[Congressional Bills 113th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 5884 Introduced in House (IH)]
113th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 5884
To prohibit the replacement of the gasoline excise tax with a GPS,
location or distance-based tax and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
December 11, 2014
Mr. Stockman introduced the following bill; which was referred to the
Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on
Ways and Means and Transportation and Infrastructure, for a period to
be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for
consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the
committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To prohibit the replacement of the gasoline excise tax with a GPS,
location or distance-based tax and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Don't Track Me Act''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.
(a) Findings.--Congress finds as follows:
(1) Tracking the location of vehicles and the identities of
owners for the purpose of taxation, fines or fees has the
potential to be misused, and such collected data could be
hacked or used for privacy-invading purposes.
(2) Government and corporate websites are frequently
hacked, and driver-tracking databases may be no more
invulnerable to hacking; to the advantage of criminals,
stalkers, and identity thieves.
(3) GPS tracking enables the technology for automatic
speeding, parking and other traffic tickets, charging variable
tax rates due to the time of day or other factors, including
characterizing driving behavior from acceleration and braking
speed, evasive maneuvers such as swerving to avoid a child or
deer in the road, or driving in what the Government may believe
is a ``fuel-wasting'' manner.
(4) GPS tracking schemes may require vehicle owners to
maintain bank accounts for the debiting of resultant fees. This
may be a hardship for many low-income vehicle owners, as well
as opening new hacking vulnerabilities for bank accounts of
vehicle owners.
(5) The existing gas tax is a rare example of a user fee,
whereby vehicle owners pay for the roads they use when
purchasing fuel. The tax has successfully provided necessary
funding for many decades.
(6) There are far less intrusive ways than location-based
tracking to get electric vehicle and hybrid owners to pay for
their road usage.
(7) Vehicle owners must not be required to surrender their
Fourth Amendment rights and be tracked everywhere as a
condition of driving on public roads.
(8) Amendment IV of the United States Constitution states
``The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue,
but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.''.
(b) Purpose.--It is the purpose of this Act to prohibit the
replacement or supplementation of the Federal gasoline excise tax with
any tax or fee based upon vehicle location or distance traveled,
whether determined by global positioning satellite (GPS), license plate
reading cameras or any other method of determining owner registration
or identity information, and vehicle location or distance traveled.
SEC. 3. PROHIBITION OF A GPS, LOCATION OR MILEAGE BASED TAX.
(a) In General.--It is contrary to the public policy of the United
States to require the placement or use of any GPS, location, distance
tracking system, or any other system to collect identities of vehicle
owners by any remote means such as license plate reading cameras, radio
frequency identification (RFID) devices or by any other means.
(b) The Federal gasoline excise tax may not be replaced or
supplemented with any tax, fee or fine based upon vehicle location or
distance traveled, whether determined by global positioning satellite
(GPS), cameras that read license plates or any other method of
determining vehicle location, distance traveled or registration and
identity data.
(c) No motor vehicle may be required to have any device on board
the vehicle or to transmit data to any off board device which tracks or
records, collects, stores, transmits and location, distance, or
registration or driver identity information.
SEC. 4. LIMITATIONS ON VEHICLE-TO-VEHICLE AND VEHICLE-TO-INFRASTRUCTURE
COMMUNICATIONS.
(a) No public funds may be used to study or implement or require
the use of any method of tracking or reporting vehicle movement or
location for the purpose of taxes, user fees, traffic fines, accident
investigation, or to communicate with other vehicles or infrastructure.
(b) Vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure communication
systems for the purposes of recording or transmitting or storing for
later retrieval location, registration, identity, or speed data are
prohibited, except for those vehicles owned or leased by Federal
Government agencies in question.
(c) Any such transmissions may only be used for momentary accident
avoidance or completely anonymized traffic reporting.
SEC. 5. ``BLACK BOX'' DATA RECORDERS.
No motor vehicle shall be required by any Federal agency to have
installed and operational any ``black box'' accident data recorder that
records any vehicle data for a period longer than the last five minutes
of vehicle operation, and such devices may never be capable of
recording audio, images, or video from inside the vehicle. Any such
device may not broadcast or transmit any data in any way, except by a
direct cable connection to a computer.
SEC. 6. VEHICLE OWNERS EXEMPTED.
No provisions of this Act shall prohibit the use by vehicle owners
of GPS or other technologies for tracking the location of their own
vehicle.
SEC. 7. REPORTING REQUIREMENT.
The Secretary of the Department of Transportation shall submit to
Congress, not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of
this Act, a report describing the actions taken to ensure permanent
compliance with this Act.
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