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

[lucyjin.livejournal.com]

Oh bitch, you just didn't. >:O

I swear, this government is THE nastiest in my living memory. No joke.

*adds signature*

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

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".

You put it much more eloquently than I did. Well done!

[xenophanean.livejournal.com]

Yes. I agree entirely, I spotted this one a little while back, and came to exactly the same conclusion. Thanks for the petition, I'll be signing up.

Really, dont trust these guys, they ain't nice.

A little off topic, but people should remember the proposed Parliament Act, whereby the current government could change any law which didn't involve a criminal sentence of over 2 years without directly consulting parliament (including this law). This was apparently an "error", that particular proposal failed, thank god.

Pro-actively labelled tl;dr for your convenience!

[scattergather.livejournal.com]

I don't buy your refutation of the congestion argument. The capacity of a road-pricing based incentive system to be aligned with transport policy objectives is far and away greater than that offered by fuel duty and vehicle taxation. You can eliminate at a stroke many of the limitations of the current system -- for example, off the top of my head...

* Fuel duty is invariant with respect to local public transport infrastructure.

* Fuel duty offers no ability (at least not in a robust way) to make special allowances for rural areas and villages -- for example, with road pricing you could offset the cost of the extra congestion caused by a discount for rural roads against the benefits of making rural and village communities more viable in the long term.

* Road pricing allows faster routes (and possibly even lanes) to be available by paying a premium; this allows businesses in particular a greater degree of control over transport times and costs by making them more predictable, which would positively impact on the economy (and not insubstantially, either).

* Road pricing could also be used to fund construction of new roads where sufficient demand is present, offering a fairer basis for charging the costs -- those who get the benefit pay.

With regard to congestion, there's no guarantee that the extra cost in fuel of idling (which is unlikely to be that large) remotely in proportion to the optimal incentive for that road. Also, the costs associated with idling tend to be invisible (or at least seriously obscure) to the driver; itemised bills are rather more obvious, and therefore more likely to have an effect on behaviour. The London congestion charge has actually been rather successful.

With regard to costs, the devices would be fitted by manufacturers to new cars. Transitional arrangements for old cars could be used to allow a suitable period of time for the majority of vehicles to have the devices installed already before cars were required to have them installed. Transitional arrangements could be offered under a different pricing scheme to avoid penalising those with new cars, or a less robust system of discounts could be offered to those with the devices fitted to ensure neutrality (or more likely an incentive for early adopters). This would be more susceptible to fraud, granted, but it could be made sufficiently robust, and sufficiently disincentivised through fines and other legal measures that the level of fraud is acceptable within the time period of the transition. The fact that so many devices need to be fitted means there are cost savings associated with mass production. As a proportion of the cost of a car, the devices will be relatively cheap. Britain is by no means the only country looking at road pricing, and the technology R&D is being led by the private sector on its own, so it's not a pure government IT project.

On government IT projects, London congestion charging was pretty successful -- and bear in mind that government IT debacles are the only sort you're likely to hear about with any frequency; businesses don't like to make too much of a noise about their cock-ups, for obvious reasons; peoples' impressions therefore tend to be based on biased data here. I'm not claiming that government and the private sector are equally good at handling large scale IT projects, just that there are grounds for being wary of the perception that the public sector is particularly bad at it. However, it should be acknowledged that the technical issues are huge, particularly when it comes to preventing fraud; however, I do not believe they are in any way insurmountable.

Privacy... there could well be technological ways around the need for storing or making available personal data from the system (clever cryptographic protocols, etc), but whatever system is instituted would be unlikely to use such methods, and there would be large technical issues; that's an argument that stands. Although, it's worth observing that biometric ID cards could form a part of the system, and would solve several tricky technical issues.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, this is the petition you want:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap Road Tax and Tolls in favour of Tax on Fuel."

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Vehicle-Taxation/

That neatly cuts out the possibility of being accused of insincerity, if your only concerns are on civil liberty grounds.

(PS I got to this post via Lauren - hope you don't mind me commenting anon, but I don't have a livejournal. Will go away now)

[zombywuf.livejournal.com]

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page10666.asp Given this response to a petition (freedom of thought is a limited right subject to restriction, who knew?) I think it's safe to say the government won't listen.

[dsky.livejournal.com]

You have to wonder if they are just seeing how far they can go. Future headline:

"Government monitors health of the nation for your safety!"

"The health minister unveiled plans today to implant all UK residents with a computer chip designed to allow the NHS to respond quickly to medical emergencies without anyone needing to report them. The chip monitors blood pressure and heart rate (and other risk factors like cholesterol) and notifies the nearest hospital if these indicate a health risk. The chip contains a GPS so that ambulances can locate patients in need of care. UK residents will be able to log into an NHS web-site to view personalised advice based on the information gathered on changes to their life-style which could improve their life expectancy."

[brucec.livejournal.com]

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.


They can already track where you've been etc. via your mobile phone, as was seen in the Soham trial. Of course if you don't want to be tracked you can always just turn the phone off, so the car monitoring scheme would be a somewhat more reliable source of data.