--- Thomas Searles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "... I don't think many people are going to be very accepting of technology that allows a government agency to track where they travel."
Tom is referring to GPS based technology that, by tracking where and when you travel, makes it possible to bill a car owner for the exact use of an automobile and would also permit congestion pricing. This need not be confined to major roadways but could also be applied to secondary roads and even city streets. And, as Tom also complains, it could even be used to keep track of your speed and issue speeding tickets. I don't find the privacy argument very persuasive. Right now the phone company has records of every call you make and those records are available to the government upon a showing of good cause. Your income tax returns are kept by the government. Your credit card purchases are also recorded and available to the government when necessary. In all of these cases privacy concerns have been dealt with by rules that limit access to the data to particular purposes. There's no reason why similar arrangements couldn't be applied to travel data collected via a GPS system for billing purposes. Privacy is a legitimate concern that needs to be dealt with. But it's no reason not to deploy a useful technology like GPS that could have many beneficial uses from billing people based upon their actual use of the road system to traffic control and accident avoidance. Charlie Swope St. Paul _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Metropolitan Issues Forum http://www.e-democracy.org/tcmetro Rules: Sign posts with real name. You may not post more than twice a day.
