"I drove those miles on private logging roads and while spending the summer in Arizona. Prove otherwise."

Coming up with ways of making an invasive and privacy-destroying law easier to enforce isn't the usual kind of comment I see on /.

Unless those foreigners live in a state where a GPS tracker determines their gas tax and their state collects on behalf of Oregon (unlikely), they will be paying the gas tax.

This new GPS system won't spring into life fully formed overnight. It will take a decade or more for a significant number of cars to be properly "equipped" for government monitoring, and during that time there will be a gas tax for those who aren't yet. You can't let all those people stop paying a tax just because their car didn't come with an embedded GPS.

The plan from a decade ago included dumping the GPS data at the gas station when you bought gas and the tax was added to that transaction. It's trivial at that point for the sale to be "dumped GPS data, pays per-mile tax" or "didn't dump GPS data, pays exorbitant gas tax". Our neighbors won't be getting a better deal on gas by coming here.

"However we can raise taxes on people who recreationally drive heavy vehicles they don't neccerially need. Not an outright ban, but if you want to drive your giant SUV when you could have used a much smaller car,"

This statement has nothing to do with commercially-plated vehicles. It talks only about the subjective "neccerially need". Who are the police who determine when you should have "used a much smaller car" versus when an SUV is required? Is every SUV owner supposed to own two cars just so they can drive the small car for small things and the SUV for "huge" things?

And I hate to point out another fallacy in your arguments. "If you can afford an SUV" is nonsense. My "SUV" cost less than many "much smaller cars".

Oh, if only you were the only vehicle on the road.

I see bikers treat stop signs as yields every day. I live in a college town where the students just don't think obeying traffic laws is an important thing to do. As a driver, I just LOVE it when I'm traveling on the through-street and a high-speed biker comes to the stop sign on an intersecting road. Stop? Of course not. Blow through the stop sign at full speed, get halfway into the intersection, and then lay the bike over to the right and turn onto the street I'm on.

Why is that a problem? Well, as a defensive driver I cannot assume that this joker is going to turn (he didn't bother to signal one, but that is just another pesky traffic law he's ignoring). He's headed for a direct collision with me, so I have to slam on the brakes just in case. That usually isn't enough to stop before I'd hit him if he doesn't turn, though, so if he manages to hit a stone in the road and his turn becomes a slide -- he's dead. And I'll have been the one to run him over.

And then there's the ones who are actually crossing the street I'm on, and instead of stopping at the stop sign until the through-traffic clears, they jog over into the crosswalk and pretend they are pedestrians -- forcing everyone on the through street to slam on the brakes to stop for them.

Sharing the road means both sides have to share. You have to do things you don't want to do for the safety of everyone, just like I have to.

Oh, if only you were the only bicyclist on the road. I've seen too many bikers who ignore everything else at an intersection and blow through the stop. They ignore cars, and they especially ignore pedestrians in crosswalks. If every ped who had to jump out of the way of a biker breaking the law paid me a nickel, I'd be a 1%er.

Making me stop all the time is inconvenient for me, too. It wastes gas, so it's bad for the environment. Letting you play chicken with traffic by blowing through a stop sign to make a hard right turn raises my blood pressure, which is bad for my health, and it is potentially deadly for you.

If not having to obey the traffic laws is what compels you to ride a bicycle, then you really don't have the right attitude about bike riding. Expecting special treatment as a vehicle sharing the public streets because that would make your life more pleasant is, well, kind of selfish.

There is no need for an "odometer version". Cars already have odometers. And an odometer version may be in testing, but it will never survive the desire to put higher taxes on people who drive where and when the government doesn't want them to. The use of taxation for social engineering and not just provision of mandatory services is too great in the modern politician and government worker.

Since an explicit goal of this system is to charge higher taxes for congested roads at congested times, it's not just the miles in Oregon that have to be tracked, it is WHICH roads and WHAT times. That demands a GPS and recorded data.

I know an engineer who was working on this kind of system for Oregon a decade ago, and she admitted the data needed to be collected by could not imagine that the government might abuse it.

