Big Brother traffic cameras, also known as Intelligent
Transportation Systems, help you to get through the
red light faster and occasionally help to solve a
crime while they erode your freedom and incrementally
condition you to accept an Orwellian surveillance
society.
My research of ITS led me to a 2002 document which was
prepared by the Intelligent Transportaion Society of
America in cooperation with the United States
Department of Transportation entitled "Homeland
Security and ITS" which outlines their 10 year
vision.
This vision includes a fully integrated spectrum of
computing, communications, and sensor technologies
which consists of smart cards, biometrics identifiers,
automatic vehicle location, map databases, video,
motion, and infrared detection and surveillance,
vehicle classification sensors, weigh-in-motion
technology, geolocation and routing technologies to
track the movement and behavior of vehicles as well as
automatic halting of vehicles that violate security
guidelines.
They also call for National ID cards, surveillance of
all public transportation, and assert that the federal
government should consider rulemaking to mandate the
inclusion of monitoring technology in all new vehicles
and the retrofitting of older vehicles.
If that's the 10 year vision, then what about another
20 or 40 years?
Where will it end?
http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20050112-101257-4152r.htm
We are moving steadily to being a city that monitors and photographs every move of the populace, whether a camera is stationed in front of an ATM, inside a neighborhood convenience store, atop the federal buildings downtown or along one of the heavily used thoroughfares.
It is a creepy practice that is forever dispensed in the context of a larger good, with some reasons more valid than others. The need to be vigilant in the age of terrorism is one thing. Photographing the license plate of a poor sucker who tried to beat a yellow light in stop-and-go traffic is another.
A camera as an altruistic instrument of the do-good, all-knowing city officials is the measure determined to keep on giving. If a speed camera placed at one busy intersection is a good thing, then a speed camera placed at every busy intersection in the city is even better.
http://www.itsdocs.fhwa.dot.gov//JPODOCS/REPTS_TE//14010.htm
DEPLOYING THE INTEGRATED METROPOLITAN
INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS (ITS)
INFRASTRUCTURE
FY 2003 REPORT
http://www.odot.state.or.us/ruftf/
Mileage Fee Development
Members of the Road User Fee Task Force saw the results of their 30-month expedition to develop an alternative revenue source to the fuel tax on gasoline. On May 14, 2004, the RUFTF members toured the wireless technology that is the backbone of the preferred alternative - the mileage fee.
The demonstration took place on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis where ODOT consulting researchers have labored for more than 14 months to develop the supporting technology. On Friday, May 14, researchers proved to RUFTF members that a mileage fee collected wirelessly at service stations is, in fact, feasible.
