If you were a government, what would you do with a GPS tracker on every single vehicle in New Zealand?
That seems to be what Minister Bridges is heading towards with his view of tolling. Only the elite see this as a cost-attribution instrument.
Of course, many of us willingly give up our privacy to our cellphone apps and to social media.
But we have to offer that up.
And granted, motorways and roads are already highly regulated environments. There’s no clear right to privacy in New Zealand.
But our Bill of Rights Act has a freedom of movement clause in Section 18. For good reason. But they think they can limit us moving, simply through fear.
How long would it last before NZTA was required to share the data with: NZ Police, the SIS, IRD, MSD, Housing NZ, GCSB, and then as we’ve seen, data goes to Ministers to roast us alive and naked? Not long.
The state does not need to know where I am.
Our Bill of Rights Act section 25(c) also defines the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty. Since anyone can be tracked anywhere in a gps’d vehicle, we will be under perpetual surveillance. The onus should be reversed: the state should have to prove when it needs this “warrant” to enter my space.
US Supreme Court Judge Sotomayor’s dissenting judgement against evidence obtained in a random cop stop railed against citizens being caught in the grip of the “carceral state”. It’s coming here if this succeeds. Those in NZ who are most victimized by our grossly jailed society have the most to fear from this GPS move. Sotomayor was on point here too.
Just as we did with the GCSB bill, we should rise up and fight this.
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