

A System to Cut City Traffic That Just Might Work - prostoalex
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/a-new-system-to-make-congestion-pricing-more-flexible-and-useful/

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bediger4000
This is a stupid article, in the "Gee Whizz!" vein of science and engineering
reporting. You know, the kind of reporting that we mostly associate with
newsreels and "Popular Science" magazine.

The system to cut city traffic relies on a central authority taxing cars for
driving in ever-shifting penalty zones. The article's authors even advocate
putting the comms with a central authority into cell phones. They neglect to
consider any of the easy-to-envision side effects: explicitly tracking every
car (and soon every cell phone) every where. Certainly that's an easy to abuse
centralization, no? Can't imagine cops and NSA agents tracking their LOVINTs
or exes around, no? Yeah, neither can I. "Wired" needs to do better than
"Popular Science" did in 1955.

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filereaper
I had the same reaction, a central authority having full knowledge about your
whereabouts in a post Snowden era is unlikely to achieve success outside of
Singapore.

Here's one thing to ponder, we use apps like Waze (now owned by Google IIRC)
voluntarily without so much of a backlash. I don't know how Waze uses my
collected data, what makes a elected government any worse?

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bediger4000
Google doesn't run the police, the courts and the prison system. Nor can
Google draft you to fight in wars. That's what makes Google a little easier to
tolerate collecting data.

