All vehicles turned into taxicabs for Uncle Scam.

E-tracking, coming to a DMV near you.

No policy bans police from automatically sending out speeding tickets
based on what the GPS data say.

By Declan McCullagh, CNET News, December 5, 2005.

Trust federal bureaucrats to take a good idea and transform it into a
frightening proposal to track Americans wherever they drive.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of
dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed
to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and
Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy
these "mileage-based road user fees."

Now electronic tracking and taxing may be coming to a DMV near you.

The Office of Transportation Policy Studies, part of the Federal
Highway Administration, is about to announce another round of grants
totaling some $11 million. A spokeswoman on Friday said the office
is "shooting for the end of the year" for the announcement, and more
money is expected for GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking
efforts.

In principle, the idea of what bureaucrats like to call "value
pricing" for cars makes sound economic sense.

Airlines and hotels have long charged less for off-peak use. Toll
roads would be more efficient--in particular, less congested--if they
could follow the same model and charge virtually nothing in the
middle of the night but high prices during rush hour.

That price structure would encourage drivers to take public
transportation, use alternate routes, or leave earlier or later in
the day.

The problem, though, is that these "road user fee" systems are being
designed and built in a way that strips drivers of their privacy and
invites constant surveillance by police, the FBI and the Department
of Homeland Security.

Zero privacy protections

Details of the tracking systems vary. But the general idea is that a
small GPS device, which knows its location by receiving satellite
signals, is placed inside the vehicle.

Some GPS trackers constantly communicate their location back to the
state DMV, while others record the location information for later
retrieval. (In the Oregon pilot project, it's beamed out wirelessly
when the driver pulls into a gas station.)

The problem, though, is that no privacy protections exist. No
restrictions prevent police from continually monitoring, without a
court order, the whereabouts of every vehicle on the road.

No rule prohibits that massive database of GPS trails from being
subpoenaed by curious divorce attorneys, or handed to insurance
companies that might raise rates for someone who spent too much time
at a neighborhood bar. No policy bans police from automatically
sending out speeding tickets based on what the GPS data say.

The Fourth Amendment provides no protection. The U.S. Supreme Court
said in two cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, that Americans
have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they're driving on a
public street.

The PR offensive

Even more shocking are additional ideas that bureaucrats are
hatching. A report prepared by a Transportation Department-funded
program in Washington state says the GPS bugs must be made "tamper
proof" and the vehicle should be disabled if the bugs are
disconnected.

"This can be achieved by building in connections to the vehicle
ignition circuit so that failure to receive a moving GPS signal after
some default period of vehicle operation indicates attempts to defeat
the GPS antenna," the report says.

It doesn't mention the worrisome scenario of someone driving a
vehicle with a broken GPS bug--and an engine that suddenly quits half
an hour later. But it does outline a public relations strategy
(with "press releases and/or editorials" at a "very early stage") to
persuade the American public that this kind of contraption would be,
contrary to common sense, in their best interest.

One study prepared for the Transportation Department predicts a PR
success. "Less than 7 percent of the respondents expressed concerns
about recording their vehicle's movements," it says.

That whiff of victory, coupled with a windfall of new GPS-enabled tax
dollars, has emboldened DMV bureaucrats. A proposal from the Oregon
DMV, also funded by the Transportation Department, says that such a
tracking system should be mandatory for all "newly purchased vehicles
and newly registered vehicles."

The sad reality is that there are ways to perform "value pricing" for
roads while preserving anonymity. You could pay cash for prepaid
travel cards, like store gift cards, that would be debited when read
by roadside sensors. Computer scientists have long known how to
create electronic wallets--using a technique called blind signatures--
that can be debited without privacy concerns.

The Transportation Department could require privacy-protective
features when handing out grants for pilot projects that may
eventually become mandatory. It's now even more important because a
new U.S. law ups the size of the grants; the U.K. is planning GPS
tracking and per-mile fees ranging between 3 cents and $2.
We'll see. But given the privacy hostility that the Transportation
Department and state DMVs have demonstrated so far, don't be too
optimistic.

Biography

Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's Washington, D.C., correspondent.
He chronicles the busy intersection between technology and politics.
Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief
for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News,
Time magazine and HotWired.

http://news.com.com/E-tracking,+coming+to+a+DMV+near+you/2010-1071_3-
5980979.html

================================================

Snooping by satellite

Police agencies are making inroads in using GPS technology to track
suspects--without getting court approval first.

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 12, 2005

When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome, N.Y., after
a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had no idea that a silent
stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a secret GPS bug implanted without a
court order by state police.

Police suspected the lawyer of ties to a local Hells Angels
Motorcycle Club that was selling methamphetamine, and they feared
undercover officers would not be able to infiltrate the notoriously
tight-knit group, which has hazing rituals that involve criminal
activities. So investigators stuck a GPS, or Global Positioning
System, bug on Moran's car, watched his movements, and arrested him
on drug charges a month later.

