As has been talked about in ‘thruther’ circles for years, the plan of doing away with a fuel tax and imposing a per mile driven tax is nearing implementation.
This is scary stuff here. Not only is the the reasoning behind it faulty: “Besides the technological advances making such a tax possible, the idea is getting a hard push from a growing number of transportation experts and officials. That is because the traditional by-the-gallon fuel tax, struggling to keep up with road building and maintenance demands, could fall even farther behind as vehicles’ gas mileage rises and more alternative-fuel vehicles come on line.” but the biggest problem is the tracking ability the government will then have to monitor your every move.
A GPS system in every vehicle will transmit data back to show how many miles you have driven. Just a number right? Nope, because every state has differing fuel tax rates it will have to upload your exact positions. The government will then be able to link your social security number (or drivers license) to your exact movements. Did you go to work today or visit your mistresses’ house? Did you stop by a strip club or casino? It seems you visit this particular house every so often in a seedier part of town, in fact many folks do. Let’s go bust open their door and see if they are selling drugs. Nope, turns out it was someone selling tomatoes.
If you think that this system would not be used in law enforcement, you are just deluded. Any house deemed in a ‘bad neighborhood’ would be suspect if it received a bunch of varied visits. They very well might be right that it is a crack house, but it could be that they sell Avon, or have a book club or even a Bible study. The point is, does your government need to know you exact travels all the time every day? Even if you want to use the ‘but I’m not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide’ argument you cannot deny that basic reasoning behind it (you might get better gas mileage so now you have to pay a premium for saving at the pump) is nothing but an end around run on the benefits of having a higher mileage car. If you want to use that argument you also cheapen every American soldier’s death that fought for your right to freely move about your country without being tracked from space.
Law enforcement will also have a new reason to stop drivers, to see if they have their GPS receivers on and not ‘hacked’ to then dodge the taxes. Oh yeah, hacking. It will take aprox. 2 hours from release time for someone to figure out a way block or spoof the GPS signals so that technologically bent folks will be able to hide themselves from this system. All those drug dealers you wanted to catch will of course have hacked systems as will anyone pulling any other crime. If you put into place a system that is this overly draconian, efforts to get around it will become itself a huge criminal industry. Anyone wishing to not share their movement with Big Brother will then be a criminal just as a terrorist in the eyes of the legal system when all we wanted was to be able to live free and go where we want without a microscope up our ass.
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