Hybrids, Carpooling, Environment, Privacy  

Dan Gillmor has an interesting tale about an unwholesome combination of the good (hybrid cars, car pool lanes and fast toll processing) the bad (the growing surveillence state) and the ugly (abusing the car pool lane idea).

The Mercury News reports that owners of certain kinds of hybrid cars can now apply for new $8 stickers allowing the use of carpool lanes. This is a result of a law passed last year by California's legislature, and ratified in the giant pork-barrel transportation bill just enacted in Washington.

It turns out, however, that there's a sneaky element to the state legislation. To get the carpool-lane sticker, car owners have to also fork over another $40 for a Fast-Trak transponder -- a little radio that tells bridge tollbooths that you're passing by (you don't have to stop and pay a toll-taker) and which is monitored by others unless you keep it in a protective bag hiding the signal.

... this deal happened because the regional bridge authority asked the DMV to get the wording. The more people using these transponders, the fewer human tolltakers the state needs, for one thing, and the fee for the transponders is not trivial. No doubt this makes law enforcment happy, too, as it provides yet another surveillance tool on more people.

As an owner of a hybrid, I'm in a bit of a dilemma. I was opposed to this law in the first place. It looked like an unnecessary diversion away from the point of carpool lanes, which are designed primarily to get more than one driver into each car during commuting hours and therefore get cars off the highways. (This is one reason why I also think it's outrageous that parents can use the carpool lanes to drive their kids around.)

We have much the same problem here (though no one is handing out express lane rights to those with transponders, as that is a fairly large portion of the population - even I have one and I only get the car out of the garage twice a week).

Many Sydneysiders may cheer when the Cross City Tunnel opens for business this Sunday. But as you whiz through the tunnel, remember to wave goodbye not only to those 18 sets of traffic lights, but also something less tangible - your anonymity. As the first cashless toll-road - with others to follow - drivers and riders will have no choice but to identify themselves every time they drive across town. It all adds up to a profile on each person's daily movements.

Sure, we've had electronic tags for a while, but we've each been able to choose whether or not to trade a little of our privacy for the convenience of a faster trip. Not any more.

The next step towards 1984 is issuing national id cards with RFID chips in them to everyone and making the carrying of these mandatory. The race is one to see which part of the Anglosphere / Oceania gets there first.

As Dan Gillmor notes on the topic of RFID, "One of the tech crowd's least attractive attributes has been its zeal to become the tool supplier for the surveillance state. This is another example of an industry putting money over liberty."

Jeff Vail might say that this is bringing the "Closing of the map" down to a personal level.