The Associated Press has an article entitled, Indiana moves toward electronic traffic ticketing. The bill was SB 247-2007, and I had the same reaction reading the article as I did when I originally read the bill. It allows the officer to enter a traffic ticket electronically, scan the driver’s license, generate a hard copy on site, and electronically transmit the data to the court. I’m not horribly opposed to this bill, but still, it makes me uneasy. Sometimes bureaucratic inefficiencies are saving graces. Perhaps, in the name of efficiency, we could have your driver’s license electronically linked to your bank account, and when the e-ticket goes to the court, it also goes to your bank which would be obligated to electronically transfer funds to the Clerk of Courts to be held in escrow pending the outcome of your case. I wonder if increased ticket efficiency will encourage police officers to write more tickets.
In the area of legislation, I know that the technological ability to generate and process documents has played a role in increasing the amount of legislation proposed. In the past, it simply was not physically possible to manipulate as many documents as we can today, and so, it resulted in fewer bills being considered by the legislature. Did we consequently suffer from too few laws in the past? I don’t think so.
Technological limits help, in turn, to limit government. We should be at least a little cautious as we remove those limitations.
[tags]SB247-2007, big brother[/tags]
I see technology and efficiency as an amplifier: Everything that is good gets better, and everything that is bad gets worse.
Look at email vs postal mail. Think of how much more connected to people you are that you would have had to write letters and wait weeks for a reply. But, on the other had, you have SPAM….
From the troopers I have talked to about this, they view this as a safety issue more than an efficiency issue – scaning a license and registration means less time standing a few feet from tons of metal going 70 mph.
What will be more interesting is when this will find its way into appelate arguements about the reasonable amount of time a person getting a traffic violation can be detained pending the arrival of a canine unit.