A federal judge in New York ruled last week that police did not need
court authorization when tracking Moran from afar. "Law enforcement
personnel could have conducted a visual surveillance of the vehicle
as it traveled on the public highways," U.S. District Judge David
Hurd wrote. "Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts
of his vehicle on a public roadway."

Last week's court decision is the latest to grapple with the slippery
subject of how to reconcile traditional notions of privacy and
autonomy with increasingly powerful surveillance technology. Once
relegated, because of their cost, to the realm of what spy agencies
could afford, GPS tracking devices now are readily available to
jealous spouses, private investigators and local police departments
for just a few hundred dollars.

Not all uses are controversial. Trucking outfits use GPS boxes to
keep track of their drivers' locations, and companies sell software
to dispatchers that instantly calculates which taxi is closest to a
customer. OnStar uses GPS tracking to provide roadside assistance to
owners of many General Motors vehicles.

What's raising eyebrows, though, is the increasingly popular law
enforcement practice of secretly tagging Americans' vehicles without
adhering to the procedural safeguards and judicial oversight that
protect the privacy of homes and telephone conversations from police
abuses.

"I think they should get court orders," said Lee Tien, staff counsel
for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We're in a world where more
and more of our activities can be viewed in public and, perhaps more
importantly, be correlated and linked together."

GPS devices work by listening for radio signals from satellites and
calculating how long the signals take to arrive.

The result of that calculation provides a highly accurate estimation
of latitude and longitude. Depending on the type of GPS tracker, that
information is beamed back to an eavesdropper's computer through the
cellular network or quietly recorded and divulged when the device is
retrieved a few days or weeks later.

Voluntarily agreeing to automotive GPS tracking can be a bargain for
some consumers. Progressive Casualty Insurance began a pilot project
in Minnesota last year that embeds GPS devices in a customers'
vehicles and offers insurance discounts based on where and when cars
are driven.

Norwich Union, the United Kingdom's largest auto insurer, has
experimented with a similar "pay as you drive" program involving
5,000 customers. Hertz has implanted GPS trackers in all of its
rental cars, and trucking companies have used similar systems for
years.

GPS tracking systems are becoming cheap enough--the prices have
dropped by about 50 percent in the last few years--that they've
become attractive methods for tracing the whereabouts of teenagers
and spouses. In 2003, South Carolina police thought they had
discovered a bomb under a vehicle, but it turned out to be a GPS bug
planted by a man's wife. In another case, a man in Colorado was
convicted of tracking his wife with a GPS bug after she began divorce
proceedings against him.

Solving crimes

GPS devices have been used to solve crimes from the petty to the
heinous. Massachusetts police recently nabbed the driver of a snow
removal truck who exposed himself at a Dunkin' Donuts, thanks to the
Massachusetts Highway Department's requirement that state contractors
outfit their trucks with GPS locators.

In 2000, when William Bradley Jackson called Spokane County, Wash.,
police to report that his daughter had vanished from the front yard
that morning, detectives were immediately suspicious. Jackson seemed
unusually nervous, and blood stains were discovered on his daughter's
sheets.

Eight days later, after desperate searches failed to locate 9-year-
old Valiree, detectives won court approval to secretly attach GPS
tracking devices to Jackson's two vehicles.

The tactic worked; the GPS bugs led police to Valiree's shallow grave
in a remote, dense forest about 50 miles from Spokane. The case ended
in a murder conviction and 56-year prison sentence.

Complicating the privacy risks of tattletale cars is a pair of U.S.
Supreme Court cases decided two decades ago. Those cases, U.S. v.
Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, established that police don't need court
approval to track suspects through a crude radio beeper.

In 1999, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals invoked that logic when
deciding that federal agents did not need a court order to slap a GPS
tracker on a truck owned by a man suspected of growing marijuana. "In
placing the electronic devices on the undercarriage of the Toyota
4Runner, the officers did not pry into a hidden or enclosed area,"
the court ruled, saying the bug did not violate the Fourth
Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Privacy intrusion?

A handful of courts have veered in the other direction, saying GPS
technology is so powerful and can reveal so much about a person's
life that it requires strict judicial oversight.

The "use of GPS tracking devices is a particularly intrusive method
of surveillance, making it possible to acquire an enormous amount of
personal information about the citizen under circumstances where the
individual is unaware that every single vehicle trip taken and the
duration of every single stop may be recorded by the government," the
Washington Supreme Court said in the Jackson murder case in September
2003. "Citizens of this state have a right to be free from the type
of governmental intrusion that occurs when a GPS device is attached
to a citizen's vehicle...A warrant is required for installation of
these devices."

