In Jones, a defendant suspected of drug dealing challenged the actions of the FBI after the FBI attached a GPS tracking device to the underside of the defendant’s Jeep and subsequently tracked the defendant’s movements for approximately four weeks. This was true until the Supreme Court of the United States decided the case United States v. And because movement information is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, there is no Fourth Amendment restraint on what information, and how much information, the government can force a taxpayer to record and disclose pursuant to its legislative taxing power.
Thus, because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s movements, information concerning an individual’s movements is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. When a person travels over public streets, he or she voluntarily conveys to anyone who wants to look the fact that he or she is traveling on a particular road in a particular direction, at a particular time, his or her ultimate destination, and any stops along the way.
So, is time, location, and distance information protected by the Fourth Amendment?Ĭourts have consistently upheld the notion that a person traveling on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy. Congestion pricing will require users to report not only their mileage but their location and timestamps as well. A “fully optimized system,” as envisioned here, is one that utilizes congestion pricing. The issue, then, is whether the information that the government would need to collect in a “fully optimized” VMT Fee Program is protected under the Fourth Amendment. However, not all personal information is protected under the Fourth Amendment. This provision, made applicable to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment, encompasses more than just the physical things a person owns or occupies the definition also encompasses large deal of personal information.
The Fourth Amendment secures the right of people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches or seizures” and no government search or seizure into such protected area may occur without a warrant supported by probable cause. Oregon’s handling of this challenge could be a model for states to follow. One little known but very difficult challenge is the restriction the Fourth Amendment places on governments to collect protected sensitive information. States, however, have shown a willingness to confront the challenges such a program presents and, in Oregon’s case, have shown an aptitude for addressing the challenges. Not only is the federal government simply not prepared for the challenges such a program presents, the federal government has shown no interest in confronting such challenges. Such proclamation underscores the truth known by many in the industry that for VMT fees to be the funding method of the future, the programs will have to be implemented at the state level first. Shuster cited “technical concerns of the government tracking mileage” as the reason for excluding the funding option. Much to the relief of Vehicle Mile Traveled (VMT) fee opponents, Chairman of the House Transportation Committee Bill Shuster recently proclaimed that a VMT fee at the federal level is not in the cards as a way to fund the upcoming highway bill.
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