Originally published March 17 2015
EU calls for tracking computers in all vehicles to monitor, regulate travel
by L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
(NaturalNews) The controlling surveillance state is deepening, prying further into people's lives like a chisel carving its way through skin and bone. Governments have become opportunistic control freaks, centralizing their micromanagement powers whenever possible. Now the European Union is rolling out plans to monitor travel on all European roads, tracking drivers' mileages and time traveled per vehicle. This controlling scheme is not for surveillance alone; it's essentially a plan to tax every driver for the for the distance they travel on European roads.
Could you imagine being taxed for every quarter-mile you drive?
A senior European politician is doing just that, calling on all European vehicles to be installed with road-pricing systems. This would include mandatory installation of a computer that would track how long one has driven on European roads and how far. This plan would serve as a built-in tax, harmonizing all road toll charges across the EU. The plan would end road-side tollss and replace them with time-tracking and/or distance-tracking toll micromanagement systems.
EU Transport Commissioner says computer system should regulate distance traveled
One of the plan's advocates, Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc, is also trying to make the computer system as efficient as possible. She said that the EU travel regulations will put "a burden on car drivers" while becoming an "obstacle to their mobility."
Bulc is advocating for a plan that charges drivers per kilometer and not by time. Her plan also includes a way to limit the speed of cars to minimize fuel loss. Bulc doesn't want to encourage speeding drivers by pressuring them for every minute they are operating their vehicle. Instead, she thinks it's safer and more efficient to charge drivers by the mile. It doesn't matter which way she looks at it, the plan to install computers in all vehicles is a gross violation of property and privacy, and another way centralized government can micromanage the people and their finances.
Bulc said, "It doesn't matter where you come from -- everyone will only pay for the distance they have actually driven and it will be billed on a device throughout Europe. We're currently investigating just such an idea."
She continued, "There are many options -- a fee could be obligatory but it's also possible to make it optional i.e. that countries decide themselves whether and on which roads they want to levy a road use charge based on kilometres driven."
The built in pay-by-the-mile scheme was slammed by UKIP transport spokesman Jill Seymour MEP.
She said, "[L]ook how the EU overrides the democratic decision of the British people: an unelected Slovenian bureaucrat in Brussels announces in a German newspaper interview that she wants to force all British drivers to fit computers in their cars which will count every mile they drive."
She pointed out, "Britain will be forced into an EU-wide scheme in which Commissioner Bulc will force all drivers to pay for using our own roads, and the money will go straight to Brussels."
She continued her argument: "This would be outrageous on three counts. First, it would be the imposition of a tax on tens of millions of UK citizens without the consent or control of parliament. Second, the money raised would not go to HM Treasury but to the bureaucrats in Brussels who would then undemocratically decide how the money would be spent on their own EU road schemes. Third, the idea that every British car would be fitted with a high-tech computer tracking every trip a driver makes is an invasion of privacy which we cannot tolerate."
Sources for this article include:
http://www.breitbart.com
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