GPS Tracking Equals Another Privacy Battle

The federal government is considering ways to bolster falling revenue from gas taxes, as more motorists drive hybrid and more fuel-efficient cars. The nation has a $140 billion shortfall in highway funding, which will get worse as cars burn less gas causing revenue from fuel taxes drop, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

What to do? One idea that the government and 16 states are considering is to charge drivers for the number of miles they drive rather than the amount of gas they buy. The Nevada Transportation Department, the University of Nevada in Reno and the University of Nevada in Las Vegas are studying such a system.

For the process to work, it will require motorists to self-report mileage (loads of incentives there to underreport), or to take odometer readings when a car undergoes its annual registration, or manufacture cars that automatically record mileage and report it at special stations, or, as most studies support, use GPS receivers "to record mileage driven, time of day traveled and the type of route," the Sun reported.

This sounds like an idea that will have the privacy groups all over it. Just read what one Las Vegas resident says about the GPS trial balloon:

"I don't want them to know where I'm going all the time," Brandon Rasumssen told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "We are in America."