[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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