Ben Wear's Wily Hunt for Truth and the TxTag

[Updates below.]

Like any self-interested blogger concerned with his image and worth his keyboard, I have a few Google alerts activated to let me know when certain things are published in Google's aggregation of online news sources. Today marks the first time one of my alerts tripped containing the title of this website.

Austin-American Statesman: Hunting the wily TxTag

Last week, I signed up for a toll tag, called "TxTag" for Central Texas customers. Dallas and Houston have different systems and different names for their tags, although all of them will work in all three places.

Given all the hullabaloo over toll roads, it seemed almost like a political act to order one of the stickers.

Unfortunately, it would only seem so to those who aren't paying attention. The government is involved in roads up to its armpits. It manages the existing road network. It plans where future growth will occur and seizes private property to clear the way for it. It funds the system through taxation. It assigns criminal and civil liabilities for what you do while on the highway. And it employs tens of thousands of people all over Texas to repair, secure, and upgrade tens of thousands of miles of public roads.

Yeah, tinkering with this economic monstrosity involves politics. How could it not when people insisted and continue to insist politicians and bureaucrats be in charge?

But given the situation, it would be an act of stupidity not to get one.

Mr. Wear's emphasis.

I should also add, as another political angle, media pressure to get with the state's program.

The tag, which you attach to your windshield just below the rearview mirror, will communicate with overhead toll readers and allow tagholders to drive without stopping at booths on the coming Austin-area toll roads. Plus, tag holders will get a 10 percent discount. And it costs nothing to get one. Well, kind of.

So having the tag will allow people faster and cheaper travel. Of course, faster and cheaper travel are good things, but they only always good things if you rip them from their context. How many people want robbery and murder to be faster and cheaper for the robbers and murderers?

Faster and cheaper government services is a good thing, but only to those who want those services provided efficiently by the government. To everyone else (my little 0.5% of the population, give or take a few hundred), it means a continuation of the collective horrorshow, just with a bit more momentum.

I decided to pretend I wasn't a reporter who knew a lot about this, but rather a regular Joe out to get a tag.

I've never read or heard of Mr. Wear before so I cannot pronounce how well I think he knows what he says he knows. I have my doubts given what this column has said so far.

I Googled "Austin toll tag."

There was no sign of the txtag.org site on the first five pages (at least) of the almost 491,000 entries this churned up. The first entry was "magnifisyncopathological: Austin Toll Roads" which turned out to be "the opinions of a libertarian anarchist in Austin, Texas." As you might expect, these were not supportive opinions about toll roads.

Magnifisyncopathological is capitalized, sir.

Now, it isn't crystal clear whether he means my opinions, the 489,000 others, or just those on the first five pages of results. If he meant me, then allow me to clarify what I actually wrote since he didn't bother to explain my posting.

Austin Toll Roads? was written in April of 2004 and originally contained only glancing remarks about automated toll collection systems. Not a word was written about TxTag itself. What I did express was this:

• Tolls, by themselves, are not intrinsically terrible. No small amount of the bitching against tolls is related to those people just bitching about having to pay for something they think they ought to get for free.
  
• But we aren't getting roads for free. Billions of dollars in federal, state, county, and local revenue is generated by taxes and license fees. In essence, "we" have already "paid" for this stuff which, by the way, rightfully belongs in the arms of private enterprise and not the state (PDF).

I can imagine Mr. Wear's hypothetical Joe reading this article and thinking...

Hmm, would be stupid to not use this thing. Quicker driving times and less expensive. Tolls are inevitable. And damn, if some wacky, utopian "libertarian anarchist" guy is against the TxTag, it's got to be worth checking out.

Since the article didn't contain a link to my blog (c'mon folks, this isn't rocket science) and Mr. Wear or his editor didn't type out the address to my website, very few people have dropped by today to see what I wrote. This isn't intellectual dishonesty, but it is irritating to get referenced so dismissively and it's particularly true when what was dismissed contained an explanation as to why roads are so political.

Anyway, unless you know the name of the tag, finding it could be a bit difficult. The Transportation Department plans to address that starting in August with a multi-front ad campaign.

Copyright 2001-2006 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. All rights reserved.

The administration for which we'll all be forced to finance. Disagree? Try skipping out on your taxes. They will eventually escalate things to the point where someone with a gun and a greater legal authority to shoot you than you've got to shoot him will arrive on your doorstep.

Mr. Wear goes on to describe how you sign up for the TxTag, generally making it look like a pleasant experience. Half of his article is devoted to the basics of the process and the primary thing require of you: a $20 credit card balance for the duration of your account. So, another government database with your personal information stored upon it.

Not only that, but a .gov database tied to your

• license plate(s)
  
• car's make, model, year, and color
  
• standard contact information

that is all tied to the tag itself:

What is a TxTag?

State-of-the-art innovation. TxTag is a thin sticker that goes on the inside of your windshield behind your rearview mirror. It is slightly smaller than your vehicle registration or inspection sticker. It contains a microchip inside that sends a signal to equipment located above the toll lanes. All you have to do is correctly install the TxTag on the inside of your windshield and make sure you keep enough money in your TxTag account to pay your tolls.

My emphasis.

Unless the above was written by an ignoramus, this is not passive technology. This is a system that transmits tag-specific information in a way that can be received by equipment mounted at least a dozen feet away while you drive by doing "highway speeds." I assume they built the system to work with speeders (although think of the speed limit enforcement possibilities if they tied this into a radar-and-ticket-issuing network...). It shouldn't be hard to see the security concerns this kind of system creates. Mr. Wear doesn't mention any of these concerns. Why would you expect him to, when he can't even bring himself to be clear that the whole thing is obviously enmeshed in politics from top to bottom?

The relevant things I've written about tolls and roads in chronological order:
Federal Toll Roads?, Austin Toll Roads?, Austin Traffic Sucks? Really???, Libertarians and Toll Roads, Which Small Towns and How Many Lives Will the Trans Texas Corridor Ruin?

UPDATED 7/11/2006 5:05pm
Just fired this letter to the Statesman editor with Control Number 200607111703432725: A Separation of Street and State

Posted by Drizzten at July 10, 2006 11:14 AM