Posted on 01/02/2003 3:43:33 PM PST by EBUCK
State GPS Tracking Your Mileage and Your Movements
Marc Morano, CNSNews.com Thursday, Jan. 2, 2003
CNSNews.com If a proposal by an Oregon State task force becomes law, the government would be able to use satellite equipment to keep track of each driver's mileage and tax that driver accordingly in order to pay for road repairs. Even the state administrator who proposed the plan thinks citizens "should be concerned" about the possibility of civil liberties violations. And Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy at the free market Cato Institute told CNSNews.com , "I think it's nutty and I don't think it's ever going to happen."
"I don't think Americans are ready to be subjected to that type of civil liberties intrusion," Edwards explained, "where government tracks them around wherever they drive."
Edwards believes the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) mileage-tracking proposal is the result of overzealous government bureaucrats.
"This is an example of economists gone wild," Edwards said. "Economists often think of these schemes that seem efficient on paper, but they don't think about the real world and the civil liberties aspect of things."
Jim Whitty, administrator of Oregon's Road User Fee Task Force, in an exclusive interview with CNSNews.com , called the GPS mileage tracking tax proposal necessary because "it costs a certain amount to drive on the road per vehicle and people ought to pay their fair share of their usage."
Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber and the state legislature set up the Road User Fee Task Force in November 2001 to explore methods of financing transportation costs.
Noting that gas taxes are unfair because of the large differences in the fuel economy of automobiles, Whitty and the task force explored alternative taxing methods to ensure equity among drivers. Seventy-percent of Oregon's road maintenance revenues currently come from federal and state gas taxes.
Commission members rejected the idea of using automobile odometer readings to track mileage because they figured some people would accumulate out-of-state mileage. The idea of raising the existing gasoline tax was also turned down because with automobiles becoming so fuel efficient, gas tax revenues are projected to dry up.
"If everybody had high mileage cars, our road system would fall apart" from lack of revenue, Whitty said.
'Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee'
The solution seemed clear to Whitty.
"You go to technology and you look and say we can calculate mileage electronically, so it can be paid electronically ... That is where the GPS device came in," Whitty said.
Whitty envisions a system that would either send auto owners a monthly bill for their miles or set up gas stations so they could read the GPS transponders and collect the tax during fueling stops. The new tax per mile would be called a VMT fee or Vehicle Miles Traveled fee.
Whitty would also like to see other technologies besides GPS considered.
"There is an odometer sensor which can calculate mileage and then data can be transferred by radio frequencies to a fuel pump. We are going to be looking at both," Whitty explained.
Whitty believes that despite the fears of potential civil liberties violations, the new method of calculating road taxes is needed to make transportation taxes fairer.
"[The task force] wanted it to look like the gas tax used to look like back around 1960 when all cars virtually got the same miles per gallon," Whitty said. "What has happened though is that in the 70s, 80s and 90s, some cars became more fuel efficient and others didn't.
"There was no longer a correlation between miles driven and revenues raised," Whitty explained.
When asked about possible civil liberties violations, Whitty admitted that people should be cautious about the state's use of the mileage tracking technology.
"They should be concerned and they should watch this and make sure that is doesn't turn into such a thing," Whitty said.
However, "that is not the purpose of this fee," he added. "The state transportation department has no interest in knowing where people are going either currently or after the fact."
Whitty believes police may ultimately end up using the GPS data for criminal investigations.
"If there was a police necessity perhaps, but we are not looking at that. That is not our concern," he said.
Edwards remains unconvinced.
"You can say it's not the purpose, but later on it will be abused and expanded," Edwards said.
"We don't need the government to have Big Brother precise tracking systems to make sure the highways are precisely paid by precisely the right people who use them," Edwards continued. "The gas tax now is roughly efficient."
Edwards also dismissed Whitty's concerns about dwindling revenues from gas taxes.
"The private sector is doing more with less. I don't see why the government sector also cannot continue to improve its productivity," he said.
Edwards also believes the cost of the GPS proposal would be too high considering "all the bureaucracy costs of setting up and installing the system, hiring satellite time, running the computers and having all the analysts looking at data."
"Do we really need all that? Edwards asked.
Copyright CNSNews.com
Sure all Bush has to do is go on TV and tell the sheeple it is to protect them from terriorism..and they will let him do anything. Go on follow me, read my mail, read my email..do on body search my wife..search my car, ask for my papers..go on anything you want.
It is like taking candy from a baby..read FR. Once hardened government watchdogs and defenders of the constitution are licking his boots
and when did this happen? The gov't is always on the search for new revenues, who are they trying to kid....
The prior comments apply to the C/A (coarse) channel. The military uses an encrypted PN sequence with a fairly long period (7 day repeat sequence if I recall correctly). That PN sequence is known, but you can't lock to it unless you have the crypto key to modify the PN sequence in real time to recover the data. The encrypted channel runs at 10 times the speed (on the same carrier frequency). The faster rate helps things like ICBMs and supersonic jet aircraft recover the data at a usable rate.
The 1.57542 GHz signal travels in a straight line. There is little atmospheric refraction. Any transmitter you build will affect only receivers that are "line of sight" to your location.
I dunno. Oregon elected the bee esser from Hope - both times.
They may just go for this.
It would never be an option I would want. I've driven 30 years without having somebody magically unlock my doors when I left the key inside or have somebody read a road map for me.
If they make it mandatory, I'll be getting older cars from that point on. Can the used car dealers afford to install one in each car on the lot? I doubt it. There is going to be too much resistance to this to be feasible...unless they sneak them in.
How many ways could this be defeated? Hard to count all of them.
Wanna buy some wire cutters?
It looks like you have hit on it!!!
There was an issue in the news about a rental car company doing exactly that...and levying fines to customers who sped!!!
Sooner. The commercial vehicles in this country are under attack by the DOT to install "black boxes" in order to monitor location, speed, idle time, driver hours of service, origin points etc. The stated purpose of this is road safety. It appears that this system will be a reality in less than 3 years.
Once this system is set up, then the transition to private passenger cars is inevitable.
I've been building telematics apps for Detrioit for the last 18 months. This one is dirt simple.
That was my first thought also, maybe someone in insurance.
I mean, who would most benefit from gps (and possibly accelerometer) data like this?
Insurance and the NWO types..
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