Turning truckers into snoopers may be the career switch of the century. And the Kings of the Road don’t even have to leave their rigs. All they have to do is look for suspicious activities, while they’re driving.
What’s wrong with that?
Plenty if you believe in privacy.
It’s the latest exercise in the “war on terrorism” that has Indianapolis, Indiana all agog with patriotic fervor.
It’s called the Highway Watch Program, and it’s sponsored by the American Trucking Association and the Indiana state police.
With the training of Highway Watch the state police hope to have 10,000 sets of eyes scanning the highways for people who are casing an area, taking pictures, marking off distances, or rehearsing a possible terrorist threat.
The training takes two hours and teaches commercial truckers what kinds of suspicious actions to look for. It even gives them a number to call if they’re anywhere in Indiana.
How truckers will manage to handle their 18-wheelers while watching for suspicious activities and calling authorities, all at the same time, is not clear. Also not clear is whether the road-safety aspect of the trucker/snooper transition was ever discussed, or even considered.
No problem. The cabs on the truck are so high that the driver has a clear vision of almost anything that’s going down. Question is, even with training, will a trucker always recognize a suspicious action when he sees it? Or will he miss the “weigh station”, or have his ETA disrupted because he was distracted by “reporting” drivers—some with long hair, some with brown skin, some on the apron of the road changing a tire,—and all found innocent, even of terrorist thoughts.
Nevertheless, this program of putting “big brothers” on the highway goes forward full steam. The first class was held at the State Police Commercial Vehicle Division on Indianapolis’s southwest side.
The thing I find troubling about the Highway Watch program is that this latest act of spying on us in the name of “home security” is meeting with no resistance or dissent at all. Apparently from anyone.
“You’re everywhere that the country needs to have an ear or an eye available,” Kenneth Strickland, state director of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration told 45 truckers and 20 highways workers.
State police Sgt. Rod Russell, a class instructor, allows as how, “It’s just good common sense.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” opined David Finley, a driver for Roadway Express, who took a day off to attend a Highway Watch class. “Me, myself,” Finley added, “I have never really seen anything along the lines of terrorism.” But he did acknowledge that in 12 years of driving he saw lots of accidents, which I presume gives him a leg up on the class.
Indiana hopes to train 10,000 truckers by next year, at an estimated cost of $10,000 to $15,000; but Indiana residents aren’t breaking a sweat, because the tab will be paid for by–surprise! the federal government.
However, the coldest chill I get, thinking about this on-the-road surveillance stunt, is not the program itself. Although that’s worrisome enough. It’s the program’s rate of acceptance and rapid proliferation—with all the citizens cheering it on and no questions asked.
It’s literally another trampling of your right to privacy, and right to be free of surveillance when you’ve done nothing wrong.
Indiana is the 24th state to join the Highway Watch program. And it appears that more states will soon follow.
This means that from now on, while you’re on the road, that “good buddy” you chat with on your CB is probably doing more than talking.
Big Brother is watching.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”