Some legal scholars fear that when the U.S. Supreme Court eventually
weighs in on GPS tracking, it will side with police over
privacy. "Unless it changes its view, it's unlikely that the court
will think the same way as the Washington Supreme Court," said Dan
Solove, a law professor at George Washington University. "The court
has a very narrow and crabbed understanding of privacy. If
something's not totally secret, you don't have a reasonable
expectation of privacy."

GPS tracking--even when bugs are installed by police armed with a
court order--can be imperfect. One bug used by police to track
convicted murderer Scott Peterson sometimes developed glitches that
showed him driving at about 30,000 miles per hour. Judge Alfred
Delucchi ruled the data could be admitted during Peterson's trial,
which appears to have been the first such decision in California.
Even with the occasional glitches, police see great potential in GPS
tracking systems, like OnStar, that are built into more expensive
cars--and that most people believe will be activated only in
emergencies. In one North Carolina case, police used the built-in
OnStar system in a 2000 Chevrolet Suburban truck to locate it and
arrest the driver, who had bought it with a fake certified check.
An even more creative method of vehicle tracking arose when the FBI
used such a system for audio eavesdropping. OnStar and other remote
assistance products permit passengers to call an operator for help in
an emergency. The FBI realized the feature could be useful for
bugging a vehicle and remotely activated it to eavesdrop on what
passengers were saying. (The 9th Circuit shot down that scheme in
2003, on the grounds that it rendered the system useless in
emergencies.)

http://news.com.com/Snooping+by+satellite/2100-1028_3-5533560.html?
tag=nl

==========================================

Road User Fee Task Force

Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding
Oregon DOT
Oregon.gov

2005 Report to the Legislative Assembly
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/OIPP/docs/2005LegislativeReport.pdf

2003 Report to Legislative Assembly
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/OIPP/docs/FinalReport2003march.pdf

http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/OIPP/ruftf_reports.shtml

============================================

King of Spain seizes all Texas streets and highways for GPS toll road
taxation-by-the-mile

TexasTollParty.com
2005

AUSTIN, TEXAS - Austin residents face $4,000/year wheel tax for
driving across town! The first freeway tolling authority in Texas now
estimates 44 to 64 cents per mile after they promised 12 cents per
mile in early 2004! "Double Tax Tolls" are public freeways funded
with our tax dollars to create a revenue-generating machine that will
shift ALL our freeways to tollways. Privatizing and tolling our
freeways will cause more traffic congestion on frontage roads with
stop lights for those that can't or won't pay the $5 to $15 toll tax
to go anywhere. Perry says it's a local decision, while local
officials say the Gov. made them do it. The blame game is over. All
the looters must go. Not one freeway has never been tolled in the
history of our country. The toll authorities throughout Texas,
otherwise known as Regional Mobility Authorities (RMA), are a new
bureaucracy created to administer a whole NEW TAX on Texas families
as they drive to work, school and shop. Unelected, unaccountable
RMA's will set the toll rates for freeways we've already paid for.
This is a clear case of taxation without representation.

http://www.texastollparty.com

"It opens the door to open-ended new taxation that will amount to the
largest tax increase in Texas History."
-Lyle Larson, Bexar County Commissioner

=============================================

King of Spain awarded $3.85/gallon gasoline tax in Texas USA

1,000% tax increase - current gasoline tax is 38-cents/gallon

"In your lifetime most existing roads will have tolls."
—Texas Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson, October 11, 2004

CorridorWatch.org
December 2005

It's shocking just how few Texans know about this massive super-
highway-rail-utility project launched by Governor Perry in 2002. Ten
vehicle lanes, six rail tracks, utilities, pipelines, state
concessions (gas stations, restaurants, motels, stores, warehouses,
etc.) all on 4,000 miles of toll roads that will consume more than
one-half million acres of Texas. Without advance public notice, and
announced late on the last day for legislative bills to be filed
without the Governor's approval, TxDOT Officials joined by Governor
Perry and Federal Highway Administrator Mary Peters signed a 342-page
agreement with Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte
SA (Madrid, Spain) to create a master plan to finance and build the
TTC-35 Trans Texas Corridor generally parallel to IH-35 from the
Valley to the Red River. The public and their elected officials are
excluded from learning the specifics and details of toll road
agreements being negotiated; even after these binding agreements
between TxDOT and their highway monopoly partners are signed.
Counties continue to join those that oppose the TTC! Last week La
Salle was added to the list of counties that have taken official
positions opposing the Trans-Texas Corridor. Here are some of the
counties that are representing the voters who put them in office and
have passed formal Resolutions raising concerns about the Trans-Texas
Corridor: Bastrop County - Blanco County - Bosque County - Brewster
County - Colorado County - Concho County - Edwards County - Falls
County - Fayette County - Gillespie County - Gonzales County - Grimes
County - Guadalupe County - Hill County - Kendall County - Kerr
County - Kimble County - La Salle County - Lee County - Limestone
County - Live Oak County - McCulloch County - McLennan County -
McMullen County - Mason County - Menard County - Milam County -
Navarro County - Raines County - Real County - Waller County -
Wharton County. Texas Farm Bureau adopts policy position to oppose
Trans-Texas Corridor. TxDOT Plans Meetings to Share TTC-35 Mexico-
Oklahoma Proposed Routes.

