Fundamental changes that are targeted on all road users need time and tactical instinct. Otherwise, today’s ‘Anger citizens’ go too early on the warpaths. Since the collapse of socialism, governments of the former free west do no longer know compunctions to discover the advantages of the planned economy. The current data processing offers more opportunities of an encompassing supervision that Orwell could ever have imagined. The scruple of politicians to use something like that for their own political career is approaching zero. At the same time the protective mechanisms of a society are too slow, in order to react timely to these changes. For unveiling these governmental attempts, it requires fantasy early on for refining the new plans of the public traffic financing – The Big Brother of the street.

Besides the data storage of mobile communications data and the tracing of mobility patterns, the next collection net evolves the road toll facilities. The so-called reason is the participation of all highway users, including the foreign ones, in paying for the preservation of roads, bridges and the monitoring technology. Behind these installations could also exist the following possibilities that would increase imperceptibly the influence of the government.

• Increase of the road charges
  Even if a set-off with the vehicle tax happens at the beginning, the system offers a simple set of keys, in order to increase the fees in the mid-term. If for example more and more bridges and roads have to be repaired, one can put with a shrug additional costs, in the form of fees, on the shoulders of the road users, without any literal tax increase.
• Automatic number recognition
  The toll collect facilities lead to a new flood of mobility data of the vehicles. The position of a vehicle can be pursued on a long-term basis with this encompassing control, similarly, as with the mobile phone detection. This enables additional insights about the behavior of the citizens. For example, the link with the mobile phone data becomes interesting. The only thing that will then be missing is the implanted personal chip. We will not only know where the mobile phone or the car is, but also reliably, where the person is at any point in time.
• Speed control
  Nowadays speed control uses fix or mobile speed cameras that measure the current speed and document a too high speed with a photo. Immediately after the misdoing or weeks later it will be punished. In the future, the time difference between two toll control places can be measured. Then the misbehavior will not only be registered point by point, but across the whole distance. If the average speed will be too high, it incurs a fine.

Even if the toll focuses at the moment only on highways, the functioning system can be expanded at any time to all kinds of road. Eventually the vehicle tax gets transformed to a fee for using the streets based on usage. The politicians eliminate then with populist fuss the vehicle tax. On the bottom line, however, the costs increase for everybody and the surveillance state will be possible in a way that can only be undone with difficulty.

Bottom line: In the plans for the German car toll system are more possibilities hidden, than one can recognize at first sight. Imperceptibly a new Orwellian system evolves that does not only cement the glass citizen. At the same time established tax models become state fees based on usage. Who already gets the idea of a flat rate, gets the point. Big Brother Traffic is an additional building block to let 1984 become reality.