Imagine a world where, in the name of homeland security, every trip by every motorist is tracked and recorded by the government using a wireless technology called telematics. The truth is, the vast body of automotive data on the activities of American citizens this would produce is closer to reality than you think. It already has a name — infostructure — as well as a powerful group of corporate executives and high-ranking government officials aiming to build it, profit from it and ultimately administer it.
You may have never heard of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA), but Charlotte drivers have been supporting its long-term goal of recording their every move without knowing it — and they’re about to increase their contribution. Every time a motorist pays one of the thousands of $50 tickets speed cameras will soon allow the City of Charlotte to issue every month, $39 of it will go to a company called Peek Traffic. Peek, which also owns and profits from Charlotte’s red light cameras, raked in $25 million from motorists caught on camera last year. It is owned by Chicago-based Quixote Corp., an upper-mid-level player among the approximately 150 corporations that are members of ITSA.
Quixote and ITSA share the same goal — to become a major player in the rapidly developing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) market. On behalf of member companies like Quixote, ITSA is fighting to drag more funding out of the federal government, in particular the Federal Transportation Department and the Department of Homeland Security, for ITS systems that will track nearly everything that happens on the road, from accidents to driving conditions, and beam it back to a centralized location. By comparison, the networks of cameras that police motorists in some European countries are child’s play.
But roads are just one of the areas over which ITSA wants technological domain. The non-profit organization is also pushing, on behalf of its members, to implement a similar sort of surveillance technology at ports and airports. Merely creating this system and profiting from it aren’t enough for the corporate and government power players behind ITSA, whose board includes executives at General Motors and DaimlerChrysler. According to the company’s strategic goals, ITSA wants to become the “overall facilitator” of an integrated network of transportation information.
If there was ever any doubt as regards ITSA’s stand on personal privacy, it was erased at its 2002 annual conference, where the keynote speaker called for a national identification card system, “perhaps voluntary,” which ITSA member corporations would, of course, create and administer, to rave reviews and applause from ITSA executives.
At first glance, ITSA and Quixote’s agenda sounds like a good deal for motorists. At an ITSA expo in Long Beach, Quixote showed off Intellizone, a modular system with wireless in-ground sensors, message signs and highway radio to relay vital info about routing, accidents and delays to motorists.
But it’s where these systems will eventually lead, and the frank way ITSA is selling that Orwellian reality to Congress in the name of “homeland security,” that sends a chill right up my spine. While in Washington, ITSA leaders have described the same “motorist safety” technologies to Congress people as “tracking” technology for vehicles, or, in the words of ITSA Chairman Michael Walton, technology that could provide “real time monitoring of highways, bridges and other infrastructure, as well as vehicles.”
Despite its very obvious conflicts of interest, given what its broad corporate membership has to gain, ITSA acts as an advisory committee to the Department of Transportation on ITS, and regularly throws lavish expos for the two dozen members of Congress on the Intelligent Transportation Congressional Caucus — at which Quixote often displays its wares.
In the coming months, all of this will be funded by the suckers who get speeding and red light fines in Charlotte and elsewhere and, since the cameras can photograph up to 120 license plates per minute and anyone going four or more miles over the speed limit could be a target, there will be many suckers. Most of them will buy the official line, that this is about safety, that it won’t eventually lead to an existence lived before the government lens. Unfortunately, the folks at Quixote and ITSA have other plans.
I would be remiss in my commitment to full disclosure if I didn’t mention another innovative bit of traffic technology that the folks at Peek Traffic have so far refused to talk to me about.
It’s a spray called “Photo Blocker,” and it’s invisible when sprayed on your license plate, but produces a glare that renders your plate unreadable in photos. Much to the chagrin of the Denver Police Department, which ran tests on it, the stuff works, and is undetectable to the naked eye.
Keith Bridges, spokesperson for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, claims that using it would constitute defacing your license plate, which is illegal, so I’m certainly not endorsing it here. But if you’re interested, the info is there for the reading at www.phantomplate.com.
Contact Tara Servatius at tara.servatius@cln.com
This article appears in Apr 21-27, 2004.
