Alternative to UK VED (car tax)

[pgkevet]

I actually agree, but I'm thinking the "battle" is long lost ... in the very ways you describe. When we consider the existing tracking that already takes place as a matter of course (and without much of a peep from the populace) it's not much of an issue if there's some tracking involved in collecting VED. Vehicles are already being tracked in and out of city low emission zones ... it's just the same on a larger scale. (Having said that I would prefer a secure mileage recorder that would simply hold a record of distance ... simpler the better.)

And there ya has it! Forget QAnon but accept that once the public fell for the great self funded, self surveillance technology of mobile phones and tinternet then any well funded gov or large organisation has extraordinary power just by key word intercepts - heck even encrypted stuff will show up as key word, phrase lengths that have a statistical value when measured by the millions/billions. An organisation like Amazon offering cloud storage has instant access to global data intercept - just the traffic through any node will do irrespective of start/end addresses. They don't have to be part of some sinister global cartel but Bezos admits to AI stats on Amazon customers to anticipate their needs and it's hardly a stretch to wonder if he does the same to a huge proportion of global traffic. You can bet there's more than one three-letter agency doing the same. So we're all puppets.