http://corridorwatch.org

"In your lifetime most existing roads will have tolls."
—Texas Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson, October 11, 2004

"It's either toll roads, slow roads or no roads."
—Texas Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson, May 2004

"If there is no access to the small towns, it will change the face of
the state."."
—Mayor Will Lowrance, Hillsboro, Texas

"It's going to kill little towns."
—Judge Frances Truchard, Colorado County Texas

"It's a terrifying nightmare. I'm scared to death of this."
—Bill Durst, Inspector, Fayette County Texas

"With a right-of-way approximately 1,200-feet-wide, the proposed
corridor could change the face of agriculture in Texas forever as it
swallows up thousands of production acres of farmland."
—Juliet Briskin, Country World News, "Proposed corridor will affect
Texas agriculture, November 4, 2004

"The Trans-Texas Corridor plan is not the product of transportation
professionals, urban planners, sociologists and environmentalists
hammering out affordable infrastructure to meet our 21st Century
needs. Rather, it was hatched in a smoke-filled room where nobody
worried about the needs of ordinary Texans."
—Dick Kallerman, Transportation Issue Coordinator, Sierra Club Lone
Star Chapter

=============================================

Communism and Fascism merge into New World Odor

"You will be happy to learn that the former head of the KGB (the
secret police of the former Soviet Union), General Yevgeni Primakov,
has been hired as a consultant by the US Department of Homeland
Security."
-Al Martin, AlMartinRaw.com, Behind the Sceenes in the Beltway, "Get
Ready for the USSA (The United Soviet States of America)," March 17,
2003

"Government control of Communications and Transportation."
-Communist Manifesto, 6th Plank, written by Luciferian Masonic Mafia
Jew Karl Marx in London, England
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html

"From 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by
every car will be monitored. Britain is to become the first country
in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are
recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records
for at least two years. Using a network of cameras that can
automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a
huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security
services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several
years. The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV
cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically
night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main
roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts.
By next March a central database installed alongside the Police
National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of
35 million number-plate "reads" per day. These will include time,
date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global
positioning satellites. Already there are plans to extend the
database by increasing the storage period to five years and by
linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100
million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank.
The scheme is being orchestrated by the Association of Chief Police
Officers (Acpo) and has the full backing of ministers who have
sanctioned the spending of £24m this year on equipment.
-Steve Connor, London Independent, "Britain will be first country to
monitor every car journey," 22 December 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article334686.ece

VIDEO DOWNLOADS:

Video clip - Austin Toll Party's Tunes not Tolls Benefit Concert,
including the legendary Jimmy Vaughn. Alex Jones of Infowars.com,
PrisonPlanet.com and WBCR 1470am in Alcoa Tennessee introduces Jimmy
who then performs a special 'No Tolls' blues tune for an appreciative
and enthusiastic crowd of supporters.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2005/280405tunesnottolls.htm

Video clip - PNTV Special Report - Robocop Spy Cam Scam
http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/11/7566.php

Video clip - American Autobahn - As seen on History Channel TV at a
LEGAL 212mph on a public highway. Discussion of the Montana Autobahn
in USA. Interview with Mark Rask, author of American Autobahn at
AmericanAutobahn.com. Legal commentary on voluntary driver license
contracts. Soundtrack includes Kraftwork's "Autobahn", DJ
Visage's "Formula" (The Michael Schumacher Song) and Bottle
Rockets' "R.A.D.A.R. Gun".
http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/6827.php

"I don't trust government. And neither should our citizens."
-US Senator Larry Craig, United States Senate, Committee on the
Judiciary, "DOJ Oversight: Terrorism and Other Topics", testimony by
US Attorney General John Ashcroft re President George Bush Jr.'s
Executive Orders to "legalize torture" of US citizens for
ALL "crimes" including "victimless 'crimes'", and refusal to release
that memo (felony Contempt of Congress), C-SPAN2, June 8, 2004

"Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."
-Benjamin Franklin

ALL-AMERICAN RIGHTS:

American Autobahn
http://americanautobahn.com

Deals Gap TT
http://dealsgapdragon.com

Faster Than A Speeding Ticket
http://fasterthanaspeedingticket.net

================================================

Pirate News TV
http://piratenews.org

Fair Use per 17 USC 107