repaired, (especially if the Local Council has decided to levy ratepayers the classic "one-off road toll" every year and not do anything,) we vote somebody else in until somebody listens to us and actually repairs the roads instead of pocketing the cash. Even an independent. Oh yeah, we've got a lot of people to choose from too, and that's just on the local level.

If the maintainers of those private roads rest on their laurels, then commuters and travelers will switch to other forms of transportation that don't require those roads, which means that the roads will lose money until they improve their conditions.

But when all the roads are privatised and are subsequently shot to pieces, how will I get to the train station? I can't, especially when it's 20kms away. My point is that there are rarely alternatives. Especially for the average citizen who doesn't live in a city. Privatising roads that I regularly use simply to get from A to B when there are no other forms of transport into town is not a Good Thing.

Sadly, the other alternatives that you refer to (bus or train) have had a history of being privatized long before the roads are. When the choice is commercial or commercial, there is no choice. It's like asking people what the difference is in oil price between the likes of Shell or Caltex or BP: nothing if any at all.

Roads at the moment are bad enough without them being privatised.

If the road is congested and needs to be widened, the government now has to deal with lengthy bureaucratic processes of getting the funding, securing right of way, dealing with NIMBYs and environmentalists, and it may take many years to widen that road. And even then, the tax dollars quickly add up. If a private road wanted to be widened and if profits are going strong, then they would widen it, one way or another (even if they had to double deck it or build underground; whatever's good for their customers and their wallets).

The Law Is The Same For Business And Government. Private Companies would have to go through the same amount of hoops if not more than the government would: the government can keep things 'in house' which makes for speedy decisions, while Private Companies have to hire lawyers and lobbyists to get the same decision. Let's not ignore the fact that the Government does NOT have to pay shareholders: all the money goes where it has to and isn't wasted on some tycoon living it up in the Bahamas or Caribbean. Answer me this: which way do you think would keep costs down and better use the sources of income?

Privatization isn't good. If you take a look, all of the other Evil Stuff discussed on Slashdot (Spyware, Software Patents, Digital Rights Management, etc.) isn't coming from the government: it is coming from private companies. Do you really want your public roads in the hands of someone like Sony? I sure don't.

No...

[Hakubi_Washu]

Imagine you have a reason, any reason (not illegal, but you still don't want to tell your wife, maybe it's about a birthday present), to come home late a few times. Instead of asking where you've been your wife checks your GPS and realizes you've stopped by one address all the time. She gets a hunch you might be "seeing" another woman and decides to quietly check you up from now on. Surprise you're still going there (Building that grand new thingamob she's always wanted does take a while even when your buddy from work, who is an expert, is helping)! A few weeks later, she's convinced that you show aberrant behavior too (Pschology is a real bummer sometimes). One day you come home to find the divorce on the floor.

I won't go into any "distrusting the government" reasons here, but, you see, from my POV there are very real problems with such tech, so I'm tempted to answer: "There's invasion of privacy, and there's useful technology ... PLEASE learn to spot the difference." But then I'd prefer you'd accept that there are a) different opinions on where exactly to draw the line, and b) legal things you could want to do without everyone knowing you are.

"But it's convenient" is decidedly not a good reason for anything, it's just being to lazy to look for a real one.

fuck this

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one am proud to admit that I have something to hide - it's called "My Privacy" and it's none of the government's god damned business. I pay for a license to drive, I pay for license plates, I pay insurance, I pay gas taxes, I pay some bullshit city sticker, I pay for parking, I pay federal taxes, I pay state taxes, I pay county taxes (part of which goes to the city, some to the county), I pay tolls on the toll roads...

So explain to me, why do I need to pay a "usage" tax again? Will it get rid of ALL of the above taxes? If not, then fuck it.

Even if it does - then I want a completely ANONYMOUS system. Nothing tied to me. Nothing that I have to subscribe to. Nothing that can be subpoenead, nothing that can be investigated. Nothing that can be misused, or misinterpreted, or ill-understood, etc etc etc...

Just stay the fuck out of my business. If you're some government and you have some problem with traffic - then FIX IT properly. None of this bullshit like here in Illinois where we have two seasons: Winter and Orange Cone Season.

Put down concrete 2x as thick like in Germany and don't have to fuck with it for 40 years. Don't put down asphalt that you have to screw with EVERY year, or mix in the stuff that stinks like hell but makes it last for 25 years. Make the road builders fund a bond that supports repairing ANY damage to that road for 40 years. Make the damn roads wide enough to support a predicted 20 years of traffic, and then when we're at 15 years of traffic levels, widen it out for another 20 years worth... But this constant bullshit where we fuck with the roads every single year is a royal pain in the ass and I'm sick of it. Enough is enough.

You assholes in the DMV have absolutely NO NEED for any more data on me. You get to license drivers to drive. So long as they're not being ticketed by the Police, stay out of their lives.

Sons of bitches better not try this crap in my state or I'm running for govenor, and I'll do it on the premise that I'm going to allow 18 year olds drink again - wanna see mass voter turnout assholes? Watch this if you piss me off... I've fucken had enough. I'm pissed off and I'm not going to take it any longer....

And the rest of you fools on this site better get with the program and wake up BEFORE this country becomes like East Germany... I guarantee the friggin Stazi will have had jack shit on the crap the Feds and their cronies have planned for you if you continue to let the camel get his damn nose under the tent...

Re:fuck this

[spauldo]

You'll solve the orange cone season by lowering the voting age. The reason the U.S. has a uniform voting age of 21 is because the U.S. Department of Transportation won't give a state highway funds unless it conforms. Louisiana was the last holdout, and even they folded - and 18 year olds drinking at mardi gras was a major income for them.

Re:fuck this

[Anonymous Coward]

You should check your facts if you are not American, and if you are American you should be re-educated right away. That is a 21 year limit on alcohol purchase/consumption, not voting. Universal age of suffrage is 18 in the United States.

Re:fuck this

[spauldo]

Was a typo on my part - I meant drinking age.

That's what I get for posting when I've got insomnia.

The courts ruled NO to tracking without a warrant

[Anonymous Coward]

Recent court cases have CLEARLY stated that tracking people without a warrant is illegal. http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_10.php

This case dealt with a cell phone as the technology used to track, so what. The technology used is irrelevant. A person is being tracked without a warrant, that's illegal.

Bad Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously does anyone understand the reasoning behind this? This is an idea passed up by a lawmaker who didn't like the idea of hybrid car drivers not paying thier fair share of taxes because they didn't buy as much fuel as the big hulking SUV drivers do. In fact the reason the EPA requirements are so low is because otherwise states and governments would be short on tax money from fuel taxes. The government loves it when you buy gas hogs because it means more money for them.

If you ever see this up for election make damn sure you say no on it because it will basically make it so someone who drives a Hybrid car 20k miles a year pay the equivalent of gas taxes that an SUV would get from buying gas for 20k driving and not only that it will tax that SUV even more because they will pay it on the fuel and on the driving. So in its entirety its a tax hike for states to take more money from you. Not only that if every state adopts this if you travel at all you will be forced to write a check for every state you drove through or your state will make you cough up the cash for all the miles driven.

Give me a break...

[Chris Bradshaw]

I'm by no means a ludite, or a paraniod schizo; BUT, what's the difference between this and what most cellular phones and cellular phone companies are already capable of doing? I mean, besides going public about it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20051115tech01

I'm with Sprint, and for over 3 years have had to manually turn off my location beacon - you know, the one that's active by default just in case I'm in an emergency and the authorities, i.e., e-911 need to locate me.

Re:Give me a break...

[Xyleene]

Your e-911 service is always enabled. The service you disable is the non e-911 tracking. Atleast on my Samsung it is. It actually gives me a warning to the effect or did before I got rid of it.. I live in Canada however so it may be different where you live

"... Mileage-based road user fees..."

[mattite]

Are currently called gasoline taxes. I don't want (need, care for, encourage, etc.) another tax on automobiles. If more tax revenues are needed, raise the taxes as they stand. Don't involve my privacy!

1984

[Anonymous Coward]

1984?

Why we should care

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how totalitarian governments do business. It starts out seeming innocent enough..."Oh, we just want to levy taxes more fairly...we'd NEVER violate your rights!" Then, there's a terrorist attack or, even more likely, the threat of a terrorist attack. Consequently, the government in all their wisdom now says "Well, as patriotic citizens you shouldn't mind giving up a little freedom for more security. We'll just pass this bill that makes it legal for law enforcement to track everything you do, anywhere, anytime and if you don't like it well label you an "Enemy Combatant" (whatever that means) and we'll hold you without trial and likely torture you until you admit that 2+2=5..."

Got it?

Re:Why would they want to?

[ChronosWS]

Just because it's not in the Constitution doesn't mean it's not protected. Remember, the Constitution grants the government certain, limited powers. It does not enumerate the rights of Citizens. See the 9th Amendment. In fact, if the power is not expressly enumerated in the Constitution, the federal government expressly does not have said power. That power is reserved for the States and the People. See the 10th Amendment.

And finally, for the learning impaired (not the parent), rights are not granted by the Constitution. They are protected. Rights are inalienable in the American way of thinking. At least, back when we Americans thought about such things.

http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Amend.html

get used to it

[willisota]

this is sadly the way of the future. in time, you will come to accept it. until then, feel free to argue it, and fight it. but in the end, they will win, and this kind of thing WILL be common. yes, a cell phone can be tracked while it is powered on, even the non gps variants if the tracker is so determined. but it indeed does have to be powered on. as far as using gps to track my driving habbits, and then charge me... well, thats a mighty interesting phrack article... you can bet it will only be a short while before someone figures out an easy, and simple manner of implementing it, and selling it ala radar detectors. and once they are used to us jamming our signals, they will indeed begin pulling us over for not reporting. and then we will find a simple and easy way to spoof another vehicles ID... the game continues... i recall an argument once that the use of radar, or lasers to determine your speed as being unconstitutional, and implicitly evil. of course now, well, it is common place.

Re:get used to it

[blackmagic1982]

Is life that important that there is no future, no matter how dark, worth risking your life fighting against? It is a sad state of affairs, we amercan. A nation founded on fighting the status quo laydowning down without a fight without a peep.

Re:get used to it

[willisota]

go outside and take a look around. we've already lost the fight. we've been fighting, but the average citizen just doesn't care, and now our basic freedom of revolt has been taken away in the name of national security.

Technological reliability?

[mattmacf]

From TFA:

A report prepared by a Transportation Department-funded program in Washington state says the GPS bugs must be made "tamper proof" and the vehicle should be disabled if the bugs are disconnected.

"This can be achieved by building in connections to the vehicle ignition circuit so that failure to receive a moving GPS signal after some default period of vehicle operation indicates attempts to defeat the GPS antenna," the report says.

Privacy issues aside, the problem with this concept is the technological limitations inherent to the system.

1) What are the chances that these GPS bugs will stay "tamper proof" for long? Something tells me a few bridged wires or a $10 mod chip will ultimately make this technology useless.

2) What if this GPS tracker malfunctions? What if the driver goes into an area without GPS coverage for any prolonged period of time? Will the engine die leaving the vehicle unoperable? What safeguards (if any) would prevent off-roaders from being stuck in the wilderness unable to drive to safety?

3) Authentication. Who's to say the GPS dot racking up mileage under your name is really coming from your car? What safeguards would be in place to prevent the theft and/or tampering of these trackers? Won't these safeguards be just another potential point of failure?

4) They plan on making this mandatory?!? Pardon me, but what's wrong with setting up checkpoints every few dozen miles on public highways requiring motorists to pay a small fee to cover the cost of highway maintenance. Hell, we can even automate this process with a small RFID tag that automatically bills your credit card every month.

