Don't forget to take your shoes off before entering Manhattan. And if you do, our CCTV scanning system will find you and send the robo-cop to shake you down.
"Lawyers dig through FasTrak records"
<ttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070607/ai_n19295541>
"FasTrak to courthouse"
<ttp://corridornews.blogspot.com/2007/06/unforseen-costs-of-life-in-fast-lane.html>
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Yes, I'm aware of the tech's panopticon-ish aspects. In fact, I'm so aware of this, I've posted quite a bit of text regarding the existing abuses and dangerous implications of related technologies:
Search term = dwayne monroe + panopticon:
Still, if you want congestion pricing but you don't want to create a sluggish toll booth situation (which, as you point out, actually creates congestion at entry/exit points), there must be a rapid and automatic fee collection method. License plate recognition and enhancements to EZPass are logical, off-the-shelf choices.
Because the information gathered is easily abused, the system must be rigorously monitored and scope limited. If such monitoring and the prevention of 'mission creep' are impossible (and I admit that the US/UK evidence leans towards yes on that question), that says at least as much about our surveillance besotted political culture as it does about the temptations inherent to a potentially invasive technology.
And speaking of license plate recognition...
Michael Smith wrote:
Does anybody have info on the EZPass system used here in New York? I could believe the license-plate approach might be problematic on a purely technical level.
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I'm not sure about EZPass NY's precise details.
Reportedly, license plate recognition tech boasts a very high success rate ("success" defined as accurate character recognition and database matching under a variety of conditions). Of course, there are caveats.
See this (quite good) Wikipedia article which covers the known capabilities and operational limits:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition>
.d.