According to a report by Creative Loafing, a federal agency, part of the Department of Transportation, is planning a monitoring program that would let the government track every vehicle on the road by using onboard transceivers.
“The only way for people to evade the national transportation tracking system they’re creating will be to travel on foot. Drive your car, and your every movement could be recorded and archived. The federal government will know the exact route you drove to work, how many times you braked along the way, the precise moment you arrived – and that every other Tuesday you opt to ride the bus.”
The system will rely on GPS technology and other methods to monitor every movement and archive it in massive databases for future use.
Transceivers, or “onboard units,” will transmit data from each car to the system, the first models of which are expected to be unveiled next spring. By 2010, automakers hope to start installing them in cars. The goal is to equip 57 million vehicles by 2015.