Sounds like a cute idea, but I wouldnt put my money on this thing going anywhere.

Re:Why would they want to?

[Jerry Coffin]

If you don't break the law, chances are they won't even want to bother watching you. And if you do break the law, you can't really complain.

But yes, it is in the constitution that they can't do that, so it shouldn't be allowed. But that's the only reason against it.

Nonsense. Just for a single extremely obvious possibility, consider a cop deciding to track (and blackmail) people who park at/near a gay bar, strip club, etc. Many perfectly legal actions are still open to being misinterpreted, abused, etc.

The constitution was written to bar unreasonable search and seizure -- and that most certainly does bar placing people under surveillance without reasonable cause to believe they have in the past, are currently, or soon will be involved in the commission of a crime.

The constitution was written that way for a very good reason: because a system that lacks such a guarantee is extremely open to all manner of abuse.

For one more example, this would also be extraordinarily open to racial profiling -- there are already pretty clearly documented instances of people being stopped for driving where cops thought they didn't belong simply because of the color of their skin. Right now it happens more or less by accident, but a system that tracked where people are driving would make it quite trivial to turn such accidents into a widely enforced (even if unofficial) policy.

A system such as this would be open to far more abuses than legitimate uses. The ostensible reason for it is almost entirely nonsense anyway. Fuel taxes already pay for highways on a pay-per-use basis, and do so much more accurately than a system that was based primarily or exclusively on mileage traveled. Fuel usage correlates much more closely with highway wear than simple mileage could even hope for.

--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

Re:Why would they want to?

[publius_jr]

You do not find the idea of giving omniscience to an omnipotent, potentially malevolent force scary? I do.

Here are some possible negative effects:

• GPS data could be forged by ruling power to 'prove' crimes against political enemies.
• GPS data could be selectively filtered to expose crimes committed by out-of-party voters and not those by in-party voters, to, hence, define the people's will.
• GPS data could be analyzed to detect gatherings of political protest. The government would thus have a database of dissidents whom they could 'reform' a la 1984.
• Imagine the Soviet system with this technology.

If you don't break the law, chances are they won't even want to bother watching you. And if you do break the law, you can't really complain.

• If you don't break the law...Maybe the odds are for you, if you are a well-conformed cog in their machine (as we most are), but sometimes those out-of-place cogs (i.e. law-abiding political enemies) are good for society.
• If you do break the law...Ever think a law was wrong? Better hope not in this brave new world.

Because...

[Belial6]

Because when I took photos of a hit and run in front of my home, and the police refused to even take a report, I went to the city mayor. The city mayor had a police officer call me and threaten me. If the police are going to murder me over a hit and run cover-up, I don't want it made extra easy by letting them know when I happen to be in a sparsely populated part of the city.

Looks like an overkill solution

[vodhner]

"Toll roads would be more efficient -- in particular, less congested -- if they could follow the same model and charge virtually nothing in the middle of the night but high prices during rush hour."

I already have an incentive to drive off-peak hours; I don't enjoy sitting in traffic. If that pain doesn't affect my schedule, the fees won't either.

Higher costs don't make people change their plans. Look at all the owners of big cars and SUVs stopping at the name-brand gas stations and paying inflated prices, instead of driving smaller cars and shopping for lower gas prices.

As for tracking stolen cars, Mexico is just a couple of hours from my home, and my car could be long gone before I would get a report filed, so the "free LoJack effect" probably wouldn't be of any value to me.

OK, if they got this fully in place, I suppose we could revert to privately owned roads. The Man would just run a collection service and allocate the fees to me when someone cuts through my property.

Our computers at some point will charge us every time we turn around: forget GPS in the cars, they'll be implanting it under our skin at birth so we can never get lost or kidnapped, can never sneak into the movie for free, will not leave town if the sheriff tells us not to, and so the government will know everybody we associate with. Security is a Good Thing.

A lot of American values are centered on individuality and self determination. You may find that Americans are a little more resistant to this kind of thing, just as we support the right to bear arms -- it's not just for hunting, folks, it's to give politicians and potential invaders something to think about, and it has worked historically.

Authority will always be abused, and if there is a central database of all your comings and goings, someone with a Big Brother complex will find a way to use this information to your disadvantage. Read 1984; "they" are really quite a bit behind schedule, but the water is getting continually warmer and the frog shows no sign of jumping.

Hey, if they make the GPS thing mandatory I'll just live with it and probably enjoy some benefits. But I'd much prefer that they use an anonymous technique, and those techniques already exist.

The GPS thing could in fact be made anonymous, if it were designed right. Prepay for your mileage at a gas station, and transfer the balance into your car's computer. But I doubt The Suits would accept a loss of trackability.

Re:Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y

[pilgrim23]

England was once the home of freedom, till it became a tyrant. America was once the home of freedom till it became a tyrant. Methinks I will drive my car to the nearest place to purchase fake ID, then cash my credit cards and other traceables in for engraved pictures of Paul Kruger, Pandas, and Maple Leafs, then bide my time as an unknown ex-pat on some beach. When Freedom returns, call me, I will be under the 2nd palm tree on the left.

Re:Why would they want to?

[atomicdragon]

Although there are some pros to surveillance, I don't consider the commonly stated, "If you don't do anything wrong, you got nothing to hide," a valid one. Just because a person is doing things 100% legal doesn't mean there is nothing a person wants to hide. As long as there is prejudice and malice in the world, people will want privacy for many things.

One example for the car tracking would be to get tracked going to some hentai store. This could be completely legal, but could cause problems if the information leaked out and you depend on seemingly unrelated decisions made by those that look down upon such things. Or even if there are no noticeable effects, maybe you are just shy about it and wish to do what you can to minimize those that know about it.

You mentioned somewhere about how the government is made of us... and that is exactly why I would fear it getting too much power over such things. It is a government of people, and people make mistakes or are sometimes malicious. At least requiring a warrant or judge's approval helps introduce extra eyes and ears into the process to stop one person from having too much power. But with things like information, it can be kind of dangerous since one mistake in a potentially very large system can let loose a flood of problems, e.g. a security mistake in the computer system letting someone get a bunch of data for many people.

Probably someone with that information would not notice what you do unless they were looking for you in particular, but many people don't want to take that risk. An extreme example would be to have collars installed on everyone that could kill them instantly with a command from the police (not really surveillance but same ideas). It would help resolve hostage and terrorist situations, but it also means trusting that there is no way for a malicious person to hit the button for your collar, for a police officer in the heat of a hostage situation to push the wrong one, or for the thing to just malfunction.

So it kind of comes down to trust in a way. I'm not saying that we can't trust people with any information and there should be no surveillance. The risks for a given process and type of information just need to be weighed against what is to gain. (E.g. that collar above would not get used very often, and would probably be pretty risky, where tracking of people's cars might not have as severe of a mistake and may help with things more often, but it comes down to how much people value their privacy, which can be a lot).

TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREADY!

[Anonymous Coward]

TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders ALREADY!

Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.

A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFID chips embedded in the tire).

Yup. My brother works on them (since 2001).

The us gov T.R.E.A.D. act (which passed) made it illegal to sell new passenger cars lacking untamperable RFID in the tires allowing efficient scanning of moving cars.

Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.

Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.

Taggant chemical research papers :
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)

I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].

It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.

Photos of tracking chips before molded deep into tires! :
http://www.sokymat.com/index.php?id=94

PLEASE LOOK AT THAT LINK : Its the same shocking tire material I have been trying to tell people about since the spring of 2001 on slashdot.

a controversial dead older link was at http://www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html

(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertes usually into any of my urls to get to the shocking info and photos on the enbedded LOGI 160 chips that the us gov scans when you cross mexican and canadian borders.)

You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.

Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.

The photo of the secret high speed overpass prototype WAS at :
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html ...but the shocking link finally died in July 2004 and the new location 2005 does not have a photo of a RFID bridge underpass RFID database collector. But this 20005 link below does discuss their toll booth RFID tracking uses...

http://www.telematics-wireless.com/site/index1.php

Re:Why would they want to?

[sumdumass]

Suppose I'm the mayor and i have a plan for some redistricting or rezoning to give access to one of my contributors. You appose the plan because it would lower your property values and place a chemical plant in your backyard. You gain support from other in the comunity. I can track you and then instruct the police ot follow you and your supporters long enough to find you violate some acain ordnance or trafic violation. Then after enough tickets, your licens get revoked and your ability to organize get seriously hampered.

Lets suppose i am the chief of police, I want a raise but the city won't allocate enough funds. I decide to look at these logs and determine you drive alot. Knowing that almost everyone will make some mistake at some point in thier driving, i have my officers follow you and others that drive alot or even those that don't drive too much at all. Eventualy you violate some minor trafic ordinance and you recieve a citation. I tally up all these citations ans say we need more money then i get my raise. Maybe even use this to get new equiptment or justify hiring my best freinds.

I mean you made a trafic mistake and you deserve to be punished right. Sure so thats out of the way, just the reaosn why you were followed remains. I guess we would never know why you were followed. I could always say that the data form your GPS logs showed you were a risky driver but you would have to take my word for it.

Suppose i looked at the GPS logs and determined you were a dangerous driver and instructed my officers to follow you and cite you for anything possible to get your loicense revoked. Later it turnes out you GPS device was malfunctioning and thats the reason you apear to be speeding across town only to turnaround and zipp back. Or because you live or work next to a bar, we thought you were an alcoholic because your car is always parked at the bar. Could i use this data to get a warent to search your house for drug related offenses when it is parked next to a crack house that got busted last week? even when it was because your girlfriend lives three houses down? i wouldn't know that, just that you might have been at the crack house.

There are all kinds of reasons to not like this idea. If you able to accept all those scenarios then i guess you get what you deserve. I'm not able to accept any of them. I'm possitive one of them will happen and nothign could be done about it./

Why have the GPS report back at all?

[Sethra]

If the purpose of this system is to tax the public based on miles of highway driving then why does the system need to report the vehicles position back at all? It would seem a simpler system would be to simply have the installed device use GPS to see if the vehicle is on the highway and keep a count of the miles driven. You could then report the annual mileage total when the vehicle gets a smog check or is due for registration renewal. The highway tax could even be added to the registration renewal fee.

No need to keep detailed records of time and position at all. The state gets its tax dollars and no one needs fear being "watched" from above. Not to mention the enormous reduction in complexity involved in actually monitoring every vehicle all the time.

SCREW YOU! read at ZERO for the true libertarians!

[Anonymous Coward]

SCREW YOU! read at ZERO for the true libertarians!

The most critical exposes on the us government have ALWAYS been posted at 0, not "1" you blind fool.

TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders ALREADY! !!!!

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170285&cid =14191922

shocking! And in this thread it is a "0" still.

That was merely one of a few different amazing threads I posted anonymously on many different tech industries over the years.

Screw you and your ignorance reading only at "1".

FYI...

[joey_knisch]

Your slippery slope argument is lame. You are assuming the laws he is breaking are just and thus should be followed.

Look here and tell me scociety will fail because a one arm piano player is charging cover in Iowa.

Re:FYI...

[woolio]

You are assuming the laws he is breaking are just and thus should be followed.

I was trying to avoid making that assumption. But if the laws are unjust, then they need to be changed. Breaking them because of perceived injustice just encourages everyone to only follow the subset they believe to be just...

Which means society won't be doing most of what most people want...

Which starts to sound like anarchy...

Re:FYI...

[Anonymous Coward]

... if the laws are unjust, then they need to be changed.

And one way to get them changed is thru Civil Disobedience.

In other words, not following the law.

Re:FYI...

