Posted on 11/05/2005 10:04:25 AM PST by SmithL
DANVILLE - Midnight settled on Dinah Thompson's Danville home, and the thief padded toward her car.
Shrouded in darkness, the thief pried open the Subaru's door. He found the hidden keys.
He motored out of the driveway, slid down the street and disappeared into the night -- a stealthy getaway, were it not for one common commuter device: FasTrak.
From the early morning hours of Sept. 22, when her car was stolen, Thompson tracked the thief by logging on to her online FasTrak account.
She knew, for example, that at exactly 2:22 p.m. that day, the car thief bolted across the Bay Bridge.
And she knew that two days later, at 5:16 p.m., the thief crossed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
For the next week, the thief continued to cross the bridge between Contra Costa and Marin counties -- sometimes twice a day -- as Thompson viewed the movements from her home and passed them along to police.
"He racked up 4,000 miles on my car," Thompson said. "I couldn't believe he left the FasTrak in there."
Using the FasTrak time stamps from the bridges, Detective Ryan Dunnigan of the San Anselmo Police Department said, investigators were able to determine the car thief's general whereabouts, obtain a photo and link him to break-ins and other car thefts that occurred at about the same time he entered Marin County. The car was recovered.
"It was very helpful she had FasTrak in the car," Dunnigan said. "It's definitely one of the tools in our toolbox, and it's becoming more and more valuable for tracking purposes because it fills in some blanks and helps us put the whole picture together."
More than 300,000 Bay Area motorists use the FasTrak e-toll device, which automatically deducts money from bank accounts or credit cards so people don't have to stop at toll booths.
Transportation leaders hail the device as the wave of the future, with FasTrak-only lanes on all Bay Area bridges. By the end of the decade, solo motorists could use FasTrak to glide through car-pool lanes.
But as FasTrak use in the Bay Area rises, the idea of government agencies observing movements stirs debate between crime victims who simply want to catch a thief and privacy advocates who fear an invasion into the private lives of civilians.
"You always have to have a balance of competing interests," said John Soma, executive director of the Privacy Foundation at the University of Denver.
"If there was a legitimate complaint of a stolen car, then the actions seem reasonable," Soma said. "However, if they start crossing the line and start randomly tracking individuals, then I think you have to go back to the classic justification and have probable cause."
The Bay Area Toll Authority, which manages FasTrak, said it does not give out personal account information to anyone -- unless police subpoena records for an investigation. A public records review by the Times corroborated the statement.
The toll authority even declined to release Thompson's account information to police without a formal subpoena, despite receiving Thompson's approval to do so.
"We're being really cautious and want people to go that extra step," said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the authority.
FasTrak's primary purpose in the Bay Area is to pay tolls. But it is also used to monitor traffic flow on most freeways; roadside signals read FasTrak devices as cars cruise by, allowing transportation officials to gauge congestion in "real time."
While the toll authority can track toll use for each device, it has no way of tracking FasTrak use away from bridges because the roadside sensors scramble the information and allow anonymity, Rentschler said. There are no programs to unscramble the information, he said.
"We're largely going to break toward protecting the information on privacy grounds," Rentschler says.
Thompson said she thinks the FasTrak information could be useful in more criminal investigations. She wants new legislation that would allow police to more easily monitor stolen FasTrak devices.
"I understand the reason for the existing privacy restrictions, but once the device has been associated with a crime, law enforcement should, without the need for a subpoena, have rapid access to tracking information," she recently wrote to state Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch.
Privacy advocates say tracking crime with the consent of the FasTrak owner is not problematic, but they worry about the potential of spouses checking up on each other or companies monitoring employees off duty.
"I wouldn't want my daughter's movements and daily routines to be known by someone, that she's always going here or there at a particular time," says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit privacy advocate group. "We're barely beginning to scratch the surface of this dialogue and who controls the information."
How long before the gov. requires every car owner to install one? Of course they will also require it to be renewed each year for a tidy sum. Caught without one in your car and your slapped with a 500 $fine. No thanks. Not worth the benefit.
It's nice to know that this sort of stuff can be done, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to publish it. It'd be better if thieves didn't wise up.
I just got our Fastrak bill for the quarter - ouch!
Socialista to English translation: "Please enslave me and kill my family."
" but they worry about the potential of spouses checking up on each other"
ROTF....don't cheat on your spouse.
Das' da FasJack.
Sticky legal question. She did not cancel her account so technically she is liable for the charges (assuming it was not a monthly one charge type of account -- I am in Maine and don't know their fee structure).
And among the law abiding as well:
"Shrouded in darkness, the thief pried open the Subaru's door. He found the hidden keys."
There is no fee for a FasTrak. The trigger levels are determined by usage history. Whenever my prepaid account gets down to $25, they hit my card for another $50. In the Bay Area, all of the bridges are currently at $3, except for the Golden Gate ($5). Soon, the tolls will rise to $4 to pay for the Bay Bridge replacement. We used to get a small discount for using FasTrak, but those days are long gone.
It'll never happen. They don't call it "Dumb Crook News" for nothing.
The fact FasTrack was used to catch the thief doesn't mean LoJack wouldn't have been better - for one, it would have given an all-the-time, real time trackable position of the car, instead of the twice-a-day datapoint that took days to track down. And it only worked because of the predictability of the thief's path.
Seems the thief's apprehension 'twasn't on the fast track..
If she contacted the police about the stolen vehicle, and the police were in contact with the tollway people (as they apparently were), she should not be liable for tolls after that contact. Allowing the car to pass through the tollgates was a strategic move to allow the thief to be caught more easily, but I don't think the woman should have to pay for that. The tollway should be able to go after the thief for use of a stolen FastPass and collect the money plus damages from him (if he has any assets to speak of).
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