Re: automatic toll collection, was Japan Puts Its Money on E-Cash
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:31:36AM -, John Levine wrote: > An article in Wikipedia says that congestion tolls in London (UK) are > also collected automatically by taking pictures of license plates. Yes, the London congestion charge. There were some horror stories about trouble with the ANPR* technology in the first weeks, but now it's just ticking over in the background and appears to be working. There is almost certainly a feed to MI5 (internal security) of the whole thing. The UK government has various plans for rolling out tracking technology more widely, such as ANPR cameras on motorways for detecting speeding, or GPS devices for national road pricing. It's also planning on building a vast database of everyone's name, address, biometrics, and fingerprints. Pete * automatic number plate recognition -- Peter Clay | Campaign for _ _| .__ | Digital / / | | | Rights! \_ \_| | | http://www.ukcdr.org - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: automatic toll collection, was Japan Puts Its Money on E-Cash
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:31:36AM -, John Levine wrote: > An article in Wikipedia says that congestion tolls in London (UK) are > also collected automatically by taking pictures of license plates. The German TollCollect system (used on the national highway system) reads license plates of every vehicle (currently, only trucks are charged) by OCR. The police is purportely very interested to obtain realtime access to the logs. Don't we all feel much safer, already? -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: automatic toll collection, was Japan Puts Its Money on E-Cash
> And, while there is a privacy issue, optical license plate readers > are getting good enough that the issue may soon be moot. Seems moot now. The 407 toll road around Toronto has no toll booths at all. If you drive on it frequently, you can get a transponder but otherwise, they take a picture of your plates, look you up, and mail you a bill. This does work -- I've gotten a bill for my NY car after a trip. The web site at http://www.407etr.com/ makes it clear that the transponder is completely optional, and won't save you any money unless you use it more than 7 times a year. (The transponder costs $2/mo and saves $3.45 per trip.) The easiest way to get a transponder appears to be to drive on the road, wait until you get a bill on which they will have assigned you an account number, then use that number to log into their web site and order one. An article in Wikipedia says that congestion tolls in London (UK) are also collected automatically by taking pictures of license plates. R's, John - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: automatic toll collection, was Japan Puts Its Money on E-Cash
>> Some Americans, analysts note, are already using a version of e- >> cash to bypass toll lanes on highways. >Don't take that as a sign of consumer acceptance, though. In >Illinois, if you won't pre-pay your tolls in $40 increments, you will >pay double the rate in cash at the toolbooth. Here in the northeast where E-ZPass is much more established, the discounts for using the pass are much smaller unless you get a commuter plan, but they're extremely popular because they save a great deal of time. In New Jersey, they've redone several high-volume toll plazas so the road splits with the right lanes going to toll booths and the left lanes running under a grid of pass readers where you don't even slow down. The prepay increment is only $15. > And the electronic system is anything but anonymous. No argument there. I always figured that I'll use my pass for normal travel but wrap it in foil and pay cash when I'm disposing of my political opponents' bodies. "Couldn't have been me, my car has a pass. Look at all these toll logs." R's, John - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