[dual_boot_brain]

Simply not following the law is not sufficient. Jaywalk in front of a traffic officer; bring a bag of pot to the police station. Civil Disobedience is not about sneaking around, trying to get away with an infraction of law. Civil Disobedience is about commiting the infraction in full view of society and then, within the context of the criminal justice system, showing how unjust either the law or the punishment is and persuading society to change the law. You must be willing to stand against dogs and firehoses. You must be willing to risk life, limb, and liberty. You must be eloquent and respectful - otherwise you're just a juvenile deliquent running across the street, screwing up traffic, in order to score some 3rd rate ditch weed.

Most cars have tracking transponders ALREADY !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders ALREADY! !!!!

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170285&cid =14191922

Shocking! And in this thread it is a "0" rating still.

you are already database speed tracked on I-75 and another highway in california using the RFID from your tires.. since 2002

APRS

[Dougthebug]

Interesting enough, some people have done this already for personal use.

Check out www.aprs.net/ old engineers with too much free time on their hands have converted their mobile ham radios and old gps receivers into a wireless tracking system that feeds into the internet through repeater/gateways. Their system costs a few hundred bucks per vehicle/person to setup and requires an amature radio license, which is probably cheep compared to whatever the transportation department is 'considering'.

My connection with aprs is kind of unusual. I worked with a team to put one of these gps trackers on a weather balloon to track atmospheric turbulence data. The aprs system that is already in place will respond to certain radio packet formats and log them for a period of time on the web. So all we had to do to collect our data (we stored real data in the comment section of the packet) was head home and log onto their website.

Re:Why would they want to?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo, if this is such a great idea, propose it back in your own fucking country. Nothing like listening to 21 year old college students from Australia with horrible web comics about civil liberties in the United States. The idea is completely horrible. My property, my space, my privacy. End of story. No government tracking, no government spying, no government charging for use of the roads. That's why we pay taxes. And don't you understand the one fundamental thing about American people: we don't naively trust our government. That's why it took Bush well over a year of false evidence and drum beating to convince enough people to go to Iraq. The rest of us thought it was all b.s., but he won the trust of others. But take it as a lesson, kid, you should never trust your government with this kind of power. There is no elegant way of checking it, and the potential for abuse far exceeds any benefits.

no it won't---

[Havenwar]

I drive kind of recklessly, I never repair my vehicle, and I don't believe in traffic laws.

Of course, most of all - I don't drive all that often. A rented truck every now and then to move the loot... ehrm... I mean legally aquired goods without receipts... Anyways, why would tracking of my vehicle change the way I drive? If I didn't find a way to disable it I would simply live with it. If I needed some... ehrm.. privacy... for moving the dead bodies out of the kitchen... I guess I would use public transportation, "borrow" another car or just encase the gps-tracker-thingie in lead.

Bottom line... I fail to see how it would affect the way I drive.

Sure, they say that people will choose less congested times for their transportation if it would cost them more to drive during rush hour, but thats bs. Most people drive during rush hour because thats the time they need to get somewhere. The people who don't care about when they drive are probably on vacation.

Blech... oh well, not like it will affect me really... not for many years. It just once more makes me thankful I don't live in the states.

Tin foil wackos

[t_allardyce]

Why would you want any pesky provisions in place to stop tracking without a court order? That wouldn't be very useful now would it? These damn liberals seem to think that law enforcement agencies can just dilly-dally around waiting for 'judges' to let them just find out where a car is (and has been for the last 3 months).

The scary thing is, people are so used to hearing about 'government tracking devices' from crack-pots, if you even mention the word 9 out of 10 times the person you're talking to will immediately think "oh there goes another one, just nod and smile". When we finally do get government tracking devices people will either not believe it or just shrug and say "i thought so all along - you mean they only _just_ started tracking us?"

Surely there is an easier way

[squoozer]

I like the idea of mileage based road taxing. It means that that people who use the roads pay for them. I very strongly disagree that GPS tracking it the right way to solve this particular problem. It's just far to open to abuse and a high tech solution to a very low tech problem. Every car has a odometer why not just read that once a year to get the milage. This is a complete no brainer. I don't know what it's like in the US but over here in the UK (the government have mooted the use of a similar system here) all cars have to pass an MOT once a year (new cars are exempt for 3 years). Why not just make reporting the mileage part of that? The first three years could be estimated or self reporting or some such. Yes you would get people that "clock" the car but you'll also get people that cover up the GPS reciever. Clocking is already an offence so just up the punishment a bit to provide a bit more of a disincentive. I'm sure you could also convince a few people to have GPS trackers fitted so that you could profile the population and spot people that are fiddling the system.

Re:Surely there is an easier way

[zmollusc]

I would like the idea of milage based road taxing if it were not for the recent (25 years or so) mania for blocking roads off and creating one way systems. Driving into town and back is at least 30% more distance travelled and twice the fuel used because of traffic lights. Hilariously, soon we will have to pay a 'congestion charge' for sitting in traffic jams caused by the reduction (in both width and number) of roads. Even more fun is to be had when an accident or 2mm of snow makes a road impassable and you try to make a detour through side roads, but they have been blocked by concrete bollards. How i wish they would re-instate lead in fuel so i didn't notice things like this.

Re:Surely there is an easier way

[squoozer]

You have some really good points there about one way systems and such. The problem is that I don't really see any solution to the problem. The one way system is basically required to keep the traffic flowing even though the path is longer. It's not ideal but I can't see any way to move the buildings back to create space for more cars. One problem that should be addressed is parking. I read somewhere that 75%+ of people driving around in London are looking for somewhere to park. If we created huge amounts of cheap parking everywhere we could get all those people off the roads quickly.

The problem is that our government doesn't want any more cars (and I can somewhat agree) but won't offer a good alternative. I suppose that it pretty must the case all over the world though. Public transport just doesn't work for 80%+ of journeys.

Re:Surely there is an easier way

[oDDmON oUT]

I like the idea of mileage based road taxing.

I was under the impression we already had that with the taxes levied on the sale/purchase of fuel.

So is this just double taxation, facilitated by technology?

Re:Surely there is an easier way

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Some of us are apparently naïve enough to believe that these new taxes will supplant, rather than supplement, the old ones. Just like advocates for a national sales tax try to sell it as a replacement to the income tax--whom are we kidding here?

Re:Surely there is an easier way

[squoozer]

To some extent yes we do already have a per mile charging system but it is complicated by the radically differing efficiencies of vehicles. I would say that fuel tax is more of an incentive to drive an efficient car than it is to drive fewer miles. A per mile tax directly charges you for the miles you drive and nothing else.

I think it would be very naive to assume that if this is brought in tax will be cut anywhere else. The economies of most western worlds are slowly failing and needed to be proped up by increasing taxes. Higher taxes are only a short term solution though and will cause the eventual final collapse to be much worse. IMVHO the reason the economies are failing is simply because the west has stopped producing things. I certainly can't think of any real manufacturing industires in the UK and those places that do still make things are barely surviving.

Has everyone gone bonkers?

[Xyleene]

I value my privacy. Not because I break the law and not because I don't think some supreme body should not be watching me but because a Government that is made up of regular people just like you and I shouldn't have that kind of over reaching power over us. Has everyone forgotten this???? I read the posts here and am scared for the first time about the views of many Slashdotters. Never thought I'd see the day.

A government is for the people by the people. Do you remember the intrusiveness of the Nazi regime and the USSR??? This is part of what we detest when looking back at these societies. Sloly but surely even the Land of the free is coming around.... Give the people the illusion of choice and they will follow like sheep I guess

To address the other issue raised here there are legitimate concerns about highway taxes but there acceptable solutions outlined in other posts that don't involve tracking every citizen that drives a car.

Re:Has everyone gone bonkers?

[OhHellWithIt]

Yes.

I read the fine documents Declan McCullagh referenced in his article. One was about a voluntary study that compared traditional data collection methods used for transporation planning with data collected automatically using GPS. Not surprisingly, the study found that people don't report their travels accurately, presumably because they don't remember things like running to get a video. Not a word about disabling cars.

Other links he referred to related to automated toll collection, which seems to be a very efficient way to pay for roads while keeping traffic moving. These systems are already in place throughout the U.S. Northeast using RFID chips that drivers willingly install in their cars. And yes, the information collected by automatic toll collection has been used in two criminal cases I know of.

Neither of the above is reason to panic. But it has been the case for a decade or so now that we have developed and implemented numerous technologies that can be used to track the movements of individuals, as well as just about everything else they do. I wouldn't get out the tar and feathers until I hear an official proposal from USDOT that they want to require GPS devices in private motor vehicles. Still, I think we all ought to be watching our legislators and policy makers very carefully, and to raise hell with them when we see a danger to our privacy. (There's nothing new about that.)

The American Fucking Spirit

[Shihar]

So putting lives at risk, harming your body, and funding gangs and terrorists and etc is the American SPRIT of Freedom????

First, it is only funding gangs, terrorist, exc because of drug prohibition. In the same way alcohol prohibition CREATED crime, so does drug prohibition. If you were to ban alcohol again you would suddenly see a spike in crime and a rise in gangs. Undo the ban and that mess goes away. No one buys their booze from gansters because it is easier and safe to walk to a liquor. Treat drugs the same way you would murder (ha ha, pun) American gang life.

Second, you bet your fucking ass harming your body is the American way. Fuck the government that tells me I can go sky diving, rock climbing, mountain biking, roller blading, swear like a mother fucker, eat McDonalds, eat red meat, drink booze, and do all the other things I do to harm my body. It absolutely is the American way to let individuals take their own risks, reap their own rewards, and pay their own prices. This shit about the government saving your soul, defending you from yourself, and then paying to get your ass fixed when you break is new.

Maybe you need the government to save you for from your self, but I sure as shit don't. Hell, I think we should start a simple program. Make 'prevention of self harm' laws optional. The people that fear they can't take care of themselves sign a contract with the government that lets the government enforce laws to keep you from doing stupid shit to yourself. While you are doing that, the rest of us are going to go rock climbing, go back to our camp site, have a few beers, and if someone wants to light up before bed, fucking let them. Hell, we might even throw a little premarital sex into the mix if there are any ladies willing. YOU can stay at home and read your fucking government regulation manual that details the ways in which the government will save you from yourself.

The only time I want the law to step in and interfere with my life is when someone is trying to impose their will on me, I am having a contract dispute, or I am risking the lives of people who have not consented to that risk. Other then that, the government can merrily fuck off while I go eat some red meat and have a beer (or 12).

Selling Freedom for perceived benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't broken any laws so you have nothing to worry about?
How naive, how trusting, I guess you want the Feds to be your 'daddy'.
Some people are so afraid of the world, or so lazy, that they give away there freedoms and privacy for what? I find a government willing to take those freedoms scarier than any supposedly abated threat, or inconvenience averted. Once the feds take something away, it is damn hard to get it back. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!

RFID

[Dr_Barnowl]

While we might not like it, an RFID system would be less invasive, would be able to specifically target high congestion roads (which is the stated aim of the program), and wouldn't require you to pay for a state-mandated tracking device to be fitted in your car. The capital cost per car would be greatly reduced - the costs for a GPS unit capable of cellular communication must be an order of magnitude higher than a bumper mounted RFID unit.

On British roads, I'm prepared to bet that you could even use existing infrastructure - the inductions loops fitted in roads as traffic-light pickups would probably make fine antennae for the RFID tags.

I'm sure that I can't be the only person to come to this obvious conclusion, which is why I'm doubtful about the motivation for this scheme ; if it's just about road charging and congestion reduction, then the RFID method achieves these aims at substantially lower cost. The only limitation it has is coverage :- you are limited to tracking the movement of vehicles on roads with RFID pickups. If your scheme is to charge for movement on busy roads to reduce congestion, then you only need coverage for those roads.

