Michael Snyder, Contributor

Activist Post

Once upon a time, the open highways of America were one of our greatest symbols of liberty and freedom. Anyone could hop in a car and set off for a new adventure at any time and even our music encouraged us to “get our kicks on route 66”. But today everything has changed. Now the highways of America are being steadily transformed into a high tech prison grid.

All over the country, thousands upon thousands of surveillance cameras watch our highways, and automated license plate readers are actually being used to track vehicle movements in some of our largest cities. Many state and local governments have come to view our highways as money machines, and our control freak politicians have established a vast network of toll booths, red light cameras and speed traps to keep cash endlessly pouring in.

If all of that wasn’t enough, TSA “VIPR teams” are now hitting the interstates and conducting thousands of “unannounced security screenings” each year. Driving on the highways of America used to be a great joy, but now “Big Brother” is rapidly sucking all of the fun out of it. Eventually, it may get to the point where Americans simply dread having to go out on the highway.

The following are 10 signs that the highways of America are being transformed into a high tech prison grid….

#1 Surveillance Cameras

All over the United States, a vast network of surveillance cameras is carefully watching our highways. The following is an excerpt from a recent article in the Baltimore Sun about this phenomenon….

The room is large and well lit, and it buzzes with activity even though its occupants remain seated.

The video screen at the front of the room is as wide as an IMAX, though not quite as tall. It consists of 64 smaller screens – 16 columns of four apiece – that monitor every inch of interstate between Great Wolf Lodge and the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. There is an emphasis on tunnels and bridges, and one corner screen is tuned in to a 24-hour weather report.

If you are driving on an highway in Hampton Roads, VDOT is watching you.

#2 Automated License Plate Readers

In a previous article, I detailed how automated license plate readers are being used to track the movements of every single vehicle that enters Washington D.C.

A recent Washington Post article explained that most people do not even know that they are there….

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

A lot of police cruisers are being outfitted with this technology around the nation as well.

So if you see a police car pull up behind you, there is a very good chance that a computer has already read your license plate and is giving the officer all of your information.

#3 Ridiculous Regulations

Some of the new “auto safety laws” going in around the nation are absolutely absurd.

For example, do you buckle up your pet when you go for a ride? Well, in New Jersey you can now be fined up to $1000 for not having your pet properly restrained while you are out driving.

#4 Outrageous Fines

In many areas of the country, unpaid traffic tickets can rapidly become a major financial burden.

For example, the new tolls on the 520 floating bridge in Seattle are absolutely killing some commuters…..

Registered vehicle owners who do not pay their toll within 80 days or more will be mailed a $40 civil penalty for each unpaid toll transaction in addition to a $5 reprocessing fee.

WSDOT confirmed some tolls plus penalty fees have added up to more than $1,000.

#5 Oppressive Toll Roads

Toll roads have become one of the favorite “revenue raising tools” for our politicians.

At this point the tolls on some roads have become so incredibly oppressive that many people simply cannot afford to drive on them anymore.

And for some reason the toll increases are coming especially fast and furious this year.

A recent USA Today article summarized some of the oppressive toll increases that we are seeing all over the nation….

California and Washington authorized high-occcupancy toll (HOT) lanes, where tolls rise or fall depending on traffic flow. Texas enacted laws authorizing private toll roads and allowing regional authorities to collect tolls. Indiana removed a provision requiring legislative approval for toll roads.

Some Maryland tolls will double this year as the state seeks money to rehabilitate aging roads, bridges and tunnels. The use of tolls on interstate highways also is spreading:

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, just won approval from the Federal Highway Administration to add tolls on Interstate 95 in his state. The state estimates that tolls on the heavily traveled corridor could generate $250 million over the first five years for expanding, improving and maintaining the highway.

New York and New Jersey recently announced that E-ZPass commuters will pay $1.50 more and cash customers $2 more to cross bridges and tunnels between the two states.

Georgia just created toll lanes on Interstate 85 in suburban Atlanta. The toll hikes are more than chump change: Cash tolls on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge jumped to $4 from $2.50, and to $12 from $8 on all the New York-New Jersey Hudson River crossings. Toll roads are one of my pet peeves. Any time I see a toll booth it immediately puts me in a bad mood. #6 Red Light Cameras

Red light cameras are another favorite “revenue raising tool” for the control freaks that run things. Unfortunately, these cameras don’t always work right so a lot of innocent people end up getting ticketed. But politicians love them because they can raise a lot of cash. The following is from a recent Business Insider article…. According to U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group), nearly 700 U.S. cities and towns installed the cameras, which accounted for more than 90 percent of tickets issued for illegal right turns, or rolling stops. In one New Jersey town, PIRG found 2,500 tickets were issued at one intersection within the first two months of installing a camera. #7 Speed Traps

In the old days, speed traps were mostly about making the roads safer. Today, they are mostly about raising money. One police chief up in Michigan has even admitted that the nature of his job has fundamentally changed…. When I first started in this job 30 years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement, but if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues. Speed traps are becoming more common almost everywhere, but some areas of the country are worse than others. A recent report from the National Motorists Association ranked how likely you are to get a speeding ticket in each of the 50 U.S. states…. After crunching the numbers, the NMA found that Nevada is the state most likely to issue you a traffic ticket, followed by Georgia and Alabama. In 2010 Florida took the top spot and Georgia and Nevada tied for second place. The state where you’re least likely to get ticketed is Wyoming, followed closely by Montana. These two ranked at the bottom in 2010 as well. #8 Government Spying

It has been revealed that the federal government has been secretly putting GPS tracking devices on thousands of vehicles in order to track the movements of people that they are interested in watching. Most of the time the people involved have not even been charged with any crimes. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Wired magazine article about this phenomenon…. The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car. Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man. The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices. The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds. #9 Extraction Devices

If you get pulled over by police, you never know what to expect these days. Previously, I have written about how law enforcement authorities in some parts of the U.S. are using “extraction devices” to download data out of the cell phones of motorists that they pull over. The following is how a recent article on CNET News described the capabilities of these “extraction devices”…. The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.



Brave - The Browser Built for Privacy #10 VIPR Teams

If all of the above was not bad enough, now we have to deal with TSA “VIPR teams” terrorizing us on the highways. If you regularly travel across the country, there is a good chance that you have already encountered one of their “unannounced security screenings”. The following is from a local news report down in Tennessee about how local authorities are working with VIPR teams to fight “terrorism” on the interstates…. You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR). ‘Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,’ said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons. Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state. TSA VIPR teams now conduct approximately 8,000 “unannounced security screenings” at subway stations, bus terminals, seaports and highway rest stops each year. Are you starting to see what I am talking about? All of this “security” is becoming extremely oppressive. We don’t need “Big Brother” constantly watching us, tracking us and fining us on our highways. So do you have any examples of how the highways of America are being transformed into a high tech prison grid to add to the list above? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

This article first appeared here at the American Dream. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.