Transportation czar: Car-tracking technology to be used only in emergencies - Boston Herald

Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack said the toll collection gantries springing up on the Mass Pike could be used to track license plates in the case of an Amber Alert or similar situations when authorities are on the hunt for a specific car — but will not keep or store data for everyday drivers when they drive underneath beginning on Oct. 28.

“One thing the gantries can do that we have never had an ability to do before is tell you, in real time, if you are looking for a specific license plate,” Pollack said today on Herald Radio. “Imagine there is an Amber Alert out. If we key that license plate into the system and it goes under a gantry, it would actually ping us and tell us that’s where the car is.”

Pollack stressed the technology would only be used in an instance where “it really matters that we find the person now, and not a week from now.”

“If we could have done that when the Marathon bomber was out there, I think everyone would agree we want to be able to track their license plate in real time,” she said.

The toll collection devices have already sprung up on the Pike and 16 are set to be built when she system becomes fully operational. Rather than having to stop at a toll booth, drivers will drive under the gantries and the technology will scan EZ-Pass transponders. Drivers without an EZ-Pass will have their license plate captured and the address registered with the specific plate will get a bill for the toll in the mail.

The technology has raised concerns from privacy advocates worried about the state collecting license plate numbers or being able to register whether or not a car is driving faster than the speed limit.

Pollack said the rules for collection and storage of data will be determined by the state’s records conservation board and be finalized before the system is up and running Oct. 28.

“We are working on a three-part privacy strategy to make sure we are not unnecessarily keeping people’s information, because if you keep it, you know there is all this hacking going on and all that,” Pollack said. “Speed data, I know, is a thing people are concerned about. ‘I don’t want you to know how fast I was going.’

“We collect the data so we can collect tolls,” Pollack said. “We are not in the speed-enforcement business.”

Pollack said traditional toll booths will vanish from Bay State roadways by the end of 2017.

“You will not know there was ever a toll both anywhere in Massachusetts,” she said.

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