Employing Ockhams' Razor ; the UK govermnent must want 100% coverage, if they are prepared to spend so much extra to get it. Since 100% coverage is not required to fulfill their stated aims, and a cheaper solution exists which would achieve their stated goals, their actual goals must be different from those stated. The obvious goal that 100% tracking coverage satisfies is the automated surveillance of their citizens movements.

They want to track us all, and they are lying about it. That strikes me as deeply sinister.

They are!

[Anonymous Coward]

Waves hand...

'Those are not the criminals you're looking for.'

If you didn't vote Libertarian, you ASKED for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who voted anything other than Libertarian, shut up and go sit on the sidelines.

You've already demonstrated that you want an intrusive, activist government, you have no room to complain now. You ASKED FOR THIS.
_______________________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.

is it time yet?

[samantha]

I keep hearing that it isn't time to shoot the bastards.. yet. When is it time? Soon no real resistance will be possible as you and your fellows are under surveillance 24/7 and everything you do and say is monitored. You think you have nothing to hide? How about from Pat Robertson and the religious right? How about from the war on some drugs? How about those who are too interested in telling you what you can read or view or who you can have sex with and in what manner? How about from the thought police comming soon? How about from those who want to limit what you can do even on your own computer and over the net to what locks you in to their meager offerings and makes you there cash cow in perpetuity? Such means increase the power of those who would more fully control you. As long as those in power are no fully committed to freedom and have their own agendas we are not safe when applications like this literally come down the pike.

RAISE HELL about this folks! Do it while some of our public "servants" will still deign to listen. All too soon they won't have to.

Re:is it time yet?

[jaaronc]

How did this get a score of 5? Why does anybody have to hide anything from Pat Robertson? Who's saying who you can have sex with and how (other than limiting the "who" to consenting adults and the "where" to "not in a public restroom)? Other than laws to protect classified government data I'm not aware of any limits on what you can read, and other than laws that protect children from exploitation, you can view pretty much anything you want (as long as you don't invade someone else's privacy). And thought police are coming soon? Please -- we can barely afford to pay the conventional police. Nobody is interested in shelling out the cash for thought police. As for those (and this has to be a reference to Microsoft) who want to "[lock] you in to their meager offerings and [make] you there cash cow in perpetuity", I admit that it's a problem but it's a by-product of capitalism, and the motive is profit, not control over your life. As for the topic at hand, I do have to admit that I don't like the thought of being charged a road usage fee. Buying gas and maintaining my car is bad enough -- I don't need to be getting a bill every month based on how much driving I had to do. That said, the capacity to track your every movement using this data would be prohibitively expensive. We are talking about massive amounts of data that will have to be rolled up as it comes in. For example, say your car reports that you got onto I-9 at exit 20, drove 30 miles, got off at exit 7 and drove 40 miles west on US-22. The system will calculate what you owe and possibly whether you were speeding. If road usage information is required, then the data for I-9 and US-22 will be updated accordingly. It's not going to archive all the information about what roads you drove on and when. Quite simply, it'll cost way to much, and nobody will be able to justify the enormous cost of tracking every driver all the time. Get over it. Paranoid conspiracy theories are just that, paranoid. Dictators and mad men who want control and power over individuals get it without GPS devices -- Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Ceasar, etc. all got their power the low-tech way. Our society, and thus our government, revolves around money and profit. GPS in cars is just another way to tax us. So please, if you don't like the idea of a new tax for using roads, say so. But quit the "Big Brother" ramblings. Besides, I always thought that conspiracy theories were the domain of the Pat Robertson and the religious right.

For Sale: Red Barchetta, low mileage, great cond.

[Dave21212]

We Rush fans have been preparing for this since 1981 (Ok, technically, we've been preparing for the Big Brother scenario since 1976).

Seriously though, I have a 1968 Ford Galaxie, and my daily driver is a 95 Honda. I only buy used cars (it's the value proposition). I wonder if they'll try to require some sort of retro-fitting on older cars. I'm not sure, but I think the massive steel body of the '68 may be a faraday cage anyway ;)

They already do

[tkrotchko]

"Why shouldn't those who use a public facility more be also forced to pay more?"

Careful with that argument; its a slippery slope. You can make the same argument about public schools.

But all that aside, a gasoline tax does accomplish what you're suggesting:

1) The more you travel, the more gas you burn, the more you pay
2) It accomplishes what I think is a good social goal, and that is, the less efficient your transport, the more you're taxed
3) It's easy to administer. It requires no contact with the "end user", you simply count the gas as its put into the tank and tax it.
4) There is no ability to governments to track my movements. The government has no power nor reason to track my movements.

GPS on the other hand will be technically complex, easy to circumvent, a nightmare to administer (I can see armies of 1,000's set up to administer), has huge privacy implications and in the end will not raise any more money than could be accomplished by:

    *DRUM ROLL*

Raising the gas tax.

When you think of it though, I think they're trying to do two things:
1) Tax us twice for travel... once for the gas, and again for miles travelled.
2) As is usual for large governments, they want the ability to track people easily.

Both of these are BAD GOALS. I can't believe people will support this.

This is old, old news

[MasterOfCeremonies]

The wise Alex Jones has been reporting on this for years: http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/toll_roads_tex as_set_to_supersize_highway.htm

Gas Tax Infrastructure Use

[iCharles]

Did a bit of research on this--as a bicycle commuter, I often have to hear flak about "what right do you have on the road? You don't pay gas tax." It might be of interest.

The gas tax tends to pay more for larger roads--interstates and major highways. The majority of the cost for normal residential streets and country roads (the sorts of streets you see bicycles on, or, for that matter, most people do day-to-day driving) are not covered by the gas tax. These are typically covered by various municipal and state taxes (sales tax, income tax, property tax, etc.). The percentage varies from community to community, but the gas tax contribution ranges from about a quarter to a third of the infrastructure cost.

My point? I'm not entirely sure. Mostly just to give everyone a sense of scale.

Re:Gas Tax Infrastructure Use

[Forbman]

Most bicycle commuters tend to also own cars, unless they're riding a bike because the Court took away their driving privileges or vehicles or can't afford one in the first place, or they're kids.

The plus side to bike lanes? The road is wider.

In rural areas, it's actually nice having a little extra runoff room, especially on windy roads. Having driven on some of the rural roads outside of Fredericksburg, VA, with what seems to be 9'-wide lanes and 0 shoulder, and 55 mph speed limits, compared to most other areas where at least there tends to be a few inches of pavement or at least gravel on the edges of the roads, it does test one's nerves...

Re:Gas Tax Infrastructure Use

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your point? Is it that cyclists do not have a right to the road independent of car ownership? That they should be ghettoized to some ill maintained bike lane?

Every state legislature has acknowledged a cyclist's right to the road. They contribute to the road's maintenance through means that are independent of car ownership.

Re:For Sale: Red Barchetta, low mileage, great con

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I hear you. I'm keeping my vintage Volvo 240 running for as long as I can, and should I have to replace it, it's going to be with a pre-OBD-II, pre-big-brother, pre-Vetronix-readable-black-box machine.

Re:TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow...if true, and I'm inclined to believe it is...that's pretty scary.

When in the course of human events ...

[joelsanda]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Re:When in the course of human events ...

[Seawitch]

I am sorry to report that the greatest document written in US history, is now a piece of subversion as declared by the "Patriot Act." WAKE UP AMERICA! We are being invaded by our government!

I will now go hide for I am also labeled as a "subversive" because I speak against the government.
I love my country. I don't trust the government.

Re:When in the course of human events ...

[joelsanda]

I am sorry to report that the greatest document written in US history, is now a piece of subversion as declared by the "Patriot Act."

I fear you are correct, sir. You know, the first document I always made sure I've had on all the PDAs (and now iPod) I've owned over the years is the Declaration of Independence. My poor son, only seven and a Pokemon fanboy, politely suffers through my instruction on its importance to our lives. He's seen art prints depicting the French Revolution, photos from Tiananeman Square, stories and art from the American Revolution - because it's important to know destiny is ours to carve.

But the longer I live (and I'm only 37!) the greater the distance between today and the Declaration of Independence. I should take him to visit the graves of the great American Revolutionists before they are carted away.

Double Taxation

[mobalist]

Usage fees are a form of double taxation that get passed down to you the consumer. Historically usage fees for roads (tolls) exceed the cost of construction and maintenance and are widely considered one of the most abused forms of taxation (right below gambling). The City of Houston (where I am from) regularly borrows money from METRO (the folks that own the toll roads). METRO has such a large annual surplus that it covers a lot of deficit spending by the city. I already pay usage taxes in the form of sales tax and of course I also pay income tax. I also pay a host of telecom taxes, city services taxes, gas taxes etc... There are a lot of good commercial uses for location based services like making trucking routes more efficient and lowering the costs of goods and services. Why would anyone support (or even worse elect) someone determined to levy yet another tax.

Sweet!

[Quixadhal]

I'm gonna love seeing my insurance rates go down when they see that my car spends 99.99% of its time sitting in my garage. Now, all I need to do is rig up an AC adapter to power that new GPS chip I yanked from the car and the savings will start rolling in!

Re:Why would they want to?

[atriusofbricia]

Ah, so that's a second yes vote for the GPS enabled buttplug. We'll note that down. After all, you don't have anything to hide... do you.... DO YOU!?

Respectfully,

The FBI

If only RFID worked that well!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do more research about RFID. It's impressive, but in a laboratory way. They just don't work well enough to accomplish what you're suggesting. Nobody has the technology right now to monitor cars based on RFID tags hidden in tires.

Mind you, it's possible RFID tags are in tires, but (a) there's no way to track a tire to a person or license plate (b) the technology doesn't work well enough to track hundreds and thousands of cars at speed.

If Wal-Mart can't get these things to work right, it seems highly unlikely that the U.S. Government can.

Re:If only RFID worked that well!

[Gulthek]

They don't track the tires at speed, but at border crossings and the like.

Re:If only RFID worked that well!

[Lihtan]

All they have to do is embed a 10 - 12 foot long receiver antenna into the pavement. As the vehicle passes over the antenna array, the wheel will eventually rotate to a point that the RFID chip is only a fraction of an inch away from the surface of the road. Let's say the array is buried an 1 1/2" into the pavement, do you think an RFID reader can read a chip that's 2 inches away?

As for linking it to a person, all that needs to be done is have video footage of the car's license plate to be stored along with the RFID reading. Anytime that unique combination of four tires passes through a border crossing, there would be a record of you crossing it.

Re:Why would they want to?

[atriusofbricia]

Oh Lord if only more people remembered these simple facts.

And I think you meant back when Americans thought.

Odometer?

[Spazmania]

Mileage based user fees? Couldn't they simply read the odometer during the annual or biannual safety and emissions inspection? Why do they need to track you via GPS to assess a road use fee?

Re:Odometer?

[Vegeta99]

Because it costs more to maintain surface roads with active traffic control devices and stop-and-go traffic that leaks fluids everywhere than it does to maintain a limited access highway. People who drive in cities should pay more accordingly.

Re:Odometer?

[Spazmania]

So tax based milage times a formula derived from your home and work addresses and require corporate (but not personal) cars to carry a GPS logger and tax it differently. Every tax-based argument you can throw at me for GPS trackers in personal vehicles is trivially worked around.

Re:Odometer?

[Vegeta99]

That doesn't account for personal use outside of driving to work and certainly isnt any easier than a GPS database where highways = $0.003 per mile and cities = $0.005 per mile or something. Plus, it isn't fair. Say I drive 5 miles to work in the city every day. But almost every night, I drive 10 miles on the highway to go to the bar. Under your formula, I'd be taxed unfairly.

Re:Odometer?

[Spazmania]

How is this supposed fairness issue of drive to work versus drive to the bar different from being taxed on the gas you consume like you already are? Oh, right, because you won't know what jurisdiction to credit the taxes to. As if that can't be solved just as accurately by pooling the taxes in a region and then counting cars.

