More happy fun surveilance from the Labour government

[spudtater]

Apparently the new scheme to cut emissions and ease congestion involves charging users per mile they drive. Which entails fitting a device to each car so that it can be tracked by satelite and charged accordingly.

Yes, the government wants to implement a scheme which will allow them to know where you've been, where you're going, and how long you stay there, for every car journey you make.

I am constantly astounded by the cheek of this government.

Now, let's go back to the problems that this scheme is supposed to solve: emissions, and congestion. And contrast our existing system, which is based on taxing fuel heavily:

1. With fuel taxing, not only are people charged for going on long journeys, they're also charged for using energy-inefficient cars. Woo! Green!
2. The more congested a road is, the longer a car stays idling in traffic, using up fuel. So the more congested the road, the more you pay in fuel taxes. Woo! Magic!

So the supposed benefits are completely bogus. And what about the negatives? Well, first of all there's cost. How much is it going to cost to manufacture and fit a tracking device for every single car in the UK? Especially as this is (*shudder*) a governmental IT project. And they certainly come in under budget and to specification, don't they?

And then there's privacy. With this and ID cards, the police will know who you are, what you do, where you live, where you came from, and where you are going. They won't need to ask for "your papers, please".

Government admits struggle to sell road pricing scheme — The Grauniad

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy. Over 200,000 signatures so far. Add yours!

Edit: while we're all signing petitions, I notice there's a new ID card petition on the 10 Downing Street site.

Comments

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

You make some good points here. I agree that the London congestion charging scheme is harder to argue against; the CCTV aspects worry me, but it has a definite and specific benefit. (Reducing traffic in central London).

How much do you know about the congestion charging scheme? Does it record information as fine grained as "on 11/01/07, 10:53 am, you were on Mornington Crescent Edgware Road going East" or as general as "on 11/01/07 you went somewhere in central London"? It's a difference of degree, not type, but at least we can feel that with the second case, data is not being collected merely for the sake of it.

There's been talk of extending that scheme over the rest of the country, and my response to that would be: only if it's really unavoidable. If you can show that it really would be beneficial to set up a controlled zone in central Edinburgh, then so be it, but don't do it just because you can.

[brucec.livejournal.com]

I believe the system can record, in real time, the presence of a car going along a specific road which has the equipment installed on it.

[scattergather.livejournal.com]

I believe the cameras are only used at the boundaries of the charging zone (not certain of this, though); so it would indicate when a car crossed the boundary, and the direction. Time will render this distinction moot, however; how long before technology allows CCTV to be mined for vehicle data? The only real palliative for this problem at present (short of abolishing CCTV networks) would be legislative safeguards (which could obviously be extended to a road pricing system). The likelihood of getting legislation you'd be content with is slim, and that's before we get into the issues of data security, granted, but in the long term, legislative safeguards are about the only long term defence of civil liberties that is viable; developments in technology will continue to throw up risks to privacy, and eventually the benefits of technology will outweigh the cost of the risk to privacy for the great majority of the population. Even at present there aren't that many people who would avoid using mobile phones because of their ability to be tracked; further developments are likely to reduce that number further.

There's been talk of extending that scheme over the rest of the country, and my response to that would be: only if it's really unavoidable.

Well, it's obviously not unavoidable, we just live with the congestion and all the costs and problems associated with it, however bad it gets.

If you can show that it really would be beneficial to set up a controlled zone in central Edinburgh, then so be it

But this isn't about avoidable or unavoidable, this is about costs and benefits, and there's therefore an implied (finite) value you place on civil liberties (or at least the ones infringed upon by congestion charging technology). That's not surprising, it's very difficult to maintain a consistent rational position without this happening, but ask yourself this:

How much would you have to offer the average citizen to make them give up some of their civil liberties? I suspect it's depressingly little...