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January 17, 2005

Give me Liberty...

So, I'm driving to work this morning and as is my habit I was listening to OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) radio. And one of their stories really caught my attention.

It seems that there is some concern with the increasing popularity of hybrid vehicles. Specifically because they consume less fuel. See, the tax monies that go to pay for road maintanance comes directly from Oregon's vehicle fuel tax. What with the hybrids consuming significantly less fuel, the tax revenues are forcasted to decrease and that means less money for road maintanance.

To be fair it's a valid concern. Hybrid vehicles cause as much wear and tear to the roads that non-hybrid vehicles do, yet their owners are paying less into the upkeep of those same roads.

What caught my attention was the one proposed solution for which Oregon State University received a grant to design and test for the legislature's approval or denial as a fix.

The gist of the idea is to radically change the way that road maintainance fees are assessed. Rather than tax the amount of fuel purchased, they're looking into taxing the number of miles driven as a more equitable and stable means of getting road maintainance monies.

How the OSU team has proposed to meet the criteria handed them is to use a Global Position Satellite receiver unit to track how many miles are driven.

My concern with this proposal is how easily it could be subverted to use for spying on citizens. Particularly the nearly unaccountable FISA court. Any assurances by Oregon to it's citizens that we won't be spied on are meaningless if FISA approves a plan which the state would never know about.

Bad idea!

Posted by Kevin at January 17, 2005 01:15 PM