Honestly, the notion that the government needs to track where I drive in order to tax me fairly is truly bizarre.

Have you people read the Bill of Rights?

[Jerk City Troll]

This thread sees a surprising number of people supporting this idea using the “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why should you worry?” fallacy. There have been weak arguments on both sides, but I would like to nail this one shut by reminding everyone that tracking citizens is distinctly unconstitutional. Maybe some of you have read the following provision in United States law.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

(Emphasis mine.) Sure, I know this is a little quaint, but hear me out. This law, known as the First Amendment, among other things, protects the right (note it does not grant a right—rights cannot be granted, only protected) of citizens to associate freely and anonymously. The reason it protects this right is so members of the population can either meet up for Thursday night poker, or overthrow the government. Shock and dismay I’m sure, but that is why we have it (and the Second Amendment). Oppressive governments, as a first order of business in controlling a population, restrict the ability of people to assemble. The First Amendment restricts our government’s ability to do that. Of course, it applies directly to protecting to a much simpler, less severe act of “petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Tracking people with GPS everywhere they go will have a chilling effect on the desire to exercise this right, regardless of the intent. Like everything else, people can gather to do something positive or commit a crime. Take guns for example. Not intrinsically bad, but used both for sharp-shooting sports and killing innocent people. Should they be taken away? Absolutely not and the same applies with our freedom to go wherever we choose without being monitored. It is astonishing to me that we live in an age where people are willing to allow the government to track and monitor their every move. These people should be utterly ashamed of themselves because this a freedom that has been won by great sacrifice and is one of the founding principles of the United States. Too bad we really don’t teach this material in schools anymore.

Re:Why would they want to?

[atriusofbricia]

You can clearly see the potential for abuse, and yet you still trust the Government with such power? And let us not mince words, this is an awesome amount of power whether you see it or not. It doesn't matter why they would want to use it, it only matters that they could. Are you seriously going to tell me that you trust the kind of people who work for the Government with the ability to pull up every place you've gone, how long you were there, correlate that with others who were there, and everything else you can infer with that information?

A certain amount of distrust for the Government is a good thing. People who completely trust and blindly follow the government, any government, are a bit scary to me.

Some thoughts

[matth]

One.. I already have this..
I'm an amateur radio operator and I have a GPS and packet transmitter in my car. If you pull up my website (not the one linked above) you can see where my car is currently, how fast I'm going, and where I've been in the last 7 days!.... oooooooooooooooo

Now.. this is a little different... and a few things come to mind... am I going to have to take my car to some place to have this installed? What happens if it breaks? Do I have to spend my time getting it fixed? How do I know if it broke?

From the article:
  Some GPS trackers constantly communicate their location back to the state DMV, while others record the location information for later retrieval. (In the Oregon pilot project, it's beamed out wirelessly when the driver pulls into a gas station.)

On the Oregon one... why can't I just fill up my jug of gas, while the car is parked in a parking spot and then transfer it over to the car, thereby avoiding the uplink. If it's constant communication seems like a low level RF signal by the car could block it out.

Re:Some thoughts

[matth]

"This can be achieved by building in connections to the vehicle ignition circuit so that failure to receive a moving GPS signal after some default period of vehicle operation indicates attempts to defeat the GPS antenna," the report says.

And what happens if my GPS antenna goes bad? My car doesn't start? I don't like this at all. Either it's my vehicle, and if YOUR device breaks that is your problem. Or it is YOUR (the state's) vehicle... hrmmm nice! I'd drive a new car furnished by the state, in exchange for being tracked.

Miles vs Years - Clean driving records

[ehud42]

Since I have not read the article, I will spout my opinion as fact, and leave the rest to the jury :-)

I have nearly 10 years of relatively high mileage driving under my belt with a very clean driving record. Its not spotless which is my point. I feel there should be some credit or recognition for distance I have driven, and not just the number of years I have been driving. The person who rarely gets behind the wheel is more of a danger then one who has a lot of current experience.

The problem is there is no way to report the number of miles / kilometers I have driven in the past year. While I hate the idea of being spied upon, maybe this will lead to some form of usage based experience credits vs just time based.

Does It Seem Like...

[Greyfox]

at some point most Americans will not be able to afford to own and operate a vehicle? Currently a ridiculous portion of our incomes go toward maintenance of the car. When the gas prices spiked earlier this year, we started seeing reasonably well-to-do families struggling to keep the car fed. Admittedly if they'd chosen a prius over the Maibatsu Monstrosity they went with it would have been easier, but I think that would only be pushing the problem down the road a little.

At some point 1 billion Chinese or 1 billion Indians (Or both) are going to decide they all want cars too. At that point no matter how much they pump the Arab countries just won't be able to keep up with the demand and the happy happy supply and demand game will heat up. One of the reasons cited by big oil for the current prices was that China was starting to want more gas too, so it seems like it's already starting.

We've been taking our lifestyle for granted for a long time now. I wouldn't be surprised if a huge change became necessary within my lifetime.

Re:TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREA

[HangaS]

Even if true, they only know that some tyre ID was read by some scanner. They still need to match a particular tyre to a particular car and from that to a particular owner.

It could very well be just used for traffic management or toll systems.

There is still a long way to go from there to know where a particular car is at some point in time.

Conspiracy

[castoridae]

This isn't new - LoJack has probably been selling information to the feds for years.

Re:The courts ruled NO to tracking without a warra

[rfunches]

Tracking people without a warrant might be illegal, but what's keeping people from doing it in the first place? If an ex-spouse wants to murder the other for cheating and they hide a GPS transmitter under the hood so they can find him/her, it's certainly illegal but the act has been committed anyway.

Besides, I'm sure that Congress [in its current membership] can find a way to maneuver around the courts and prevent such a device from being considered "tracking."

Good grief

[beforewisdom]

Um..., why not just use toll booths?

This erosion of privacy is getting ridiculous.

Don't assume legal == right

[snowwrestler]

There are plenty of laws on the books at the federal and state level that were palatable only because the difficulty in enforcing them eases their impact on society.

There's never been such thing as 100% compliance with any law. The case could be made that 100% effective enforcement of laws would have a negative effect on the nation. Much progress occurs technologically and economically before it occurs legally.

Consider speed limits--they are now up to 70mph on some highways. But it wasn't that long ago that 70mph was considered suicidally fast for the average driver. Technological advances made safe driving at such high speed possible. But it was years of data showing that people can drive safely at such speeds that convinced governments to up the speed limit. But with 100% speed limit enforcement, those years of data would never have been collected and we'd likely all still be driving 50mph to get everywhere

And just think of the economic impact of everything you've ever bought getting there 15% slower than it does now. That's a big hit on the throughput of our economy

Every time I read stories like this one I think we're coming closer to the problem Frank Herbert outlines in "Whipping Star"--a government that becomes so efficient and effective that it is actually damaging to the nation it governs. Will we need an official Bureau of Sabotage one day to create the buffer that society needs from its laws?

Re:Don't assume legal == right

[SacredNaCl]

Consider speed limits--they are now up to 70mph on some highways. But it wasn't that long ago that 70mph was considered suicidally fast for the average driver. Technological advances made safe driving at such high speed possible. But it was years of data showing that people can drive safely at such speeds that convinced governments to up the speed limit. But with 100% speed limit enforcement, those years of data would never have been collected and we'd likely all still be driving 50mph to get everywhere

You don't know your own countries history. Speed limits were 70mph and greater and in many places they didn't have them at all before James Earl Carter and the Congress of that time rammed through the 55mph speed limit restriction during the oil cartel squeezing us and faked shortage "energy crisis". It was incredibly unpopular. All we have done is return to close to what we had before, but still slower than we used to be able to travel in most areas. It has squat to do with safety. The safety nazis were against returning the limits to reasonable speeds. The trucking companies & average voter, however, were very much in favor of it. Time is money, trips across the vast land no longer have to take all day.

Re:Don't assume legal == right

[cayenne8]

"Consider speed limits--they are now up to 70 mph on some highways. But, it wasn't that long ago that 70mph was considered suicidally fast for the average driver. Technological advances made safe driving at such high speed possible."

I'm guessing you're a bit young. Before the gas crisis in the 70's, the national speed limits were in the 70's...I swear I remember even seeing 75 mph speed signs in TX as a kid..but, my memory may be fading...hehehe.

But, the speeds were up way before the recently upgrading of them in the last few years. They were not reduced for safety...they were dropped to 55mph max to cut down on gas consumption due to the gas crunch we had in the 70's. In addition to lowering speed limits...the 70's gas problems (along with the insurance industry) killed off the old fun muscle cars...

:-(

Re:For Sale: Red Barchetta, low mileage, great con

[Dave21212]

Luckily for you, Volvos are legendary in their longevity :)

I wonder though, if there's a simple list out there of all automobiles with a "black box" - I can't find an organized, easy to read list on Google yet, but here's a list of all the supported car models carrying Vehtronics boxes (and the box locations)... and the OEM database for On Board Diagnostics (looks to be very complete). Oh, and some info on pre-1995 models.

Post back if you come across a better listing !
Thanks.

The price you pay...

[everphilski]

It's the price you pay for being an inconvenience to the rest of us... They are giving you a financial incentive to change..

-everphilski-

Re:The price you pay...

[atriusofbricia]

Clearly that's the case. However, in the case of those who must be at work in a given area at a given time, it's a bit of a pain and unreasonable to punish those people. Public transportation might not be an option for them. I'd rather they offer tax breaks or something of the like to businesses to get them to stagger their schedules a bit more.

Re:The price you pay...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'd rather people actually catch public transport. I live in a regional area, and have to ride my bike 30 minutes to get to the nearest train station, then cycle 10 minutes from the destination station to work. I do this because it is the environmentally friendly thing to do.

What I don't get is people who refuse to walk even 15 minutes to the nearest train station, then spend ridiculous amounts of money on gym memberships so that they can walk on a treadmill for hours.

Declare the pennies on your eyes

[louden obscure]

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet

props to gh

jeeze, it seems that my fellow babyboomers that are now in charge have convoluted the call of "revolution for the hell of it" into taxation for the hell of it. i'm sorta disapointed.

Great for public transit

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to dial up a satellite with my phone to know exactly how many minutes late my bus is, and if I've got time to grab a java.

all the more reason...

[dlc3007]

... to keep riding my bicycle.

Trucks

[jefu]

According to a lecture I heard a number of years ago, the damage to a road (and hence the long term cost of maintaining that road) goes up linearly with the number of miles travelled (seems reasonable), proportionally to the square of the speed (again seems reasonable) and proportionally to the fourth power (!!!!) of the weight (this one I don't know about and have not been able to verify). That is, a car that drives the same speed as me and the same distance but weighs twice as much does sixteen times the damage.

It is not hard to set up a simple spreadsheet to look at different models and pretty much any power over two for the weight produces very interesting damage numbers for large trucks. If the truck is carrying ten times the weight of my car (a rather light truck, actually) it should be contributing $10,000 to highway maintenance for every $1 I am.

Attempts in some states to assess trucks user fees that would be more equitable have been stopped quite effectively by the trucker's lobby.

So, the next truck you pass (or that passes you), remember just how much you are subsidizing it.

Re:Trucks

[PlusFiveTroll]

So, the next truck you pass (or that passes you), remember just how much you are subsidizing it.

And just remember that truck is carrying your food/toys/eletronics to your local store where you pay for the cost of shipping with the shelf price.

TINSTAAFL!

