The true face of this government
After years of preparation, on 16 November 2009, Minister Eurlings submitted the bill for road pricing titled "Rules for charging a user-dependent price for driving a motor vehicle (Road pricing act)". The submission was accompanied by an infinite number of attachments.
Notable is the penalty of 6 months' imprisonment or €18,500 fine if the road pricing box in the car malfunctions or fails to transmit kilometres to the control centre.
The box must, according to Article 4.5 sub 3.c, " record time and location data on the driving of the motor vehicle". The next paragraph, Art. 4.5 sub 3.d, states that only the amounts to be charged (per month) may be read out: "the data relevant to the calculation of the kilometre charge due that do not include time and (linguistically incorrect, should be "or") location data, broken down by base rate and peak rate."
Again, the danger of improper use lurks here, just as with the central registration of personal data with the New Passport Act.
There will have to be service providers (see Art. 4.23) that are trusted by the account driver. Some will appear more trustworthy than others and some will be less careful with data than others and it is on these image elements that the points of possible competition thus lie.
The catch 22 is that the driver has no certainty about the correct functioning of the box nor the accuracy of data transmission but can be fined 6 months' imprisonment or €18,500 for doing so.
The question now is to what extent the data will also be known to police because how else will you be able to pull people off the road?
By making the incorrect or non-functioning of the bill driving box highly punishable without the driver being able to do anything about it, you get an overt display of a Big Brother-like situation for the first time in the Netherlands.
With the new Passport Act, it could still be somewhat concealed from the common man and was only obvious to experts.
Now the common man is also clear.
Actually, there is already a general tax for road pricing, namely excise duty on petrol! By raising petrol, diesel and gas prices, you obtain similarly higher revenues.
The deep wave of uneasiness is being called to the surface in this way faster than we thought possible.