Please don't ever get lost in the mountains in my area, because my driving to a search to save your ass doesn't benefit you so I won't bother doing it.

What is an "annual emissions check?"

Yes, if you are going to tax someone on what roads they drive on and when ('congestion fee'), you need to know what roads they drive on and when. An odometer doesn't provide that information.

Why would we as a society stand up and demand more taxes?

Oregon tags (mine) renew every two years, by mail.

It would take much longer than 5 minutes for an employee of DMV to come to my house, break into my garage, and read my odometer.

An odometer cannot report that none (or most) of my miles were on I5 in downtown Portland at 9AM (or 2AM) so it cannot be used to charge a higher tax for use during congested times and places.

You pay at the pump and then get a refund by filing Form 1220, at least in Oregon. Other states have the same kind of thing.

Yep. But since knowing which roads and when is an important part of the pricing structure, a GPS will be required.

I'm a search and rescue volunteer enroute to an active search, where we find and extract a lost mushroom hunter -- alive. A week ago I was staff on an overnight training exercise that graduated 13 new SAR volunteers. Three weeks ago I was involved in a lost aircraft search. You say the only person who benefits from my car is myself?

All cars already have a mandated "odometer device". It's installed by the factory.

What that device doesn't record is:

1) where the vehicle was driven. There should be no tax on miles driven on private property.

2) what road the vehicle was on. Charging more for main roads and less for local roads needs this data. and,

3) what time the vehicle was there. Charging a "congestion fee" requires this data.

I.e., the poor who drive older, used cars would be taxed more than the rich who can afford a new car every year.

This. I knew someone who was involved with this idea a few years ago, in Oregon, and I could not convince her that to tax someone based on which roads were used at which times a complete log of where the car was and when would have to be kept so the tax could be computed correctly. And so the taxpayer could dispute the tax. You can't point to a GPS log of position and claim "I was driving on my own property which abuts I5, not on I5 at peak time" if there is no GPS log to point at.

And the propensity of government to keep all the data it gets was quite beyond her imagination. Before the idea was killed the last time, (apparently not dead enough) there was some acceptance of the idea that "gee, this would be great data for police to have if they're looking for an abducted child" (i.e., "Amber alerts".) I mean, the public seems accepting of Amber alerts going to their cellphones at all times of the day and no matter where they are. Think of the Children(TM)! From that use, it is just a short step to "any criminal", and then to "any terrorist" (if the latter doesn't precede the former.)

To the later poster who asks about toll roads: Oregon has no toll roads that I know of, and if it did it is usually easy to select a different route if you want to avoid them. Cameras that record your passing are stationary and do not record every place you go and when.

Given the arguments over GPS trackers used by police, and how the argument that it's really no different than a full-time tail was shouted down, I'm amazed that anyone on /. could claim that a full-time government mandated GPS tracker on every car is no different than "toll roads" or "fixed cameras". Keep in mind, those "tax" trackers are no different than the temporary installations that monitor your car on private property and 24/7.

I can understand the reason why someone can ask about themselves, but I don't understand why a third-party request like this hasn't caused more of a reaction. "OMG 19 pages" isn't what I mean.

I mean "the government is collecting info we don't think they should and THEN handing it out to anyone who asks for it." Why should a FOIA request about someone completely unrelated to you be approved? If the government shouldn't collect it, why should they hand it out? (Yeah, I know, He's Dead Jim, but his family isn't.)

I agree. They are in the wrong. My point is that she agreed to work for the pay she was getting (so has no complaint about being on call 24/7 and the company isn't in the wrong for expecting it.) Her mistake was installing the app on her phone before reading the information about the app. When I google "Xora app" today, the first result is for Xora.com which has various links shown, one for "Employee Location Tracking." When you click that link, it takes you to a page that tells you:

GPS Get Visibility with GPS Location Services. See the location of every mobile worker on a Google Map.

Kind of hard to see where every worker is on a Google Map without it tracking where you are, I'd say. Basic info about an app that someone wants you to install on your phone. It's not hidden info like the fact that the cell company tracks the phone already, it's kinda right out there.