Re:TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREA

[njyoder]

This is way too over-the-top for me to believe this guy is anything other than a troll, read the end: "
4 out of 5 times this post was rapidly modded to -1 by fbi shills angry at the epson ink info and tire info and explosives taggant info and only one time did it survive the FBI negative modding Slashdot accounts and remain at +2 by the next day. If you like to read RFID facts like this that I BROKE FIRST IN SPRING OF 2001 here on Slashdot, then keep this vital post from getting modded to -1 by idiots that cannot follow links or perform searches for themselves."

Come on, FBI shills? I can't believe this got moderated up, this is bad even by Slashdot's standards. You should be ashamed!

In case you actually bother to look up anything he mentioneds, like the TREAD Act, you'll note there is no conspiracy. The TREAD act is about Tire Safety and Accountability for defective/bad tires, it has nothing to do with tracking or RFID.

Cars dependant on external input?

[Anonymous Coward]

National Security is another possible major issue with making cars "require" GPS input.

All a foriegn government would need to do to knock out major portions of the US economy is kill a few GPS satellites. If all cars require GPS input, the effect would be staggering. (Even a less advanced nation (think maybe Iran) could even conceivably do this with ground-based technology and less investment than making nuclear weapons.)

Re:TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREA

[Anonymous Coward]

Retroactive database searches are easy to prove where you drive at any time.

Also besides retroactive... if your car is known from tool booth chokepoint... your car is now known.

Additionally, the FBI or cops can scan your parked car and its as good as done.

The TREAD act is for better record keeping, and partially aids in tires sold to non-anonymous purchasers.

I'd be afraid!

Incidentally, your car speed can be estimated accurately over highway spans using this irrefutable data.

Knowledge is power

[patternjuggler]

Although I hate to experiment with privacy and freedom in this way, if it happens some interesting things might happen. I strongly oppose this and the overall trend towards the expansion of government powers.

People claim that the tracking and the law may be used as a smokescreen to persecute people arbitrarily. Since nearly everyone will be breaking the law at some point or another, law enforcement will have to filter out people they think are 'good' citizens because otherwise the burden on the justice system will be too great to handle everyone. I'm not sure this is true. If there was a database with the movements of everyone, and someone found themselves in court over an infraction, they could easily show that there are many other offenders out there that also have to be prosecuted, show bias from other prosecutions, and so on- all the data is out there and probably would be accessible to the defense. It's much easier to discriminate while enforcing a blanket law if the means of detection are also random and arbitrary (e.g. a cop riding around in a car only pulling over people within range).

The result may be one of two things- the first is the government would realize they can't give full due process to so many offenders and move to streamline the system.

Whenever anyone talks about making the government more efficient, you should suspect that the efficiency they're talking about is either one of taking away freedoms from ordinary individuals or of granting freedoms and immunities to large corporations- freedoms are kind of a big burden for the government to bear after all, it can operate with much more efficiency if it only has a handful of very wealthy 'citizens' it is granting rights to and representing the interests of rather than hundreds of millions of people. It's a human thing to do to make assumptions that will simplify the decision process- a congressperson can try to make out statistical mumbo-jumbo about the varied and subtle effects of a new law on the masses of diverse people or they can simply see that a handful of rich people or companies will add millions or billions to their profit margins as a result of a new law.

But the second result is that so many voters will be affected that they will move to get rid of stupid laws, or vastly decrease the negative effects of conviction. It's also possible the sort of crimes the government starts convicting of are made to be felonies, and then they can disenfranchise potential backlash voters very quickly- felons don't get to vote.

In the future, most of the people living in the country might be disenfranchised felons who can be easily stripped of remaining rights as the government sees fit.

One sure sign that the movement to add these tracking devices is a corrupt one is if there are any exceptions: rich people, government officials, or the police themselves will be able to disable or remove the devices legally?

your tax dollars at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you love it when a government that has been elected by voting machine fraud keeps taking your tax dollars and, against your will, is wasting them on some creepy projects that are designed to fill crooked politicians' pockets and to invade your privacy? Very nice, isn't it?!

Good idea, if with limits

[feelyoda]

This is a very good idea. The cost of roads has nothing to do with what fuel your car uses, but gasoline taxes are currently the best way to get drivers to pay for roads.

Having intelligent streets that can automatically charge you for your share of the driving makes plenty of sense. Further, it might finally spawn the use of private roads, where companies would compete with the government on a per-mile cost of maintenance.

Note that this needn't be a GPS system. The most expensive roads could just have toll gates.

This, along with all public surveillance, should have a great deal of oversight.

Some economists are proposing legislation that would create a cabinet level post whose entire job is to act as watch-dog to any group doing domestic public surveillance. You can read a bit about it here

TREAD ACT does too imply RFID! Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

njyoder you ar wrong! TREAD is real.

Goodyear, Michelin and other tire manufacturers are claiming TREAD is the reason they are forced to put in spy RFID transmitter chips in all tires... not whims. A bylaw document addendum for TREAD is merely one strongarm tactic by feds that aided it to be fully adopted. AIAG manipulation was another.

Goodyear RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"Tires have to have a unique identification number called a DOT number," he said. "Cars have a vehicle identification number. Under the TREAD Act, carmakers have to associate the unique number on each tire with the VIN of the car it's put on. RFID offers a cheaper way to do that association

web source : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/122 3/1/1/

Michelin RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"The tire industry faces regulatory pressures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requiring tire companies to monitor pressure and temperature in tires as part of the Tread Act, a much-publicized law passed in 2000 in response to the rollovers of Ford Motor Co.'s Explorers equipped with certain Firestone tires. The Tread Act states that the vehicle identification numbers must correlate with the Department of Transportation's number for the tire."

web source : http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:NKrAuVWpXksJ:w ww.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml%3 FarticleID%3D49901229+%2B%22tread+act%22+%2Btires+ %2Brfid&hl=en

Industry and TREAD RFID ..
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:

"There are no industry-based automotive mandates out there today. Perhaps the only exception to this is the Tire TREAD Act in which RFID is specified as a method of identifying tires supplied to OEMs. The U.S. Congress passed the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act after the Firestone/Ford Explorer issues emerged. The act mandates that carmakers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there is a problem. "

web source : http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/rfid/faq s/rfid_considerations_specific_industries.html

===

SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"For example, Michelin and Goodyear plan to use RFID to aid their compliance with the Transportation, Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act."

web source : http://www.fawcette.com/wss/2003_10/magazine/colum ns/trends/

You are probably an FBI shill for wanting to FACTUAL INFORMATIVE mod the post to -1 like it was 4 out of five times before... all using the feds shill accounts.

njyoder, If you have a fact to dispute then post your facts! Otherwise read and learn! The feds aready scan car tires on the roads.

Did you even READ this post, did you even read the other? or are you a sock puppet account for the FBI?

Re:TREAD ACT does too imply RFID! Proof

[njyoder]

You completly misread that. They're using RFID only as a serial number, to make it easier to know where each tire came from during a recall. In the article you linked to, it specifically says they're doing it simply because it makes compliance easier, not because it's REQUIRED. Sounds like a common sense business move, since RFID makes it easy to identify tire serial numbers. The TREAD Act doesn't even mention RFID, I actually searched the PDF text of it (linked in my original comment).

And again, if you read those links you paste, you'll note that they put in RFID to comply with the customers they're supplying to, one of which is the DoD, the other is Wal-Mart. They could have chosen not to, certainly, if they wouldn't mind losing those contracts. However, there's no legal regulation saying they must use RFID.

Besides, technologically speaking, reading RFID off of moving cars is infeasible. IF you read the first article you linked to, they had significant problems just making the RFID tags readable from any orientation (upside down/right side up). So doing it from a moving vehicle, from a random location on the tires isn't possible. The RFID tag is embedded in a specific part of the tire, so the reader has to be put right next to it for a period of time to read it. How are you going to do that with a moving vehcile, or even a stationary one where the RFID tag may be on the opposite side of the tire that the reader is on?

In any case, I'm definitely not a shill for the FBI, I find your posting hilarious, and I'm sure you're a troll, I p ost this only for the good karma. :)

Re:TREAD ACT does too imply RFID! Proof

[Vitriol Angst]

Njyoder,
Why would you need an RFID to help with a recall? You could use a plain old bar code. Plus, this design seems to be more robust for "distance" reading.

I don't like the moves towards making dissent impossible. What can we do to change a crooked government after there is no more anonymous action? Think about that. If you know everything I do, you can make my life miserable, without me being able to prove it. You can extort and intimidate everyone.

I like the idea of Gamma ray detectors. But I would prefer real and open investigations into 9/11. Planes flying around at their whim for an Hour and a half waiting to hit a building is a bit much for me to swallow. It all comes back to that for me--sorry to ruin my post with a conspiracy theory--but we are talking about real conspiracy data here. You cannot trust the government NOT to abuse a capability. If the RFID tags can be used to track people the WILL be used to track people.

Re:TREAD ACT does too imply RFID! Proof

[njyoder]

Where would that barcode be placed? You can't place it anywhere where it would be rubbed, scratched or otherwise come off. If you place it on the inside, it makes it more of a pain in the ass to scan it in, especially when you have many tires to scan. You're a crazy conspiracy theorist, have fun with those crazy theories.

constitution

[jefu]

There is no constitutional right to travel (though a couple of the rights might be interpreted that way by a judge with a bit of willingness to do so) so a strict constructionist judge on the Supreme Court would have to rule that the government has the right to track you.

Re:constitution

[isotope23]

There is no constitutional right to travel

WTF are you smoking?

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Go re-read your constitution, and the federalist papers. The constitution does not grant rights, rights are inherent. They only listed a few important ones within the constitution, but because these are natural rights you have them and a host of others even if they are not listed in the constitution....

Even if you ignore the ninth and tenth amendments, what about the first?
E.G. "the right of the people peaceably to assemble"? obviously we the people cannot assemble without traveling to said assembly. So yeah, I'd say that alone says we DO have the right of travel.

As for the right to track you,

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is to my mind clearly a case of unreasonable search and seizure. The right of the people to be secure in their persons surely means secure from tracking my whereabouts.

People like you scare me. It is a sad testament to what america and its educational system have become.

Re:constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! While not everyone will fully understand the wording of the U.S. Constitution, I wish more people would at least read the constitution, before they spout off nonsense.

What happens when a GPS satellite fails?

[paul42w]

How many dead cars would we find on the highway - particularly in areas that don't get good reception to start with?

mod chips

[phlegmofdiscontent]

I know a lot of vehicles out there have rev-limiting and speed-limiting chips. I also know that there are mod-chips out there that remove those limits. So, we get this new GPS system for new cars. Shortly afterwards, someone develops a chip to get around that or posts instructions on how to disable it. If I ever had to buy a car with this system installed, the very next purchase I would make would be a mod-chip. Fuck the system.

Re:TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREA

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so a tire may be a bit large to fit in my microwave. Any other ways to kill RFID tags?

Re:The courts ruled NO to tracking without a warra

[RexRhino]

Nothing is illegal if the people who are supposed to enforce the law are the ones commiting the crime. If the technology exists to track people, the government will track people. End of story.

Boy am I glad I live in the big city...

[Ferromancer]

Now I don't need to drive anywhere. The poor folks who have to drive large distances to work are going to get screwed twice over: once at the pump (in terms of taxes), and every year when the gummint processes the GPS data. So much for buying a hybrid to save on gas! In the meantime, I will be paying the same amount to take public transportation. Enjoy being a slave to your automobile, folks.

And then of course, the security vs civil liberty problems. The government will be able to track to you to tax you, but the police will not be able to track you? Yeah right. Do you think criminals are stupid? Either they will tamper with the GPS, drive old beaters that don't have one, or they'll mug people on foot. It's just another way to keep ordinary folks in line.

