Toll Roads and Privacy
See the Links section for more info
This topic is not new. The following is from 1993!
From Privacy Digest Volume
2, #34 (an abstract)
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 93 14:03:29 -0800
From: Les Earnest <les@sail.stanford.edu>
Subject: On the Road to Nosiness? (Digest V02 #34)
In his Detroit Free Press article, Dan Gillmor describes prospective
privacy intrusions in the form of vehicle tacking based on
"intelligent vehicle highway systems." Some of these problems can be
avoided through appropriate design decisions, but the fact is that
many of us can be tracked today on a minute-by-minute basis.
The article says:
* Proposals for electronic tolls -- which economists and
traffic planners generally agree would be an efficient way to
reduce congestion and pay for upkeep. The reasoning, which
makes sense, is that you should pay more to use the highway at
rush hour than at 2 a.m. How would that be done? Highway and
vehicle sensors, which wouldn't slow traffic like old-fashioned
toll booths, would know when you use the road and bill you
accordingly.
However, instead of basing toll payments on a credit/billing system, a
debit card can be used that is purchased anonymously. This can be
done in at least two ways: using a smart card that keeps track of how
much of its value has been "spent" on tolls or a card that simply
gives its ID number when interrogated, so that a central toll computer
can keep track of how much of its original value has been spent. A
more elegant approach would be to use a Digicash card or equivalent
coupled with a transceiver. Any of these schemes would do a
reasonable job of preserving privacy.
California state officials originally proposed an automatic toll
billing system in which the vehicle identification number could be
read electronically, which would have been disasterous for privacy.
However, they have apparently been talked into using the anonymous
debit card approach by privacy advocates, principally Chris Hibbert.... |
We are really at the beginning of the process here in BC, although we already
have the Coquihalla toll road between Hope and Merrit, about 250 km from
Vancouver. This initial toll road is
completely manually collected at this time, so does not directly impact privacy.
In fact, there are TV cameras which can catch the license plates on vehicles,
but they appear more to be part of an employee monitoring system or security
system than anything else. There are problems with this too, (see my June
article) but they are nothing compared to those of some automated collection
systems.
While it has not yet been set in policy here in BC, the typical toll
setup has a toll road as the faster, less congested alternative to a
normal road, so the toll payer has the alternative of going a different
way to avoid losing their anonymity. The problem is that this puts an economic
price on anonymity; the lost time (and therefore money) spent on the
slower road - which is virtually always more than the toll on the toll
road (otherwise nobody would use the toll road, right?)
In other areas,
(such as the proposed update to the Sea to Sky highway here in BC) there
may not be an alternative, so everyone ends up being part of the system.
In situations like this, the preservation of anonymity is doubly necessary
in the collection of tolls since there simply is no alternative. In this
case there is a need to deal not only with those who travel all the way
through the corridor periodically (it's the road to Whistler Mountain),
but also those who live along the route and who may have to pass the toll
plaza due to work and living habits developed before the road was
upgraded; and who are either exempt, or who pay a flat or reduced toll.
Some
method of collecting tolls and recognizing exemption/bulk purchase must be
implemented if anonymity is to be preserved.
While I'm researching this topic, I'll post interesting links here.
They will eventually be put into a separate page.
