Merry Christmas! Santa knows if you've been bad or good. The U.S. Department of Transportation wants to know where you're driving.
Where you're driving, right this very minute, tracking you in real-time using GPS. If the GPS signal is obstructed, your car's engine will turn off, Citizen!
Update: a great comment by
Jaime Frontero links to an article that shows this is even scarier, part of a much larger program
designed to capture "the identity... of transportation system users."
Sensors deployed in vehicles and the infrastructure could "identify suspicious vehicles," "detect disruptions" and "detect threatening behavior" by drivers, according to the addendum. Those who take public transit wouldn't escape monitoring, either. The addendum suggests "developing systems for public transit tracking to monitor passenger behavior."
DOT claims that the GPS is just to allow taxes to be calibrated to road usage. Of course, a gasoline tax already does that.
But there's much more than just taxes at stake. DOT won't restrict government access to the data. Of course, cops never misuse government databases for personal stalking. And the government never singles out non-criminals for tracking. And government employees never use government data to blackmail or harass enemies. And besides, you have nothing to hide: you're as innocent as a fifteen year old girl! You never park near a strip club, a gay bar, a gun show, a mosque, or a political demonstration, right? Right? Well, you won't now, Citizen!
Don't worry Citizen! You'll like being tracked by GPS; DOT plans to spend your tax dollars buying editorials to talk you into it. And real-time GPS tracking is much shinier than old-school Russian internal passports or Apartheid-era passbooks or other paper documents!
Positive uses of this: the roads will run on time!
Some commenters have questioned whether they should believe this. Especially after the UMass student's Mao book hoax, this is good healthy skepticism. So don't believe
me. Read
USDOT's own report on the successful test deployment of GPS tracking.
Normally, I wouldn't beg for diary recommendations; but in this case,
I ask you to recommend it, to help get the word out so we can cauterize this hydra before it hatches.