Re:TREAD ACT does too! njyoder the shill?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rights being stripped away is hilarious. Already half the mods were shills modding it downward. I am supprised it survived. Maybe because its less controversial in 2001. In 2001 I was called an outright liar. Now that I am vindicated... people like you try to downplay the facts.

hilarious oyu say.... yes its comedy. and HIGH ENERGY emission tire scanners on overpasses scanning car tires downward from 14 feet above work fine, were sold, and in place, ... the goddamned sokymat tire web site claimed they proved it at speeds of 100 kilometers per mile for passing traffic and that was years ago.

And on top of that there are already deployed scanners on a few choke points on use highways.

You are trying to discredit it. You are probably a gov shill and probably have multiple shill FBI accounts.

Just because one link by a low IQ firm had troubles with their piddly little low energy scanner does not mean the coils do not work fine with proper antennae.

Variable Rates

[i_am_sadpanda]

If they implement this they should charge double for all the idiots who put their "snow tires" on in October and dont take them off until June!!! It doesn't really snow in oregon, but maybe, maybe once a year!!!!!

Re:TREAD ACT does too! njyoder the shill?

[njyoder]

Really? I read the Sokymat link that you pasted and I even searched the site, there's only one page about the RFID tire things and it doesn't mention anything about reading arbitrary RFID tags from 14 feet below, especially not at 100 km/hr. Why don't you provide proper sources? These are PASSIVE RFID tags (meaning that you have to get close to them to power them through induction), they're not going to be read except close up and certainly not at high speeds.

Re:TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREA

[Hillgiant]

Those spinning rims should create an interference pattern. Or you could wrap them in tin foil.

It's been tried...still a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"There has to be a way to have drivers pay for use of the roads."

Why? Everyone pays taxes already. Why do we need to have a sales tax, an income tax, a gas tax, a telephone tax, an alcohol tax, a property tax, another income tax....? We really only need one tax per level of government. Let the states and the federal government set the income tax rate appropriately, and bill us _once_. Not in twenty different places, so we never know just how much we pay. Having all these little taxes isn't about generating needed revenue. You can do that just as well with a single tax. It's not about being "fair". Not only is fairness hard to define (is it more or less fair to make a rich person who drives less pay more than a poor person who drives a lot? if a person drives the same number of miles but uses less gasoline and makes less pollution, should they "owe" as much?), but in the end, it tends to come out the same regardless. For example, why do you need to know how many miles a New Yorker drives in Connecticut versus the number of miles someone from Connecticut drives in New York? Is it really that significant? Even if there is an imbalance, can't the Connecticut DOT just pay New York based on statistical usage? Do specialty taxes actually go to something in particular? Gas tax, the lottery, phone tax...they're all sold as generating revenue to improve the particular infrastructure, but I think that in Connecticut they all go in the general fund. Raising more gas taxes doesn't mean that there's more money to maintain the roads if the legislature siphons off money for their favorite new idea anyway.

The roads are effectively a public commons. The government isn't in (shouldn't be in) the business of trying to rent access to roads; it should be maintaining a public resource. While charging does prevent overuse of a common resource, there are plenty of costs already. Driving takes time, gasoline, car maintenance, insurance costs. There are reasons why the Internet has been so popular. In part, it is because you don't meter data at the individual user data. Sure, transmitting a megabyte costs something. But, you don't nitpick about the details of how much you use - you pay a fixed rate to connect. Back in the BBS days, sure....you could connect to computers around the world. But if you wanted to go outside of your local calling area, you had to pay a long-distance rate per minute. ISDN didn't take off, in part because noone wanted to pay the per-minute or per-kilobyte charge that the phone companies wanted. Back in colonial days (and under the articles of confederation), the country had a patch of local roads (and worse, local currencies...). So every few miles you'd have to stop and pay another toll. Not exactly a boon to commerce, was it? Why would we want to bring back that sort of a system?

If you really want to bill based on road use, a simple thing to do (which I'm sure is already done) is to bill tractor trailers at a higher rate for registration renewals. Huge trucks carry a lot of weight, and must do more damage to the roads than private cars. They log a lot of miles per year (otherwise, they wouldn't be generating any revenue). Simple, low-tech, no privacy invasion needed.

As for the privacy issue, I don't have a problem with the government being able to track my movements. I have a problem with them being able to track my movements _cheaply_. If they secretly want to know more about me, I want it to be hard for them. I want them to have to present their case to a judge. More importantly, I want to be expensive enough that they won't undertake it without being convinced that it needs to be done. Make it cheap and easy, and sooner or later it will be abused.

TREAD act

[YesIAmAScript]

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/Cfc_title49/publ414 .106.pdf

Go ahead and search it. It requires better labelling, but no RFID chips. There doesn't even seem to be anything in there to even let you identify a particular tire, just perhaps model and manufacture date or something.

Conspiracy theorists (and trolls) never check their sources too carefully, it just dampenens the ranting.

Grandfathering no longer applies in California

[Reziac]

Not any more. California smog regs got changed a couple years ago, and they apply to ALL cars, regardless of age.

My 1978 truck is a fine example -- it used to always pass, being well below the max smog level. Two years ago it failed *because the standards had been changed*, and the fact that my truck was manufactured back in an era of token smog standards was no defense. It now failed the smog test, and required $500 of messing with to get it to pass.

OTOH cars less than 6 years old are no longer required to be smogged. I can hear the hand of auto dealerships in that one!!

etracking

[ralph1]

Thats why there are terrorist you all deserve to die.

Motorcycles? Bicycles?

[smartguy]

I ride a stripped down chopper to work. Where are they going to put it that isn't sticking out like a sore thumb?

For that matter, in my home town of Portland, Oregon, there are thousands of folks who ride bicycles full time. They share the same roads and even have their own lane. Are they going to stick GPS tracking devices on them too and make them pay for road use?

This is rediculous.

Re:TREAD ACT does too! njyoder the shill?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sokymat and the tadiran-telematics.com web sites both had crucial facts stripped off them in the past few years, but your denial will not change the facts that the products work fine.

In fact tire RFID works at speeds up to 160 km/h

Here is a meticulous research PDF paper entitled "Test Report : Single-lane Vehicle identification with UHF RFID"

http://www.ipico.co.za/technology/Whitepapers/Sing le-lane%20EVI%20Test%20Report%2020030618.pdf

And that shows a LOW POWER 4 watt reader at a height of 5.7 meters above a passive RFID coil product can read at speeds of 160 km/h for common tollway type RFID. Admittedly tire chips are a LITTLE tougher because the capacitor hold field is under a third of the energy but the massively powerful gear the feds buy for PATRIOT ACT expeditures uses more than 4 watts and uses specialized calibrated antennae from tadiran-telematics and other secret suppliers. The US feds do not purchase wimpy 4 watt readers for the overpasses. And the crap works well, and even if limited to 4 watts so long as the antennae and proper amplifier is used.

Also remember that 5.7 meters is 18.7 feet away! The research paper shows RFID working at 18.7 feet and 160 km/h.

Quit trying to stop the facts, njyoder. I bet you are one of the many fbi shills out there that try to discredit this horrifying attack on freedom. I showed you TREAD was real, and now I showed you passive RFID was real. You want me to divulge facts I cannot legally divulge so this is where it ends.

Re:TREAD ACT does too! njyoder the shill?

[Anonymous Coward]

Death To women's Rights

Re:TREAD ACT does too! njyoder the shill?

[njyoder]

You realize that those RFID tags are specially designed for that, right? You can't just do it with any arbitrary RFID tag and it doesn't make sense that they'd use these more expensive RFID tags in their tires. It has to drive right under it or over it. You'd be better off with a camera.

Re:As for the constitution...

[symbolic]

I was rather awestruck to find this comment in the article:

The U.S. Supreme Court said in two cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they're driving on a public street.

The Supreme Court has decided that "privacy" only applies to your presence in places that are "non-public". I think this is a gross misinterpretation of the intent of the 4th Amendment. When this was written, there was no concept at all of anything related to being able to observe someone without their knowledge, and without the observer's physical, corporeal presence. As such, there were obvious limitations to just how much observation could actually happen. This is a good thing, because it meant that observation (even in "public" areas) was a costly endeavor, and something to be used wisely. They had no other choice.

Today, however, all that's required is the installation of a few electronic components that can take the place of any number of physical observers. The fact that there are no salaries to pay, no benefits, and no retirement plans to worry about, in addition to the fact that they are available 24/7, make them a very inexpensive proposition. Now, you have "public" areas that can be under constant surveillance, watching. Watching for speeders, watching for red-light runners, potentially watching for road use, potentially watching for -- pretty much anything. The number of potential infractions will only grow, because observation can be done efficiently, and there is money attached (the fines/taxes you pay associated with the various points of observation). The number of ways that you can not only be inadvertently ID'd, but also profiled is growing at what some might consider an alarming rate.

Knowing the potential for government abuse, I have a hard time believing that this is what the framers of the U.S. Consitution had in mind- that "public" area means you have no expection to be LEFT THE HELL ALONE if you are not already suspected of having committed a crime.

Gotta give to take

[subkid]

I'll let them track my cars when they let me track thiers. I'd be good to know when there comming to get me.

Re:TREAD act - many TREAD links for the fed shills

[Anonymous Coward]

The real manipulation was the feds on the AIAG.. but TREAD RFID is also quite shockingly real. Why dont you please look at these following links and read all my extracted highlights here in this post:

Goodyear, Michelin and other tire manufacturers are claiming TREAD is the reason they are forced to put in spy RFID transmitter chips in all tires... not whims. A bylaw document addendum for TREAD is merely one strongarm tactic by feds that aided it to be fully adopted. AIAG manipulation was another.

Goodyear RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"Tires have to have a unique identification number called a DOT number," he said. "Cars have a vehicle identification number. Under the TREAD Act, carmakers have to associate the unique number on each tire with the VIN of the car it's put on. RFID offers a cheaper way to do that association

web source : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/122 3/1/1/

Michelin RFID tires from TREAD :

SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"The tire industry faces regulatory pressures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requiring tire companies to monitor pressure and temperature in tires as part of the Tread Act, a much-publicized law passed in 2000 in response to the rollovers of Ford Motor Co.'s Explorers equipped with certain Firestone tires. The Tread Act states that the vehicle identification numbers must correlate with the Department of Transportation's number for the tire."

web source : http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:NKrAuVWpXksJ:w ww.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml%3 FarticleID%3D49901229+%2B%22tread+act%22+%2Btires+ %2Brfid&hl=en

Industry and TREAD RFID ..

SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:

"There are no industry-based automotive mandates out there today. Perhaps the only exception to this is the Tire TREAD Act in which RFID is specified as a method of identifying tires supplied to OEMs. The U.S. Congress passed the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act after the Firestone/Ford Explorer issues emerged. The act mandates that carmakers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there is a problem. "

web source : http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/rfid/faq s/rfid_considerations_specific_industries.html

Industry abd RFID TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"For example, Michelin and Goodyear plan to use RFID to aid their compliance with the Transportation, Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act."

web source : http://www.fawcette.com/wss/2003_10/magazine/colum ns/trends/

Notice a theme ? Instead of blaming AIAG these tire companies blame TREAD federal law compliance for the RFID tracking chips in all passenger tires. Read those links, you government shill.

And next, you will start claiming the products dont work well on highways.

Here is a meticulous research PDF paper entitled "Test Report : Single-lane Vehicle identification with UHF RFID"

http://www.ipico.co.za/technology/Whitepapers/Sing le-lane%20EVI%20Test%20Report%2020030618.pdf

And that shows a LOW POWER 4 watt reader at a height of 5.7 meters (18.7 feet) above a passive RFID coil product can read at speeds of 160 km/h for common tollway type RFID. The feds buy >4watt readers and also use better gear.

I love the naysayers.

