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highway privacy and extremist politics
``` Date: Sun, 28 Jan 96 14:31 PST From: privacy@vortex.com (PRIVACY Forum) Subject: PRIVACY Forum Digest V05 #03
PRIVACY Forum Digest Sunday, 28 January 1996 Volume 05 : Issue 03
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Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 20:08:26 -0800 (PST)
From: Phil Agre
In a report on the right-wing militia movement in Washington State (available on the Web at http://nwcitizen.com/publicgood/reports/maltby3.htm ), Paul de Armond discusses one David Montgomery, whom he describes as "a perennial right-wing congressional candidate and former treasurer for the Washington chapter of Rev. Sun Myong Moon's American Freedom Coalition". He clearly regards Mr. Montgomery as a fringe extremist, and he illustrates this view by quoting one of Mr. Montgomery's campaign flyers, entitled "Gun Rights and Your Freedom" as follows:
"New toll roads can identify your car and charge an account in your name by means of a sensor in the windshield. This could allow the government to track your movements."
Although he doesn't say so explicitly, the context makes it sound as if Mr. de Armond regards this view as bizarre. The problem, of course, is that it is basically true. The "sensor" is really (in most cases) an RF transponder, and it is not quite "in" the windshield but (in many cases) attached to it. Such systems are in operation in roughly ten US states and in several other countries. Although few serious observers regard these systems as government plots to track citizens' movements, the systems have nonetheless provoked controvery across the political spectrum because they could, in fact, be used for this purpose. The FBI, for example, has made no secret of its desire to obtain unrestricted access to the files maintained by toll authorities. Although such systems could easily be made anonymous using new technology based on digital cash, I know of no US authority that is planning to do so.
Now, Mr. de Armond is actually aware of all of this; he just inadvertently neglected to quote enough of the flyer to make apparent the role of automated toll roads in Mr. Montgomery's humongous conspiracy theories. What's scary, of course, is that the toll roads are so readily used in this way. The use of this issue by political extremists is a symptom of a deep problem, which is that automated toll collection in the US, like many other new technologies that affect the public, is being developed with only the faintest semblance of democratic process -- decisions are made in back rooms and the systems just seem of materialize one day. The bureaucrats who run the show don't expend much effort on privacy because they don't hear any screaming about it, and they don't hear any screaming about it because only a tiny proportion of citizens is even aware of the issue. (Having said this, I should point out that Washington State is just about the only US jurisdiction which has seen meaningful organized resistance to automated toll collection. I do not know of any connection between this resistance and the far right.)
Automated toll collection may not be a sinister plot, but in its practical consequences it is just as bad. It is a serious accident waiting to happen -- not least because it provides an organizing issue for political extremists. The very possibility of the systems' abuse, together with the tacit policy of stealth implementation, threatens to become a corrosive influence on our society.
Phil Agre, UCSD
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End of PRIVACY Forum Digest 05.03
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