Police State "Amerika" to Track Movements of Your Cars and Trucks

05-05-2011 • market-ticker.org & TheHill.com

Not content to tax your gasoline purchases, now the government wants to track exactly how far you drive - which, of course, implies tracking exactly where you drive. The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive. Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations. Oh yeah, that'll go over well. You do realize, folks, that it's trivially easy to tamper with such a device unless it also stores tracks. That is, exactly where you drove, not just how far. And that tampering with such a device would be ridiculously profitable and, if tied to you via your fill-ups, would be effectively anonymous, which would make cheating impossible to prosecute. Therefore, that couldn't be done. Therefore, the unit's identity would have to be tied to you, and the path you traveled would have to be stored and maintained in order to validate that you hadn't cheated. The office would be required to consider four factors in field trials: the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs, and "user acceptance." The draft does not specify where field trials should begin. User acceptance eh?