Re:TREAD ACT does too! njyoder - DTR RFID

[Anonymous Coward]

"D"eath "T"o women's "R"ight == D... T.. R...

Defense Transportation Regulations = (DTR)

Quite correct. the usa's DTR does indeed care quite a lot about tire RFID!!!

U.S. Department of Defense Transportation Command and the DTR.

They do not like multiple RFID antennas... but they LOVE LOVE LOVE the untamperable nature of the embedded tire substrate RFID chips. The DoD creams their pants on that little choice aspect.

Are you "John Arndt"?

Re:TREAD ACT does too! njyoder the shill?

[feagle814]

Mister Anonymous, while I may or may not be an FBI shill (you decide!), you may be interested to know that you can go "back in time" on the internet using www.archive.org - it lets you see copies of past websites and you may be able to find your 'proof' links there.

Another alternative

[loose_cannon_gamer]

I think a good alternative, severally submitted, is to simply use odometer numbers for taxes.

A better option IMO that obviates the need to regularly register your mileage, is simply to raise automotive taxes. Amortize up front the expected taxes on the entire automobile when purchased new -- obviously the government thinks it knows how much it should charge per mile of roadway use, so simply multiply by the expected lifetime of the car. If you sell the car later / trade in, you deserve to get back the amortized difference. No loss of privacy, no checkups, no reports, no registrations, no problems. And because many cars don't make it to their guestimated lifetimes (accidents / etc.) the government could probably come out ahead on it. You could even cut gas taxes, so buying the car is $EXPENSIVE$ but owning and operating gets cheaper. Since most people consider cars to be big-ticket items anyway... Sure, we would need a transition plan, maybe ramp up cost per mile on the car over the next 20 years, and poof, adjusted consumers, funded highways, privacy maintained.

Seems like the easiest solution to me.

Re:User fees are the way to go it's a crime

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course "Legal and Illegal" map directly to "Right and Wrong"!
-just google "Rosa Parks"

The law -like a viper- must be respected; it can hurt you. Whether the law -or any specific law- is to be esteemed* is completely a matter of individual choice.

* see n1 http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=esteem

GASOLINE TAX.

[Anonymous Coward]

'mileage-based road user fees.'

How about, the more gas I burn the more tax I pay because i have to BUY MORE....

stupid.

Re:For Sale: Red Barchetta, low mileage, great con

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Thanks for the links -- I've never seen a list at all before this, but it is my understanding that GM cars have *all* had black boxes for awhile.

invasion of privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

The federal government in all of their dealings, out of lack of something better to do with our tax dollars or or just want to use technology just because they can is just invading our privacy. I enjoy my right to privacy without have "big brother" looking over my shoulder watching my every move. I don't car, call it in the name of "national defence", call it in the name of "those who use the roads pay for the roads," i don't care. There are better ways to defend this nation without watching its own citizens; try watching those people who come from 0ther countries and those who take advantage of other people's freedoms.

As far as people paying to use the roads goes, isn't that what the gas tax is for? It is fair that way, but to impose a second tax/fee one drivers is just merely taxing folks twice for one thing.

I have another runaway idea...

[macserv]

My idea is a using the Preview button and a checking your posts so you don't a sound like a Luigi from a Futurama.

Low-Tech Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If the goal is a usage-based user fee for roads - why not just rely on revenue from taxation of fuel?

NOT that I am advocating such taxes - but spending on GPS-based taxation will just increase costs (and "gaming" by tinfoil-hat-wearing slashdotters)...

More importantly

[nurb432]

If I'm not under active investigation for breaking the law, then its none of their damned business where i go, or what i do. None, zilch, zero, zip.

Has nothing to do with people 'cheating' and not being able to get away with it now. It has all to do with the citizen's rights and freedoms.

Any technology is defeatable

[shrtcircuit]

Not getting into whether it will become illegal to do so, I have to surmise that any technology created can be defeated. It's the basic principle of computer security, and is every bit as valid here.

It's hard to track a vehicle that just broadcasts a GPS signal from the same 10-foot area in Siberia 24x7, or that doesn't broadcast anything at all. As for RFID tracking in tires, if you can find the frequency of the chip it shouldn't be too hard to take care of (or overload electronically, somehow).

I don't doubt that they're trying to track movement - that is nothing new. And I certainly can't stop them from videotaping me, which they already do to motorists every day. But knowing where I go minute by minute (and likely why I go there) is just going too far. Too much potential for abuse, and too little history of responsible use of power by the people who want to know. I don't break laws that will put me in jail, but at the same time I have to expect that I can move from place to place without being questioned, tracked, and scrutinized. This just reeks of the Soviet-era "show me your papers" stuff, and at some point enough is enough.

Of course in Germany, Hitler rose to power by either silencing those who opposed him, or by convincing the masses by and large that there was nothing to fear. I wonder if one day the world will need to be saved from itself, or if it will slip into a global police state where your every communication, motion, and action is monitored and analyzed by those who believe they're right and should control you. Hell, maybe this sounds like paranoia - it might be. But I'm also fairly observant, and don't have some anti-government agenda. I just think we are globally heading down a path that will put us in a place we died to get other countries out of 55 years ago.

I think we're going to go downhill before it gets better... But we'll see.

Re:TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREA

[Vitriol Angst]

I was reading about a new requirement that all cell phones made after January, 2006 must have a GPS chip in them -- ostensibly to provide 911 service, but I'm sure, mostly to provide location of the user. The chip is not required to provide GPS service usage to the user.

In Gulf War I, I was watching a news program that talked about how the Laser Printers had chips in them that, when hit by a satellite signal, would identify the location of the device. This was used to target "command centers" -- but probably, just places where someone had some computers. My more cynical nature now wonders how everyone getting killed is an insurgent.

Anyway, the efforts to track everything are coming along nicely. I am somehow more troubled by the ability to halt all crime than I am by crime itself. I suppose I'd feel differently after I was blown up -- but you see how difficult it would be for me to learn that lesson?

Just more grist for the mill.

Oil companies and automakers love this!

[aquarian]

Fuel taxes are almost perfect as road user fees. Larger, heavier vehicles tear up the roads more, and also happen to use more fuel. If pollution is considered, the model holds up there well too.

High fuel taxes encourage people to use less fuel, and to buy more fuel efficient vehicles -- perhaps from other than (SUV heavy) US carmakers. But if road use were taxed by mileage, fuel use would be less affected, as would vehicle choice WRT fuel efficiency. SUV makers and oil companies would benefit. So they love this. And yes, it's partly their lobbyists and think tanks who are behind it.

Also, who do you think would be making the GPS units? Delco, perhaps? Hey, if you can't compete for consumer business effectively, go for the gov't contracts...

4th Ammendment.....

[queenb**ch]

There shouldn't need to be a provision in the law for this. It's part of the US Constitution or have Oregon and Washington suddenly seceded from the union without anyone being the wiser.

Quote from the Bill of Rights -

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

I'd say that tracking wherer you go would fall under "be violated" part.

2 cents,

Queen B

Learn to moderate, people

[Ryan C.]

Stop modding this guy down just because he seems to be crazy. That's not what mod. points are for. This is a very interesing rant and brought about a lot of discussion. It's on topic, it's got interesting links, it should be +5 interesting. Wrong, but interesting. If you disagree, post. Don't try to argue with mod. points. Read the moderator guidelines.

User fees? Internet-pay per minute-byte?

[lpq]

I don't see this as a positive trend. There are certain "infrastructure" items provided in a society for the common good. Providing them at a fixed-cost allows considerably greater mobility and freedom for "users" without having to worry about "the small stuff".

How is charging per-minute usage fees on roads, or charging for length traveled, or "weight" on a road, different than charging per-minute internet access fees, distance or volume charges?

I don't think it would be economically viable to start charging highway usage by the mile. I don't know about every location, but in areas of high property value, those "servicing" the local residents (think teachers, nurses, et al. in addition to standard service type jobs) often cannot afford to live in the communities in which they work due to cost: they have to commute from outside the area because the area is too expensive. Charging per-mile type fees for drivers will hit those who have to commute to work. Those who can telecommute, or who are paid well enough to afford "local" housing will be least affected. It seems this just has the effect of increased separation between the haves (living near their job, or not needing to work), and those having to drive to work.

Again, so often there is the NotInMyBackYard syndrome -- usually more so from affluent or "quality-of-life"-special communities. In the SF Bay Area, mass transit was supposed to encircle the bay and taxes were levied many years ago to implement such, but snotty towns have put up roadblocks to having tracks through their cities or having rail-stops exit in their cities (we don't want commuting "riff-raff" exiting in our city -- or even rails going through it!...atherton.ca.us, et al).

1984 just a few decades late?

[olddotter]

subject says it all

1984, 20 years late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the last couple of years, I've noticed video cameras on public buses. More recently, there seems to be more cameras at street intersections everywhere.

This is just the next phase of government tracking its sheep (citizens). They want to install GPS in cars for the main purpose of SPYING... tracking all activity. Five years down, they will want to install GPS chips inside human bodies for some other lame excuse, say terrorism.

You don't need goddam GPS to calculate average cost for the tax. A simple calculation can be used instead:

Tax = 2% * (avg. gallons consumed) * (avg. mpg. of vehicles in the city)

If state *revenue* falls due to higher mpg vehicles, simply increase the tax percentage, and stay off the stupid, spying GPS!

Re:If you didn't vote Libertarian, you ASKED for t

[Anonymous Coward]

How right you are.

Re:TREAD act - many TREAD links for the fed shills

[mibus]

I don't suppose you have any links to your earlier posts on /.?

Not looking back far enough

[snowwrestler]

Your response basically mirrored the other one but since you were more polite I'll respond to you.

First of all I never mentioned the federal speed limit, which was imposed for conservation reasons in the 1970's and to which both your posts referred.

I was actually referring to the development of state and local speed limits from the early 1900's to the 1970's, when the "federal 55" was imposed. During that time period the raising of the state or local limit was often in response to how fast people were actually driving--i.e. everyone was breaking the law so they changed the law. In the early 1900s, many towns had speed limits well under 25 mph throughout, for instance.

Obviously such a method of advancement would be hard to imagine in a world where the current speed limit is enforced with 100% effectiveness.

To call in another example--would record labels and TV networks be as interested in online distribution if the government could stop all online trafficking of copyrighted material?

The human tension between those disobeying and those enforcing the laws of the country is an integral part of the progress of American society, as both sides are citizens and in many ways equal (if enough citizens don't like a law, it can be changed). If you take humans out of the equation (automatic law enforcement) I think there's a real risk of dramatically changing the dynamic from a tension between equals, to a police state supervising its wards.

Are you not paying attention?

[jefu]

Strict constructionist judges have not frequently looked at the tenth amendment to allow people to keep their rights. Remember that Scalia thinks we all (except, undoubtedly himself) have "too much freedom".

Further remember things like "free speech zones" (for the right to assemble), the recent upholding of the right of the constabulary to require you to show identification in (essentially all circumstances), the fact that driving is not a right but a privledge, arbitrary searches for airline (and perhaps eventually all other public) travel as well as essentially arbitrary prohibitions against certain people travelling. Note that there have been several recent incidents where people have been arrested or removed from public transportation for not showing id Remember that people are often stopped for just walking around in some neighborhoods (perhaps it is the wrong time of day, perhaps they are just the wrong color).

Finally remember that interstate travel may well be covered by the "commerce clause", which makes it federal jurisdiction and subject to rules imposed by the congress and executive branch.

None of this is precluded by the fourth amendment. Searches and seizures need to be "unreasonable" to be illegal and the courts have found more and more things "reasonable" - especially in the aftermath of the September, 2001 WTC incident.

"People like you scare me. It is a sad testament to what america and its educational system have become."
People like you scare me, you're not paying attention.