We Need Privacy Protection on Intelligent Highways (1995)

I was concerned about dataveillance in 1995. Few other people were concerned.

Ominous steps have been taken recently, steps that perhaps move us all  closer to a global surveillance state, but few people are aware of them.  Governments around the world are installing "intelligent highways,"  whose snooping capabilities ought to concern every driver.  I recently remarked to my friend Peter, as he drove me  around Geneva,  that he is scrupulous about obeying the speed limit. He replied that he  had on a previous occasion received in his mailbox an envelope  containing a photograph of his automobile, the radar detector readout  superimposed, along with a notice of his fine. On key Swiss roads, radar  detectors automatically videotape speeders, computers automatically  recognize the license plate number, check it against a database, and  issue mail to the home address of the owner. It happens in Japan, too,  and more and more locations around the world.
 

If my Swiss friend had not told me that story, the hair on the back of  neck would not have started to stand up when I read, the next day, in  the October 9, 1995 edition of the International Herald Tribune, that  Kansas became the tenth state to adopt electronic toll collection.  Electronic transponders installed in vehicles automatically communicate  with toll collecting machinery via radio, and tolls are automatically  deducted from the driver's account. The following day, October 10, the  same newspaper reported that Singapore had announced contracts to wire  up the road system of the entire city-state. Singapore, never known as a  bastion of civil liberties, will be able to track the location of every  vehicle, and identify most drivers, on a minute-by-minute basis. 

 A government and private industry initiative now underway proposes  multibillion dollar investments in "Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems"  (IVHS) in the US. These systems, combining massive numbers of embedded  sensors, video cameras, chips embedded in vehicles, and even satellite  global positioning signals, are now under construction in every  industrialized country. IVHS promise greater convenience and perhaps  safety by monitoring highway traffic,  routing around jams, and automatically collecting tolls. If these  systems are not designed with the privacy of citizens in mind, however,  we might be buying a heap of surveillance capabilities for future secret  police. This is a technology policy issue where informed groups of  citizens can have an impact if we act now. It isn't a matter of banning  the technology. It's a matter of making sure today that these systems  are designed with the privacy of future citizens in mind. 

One of the best sources of information about the social impact of IVHS  comes from Professor Phil Agre at the University of California, San  Diego. Agre stated recently:  

"Society may decide that it wishes to provide law enforcement with  generalized abilities to track citizens' movements, but this would  clearly be a grave decision - one that should be discussed well in  advance>  rather than building the technical capabilities into ITS systems with  virtually no public discussion."

There is a technical fix that could give drivers conveniences without  compromising privacy. Encryption techniques make it possible to transmit  account information from an automobile without disclosing the identity  of the owner. 

The technology won't work for us if it is not widely used, which means  the future of privacy means helping create a market for  encryption-enabled transponders.  Agree points out that right now, at  the beginning of the intelligent highway build era, it is critically  important that the early majority of transponder manufacturers build  encryption capabilities into their devices. Making privacy a standard  will work far better than attempts at legislative regulation after the  market has settled on a standard. 

Agre's reports can be found at his website.  To access his whimsically-named but extremely useful "Red Rock Eater  News Service," via e-mail send a message to rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu,  Subject: archive help. 

We still have time to do something about this one.

We need  to ask manufacturers now to consider the importance of building privacy  protection into their technology. I support Agre's statement: 

 "People need to use roads to participate in the full range of  associations (educational, political, social, religious, labor,  charitable, etc) that make up a free society.  If we turn the  roads into a zone of total surveillance then we chill that fundamental  right and undermine the very foundation of freedom.