[pp.int.general] Big Brother in NL?

[Reinier Bakels]

> Hello,
>
> I want to ask if a pirate in the Netherlands can tell me(us) more about a 
> hm... "green" project there to start kilometer-taxation of cars with a GPS 
> onboard unit in every car.
>
> Aside that I am not a friend of such restrictions of mobility a GPS wich 
> emitts a lot of data more then only driven kilometers is a no go. Our 
> Constitutional Court forbid instruments allowing the state to create 
> "movement profiles".
>
> I wonder how this is in the Netherlands.

It is an old ambition to implement some sort of "road pricing" system in NL. 
The present proposal *pretends* to register only the data really needed for 
pricing purposes. The progress of the project is problematic, and the 
experience with a chipcard for the public transportation over all of the NL 
due to privacy concerns became more or less a nightmare for the government. 
So I hope they learned their lesson.

In my opnion, road pricing serves a purpose. Firstly, taxes on automobiles 
are high (higher than in DE, afaik), and in the present system, the tax is 
the same whether you drive a lot or not much. (Only the fuel tax is 
usage-dependent (of course)). With a road pricing system, one pays for the 
usage rather han for the posession of a car. A second reason for road 
princing is the ability to differentiate, and thus to prevent people from 
using their car during rush our on our congested road network if not really 
necessary.

Is it possible at all to build a system that respects privacy and still 
complies with reasonable administrative requirements? I don't know. A "black 
box" that only produces an (euro) amount may not be satisfactory because 
then there is no way to settle disputes.

Finally, I assume that you refer to Germany. In NL, we do not have a 
constitutional court. Our constitution dates from 1848 when the prime 
problem was to control the power of the king (our republic became a kingdom 
overnight at the Vienna Congress in 1815)! But in NL, unlike Germany, the 
European Convention for Human Rights has "Verfassungsrang", so we can submit 
violations to the Strasbourg Court for Human Rights. Because our courts know 
that, they apply the ECHR themselves (which is permitted in our "monistic" 
system). Going to Strasbourg it is a powerful (but time-consuming) process. 
But one should keep in mind that the Dutch are not very privacy-conscious, 
much less than the Germans (who have the questionable "benefit" of the Nazi 
and Stasi experience). Still, the risk of deficient privacy is very obvious 
in transportation. Affairs with (girl) friends can be easily detected and 
proved with transportation records. An improper system provides divorce 
information "on demand". At the same time, transportation (mobility) info is 
*very* attractive for the police, and our police has repeatedly shown to 
have a poor understanding of law, and human rights in particular. For 
intanmce, they repeatedly made proposals to register all cards passing 
certain highways, and to implement an "electronic moat" around Amsterdam. 
Are there perhaps vendors of (privacy killing) systems that excite police 
chiefs? The good news is that the present government keeps more distance 
from the police (recently the chief of the Amsterdam police loudly 
complained about that in a newspaper interview).

reinier