Privacy Issues in TDP Road Pricing

The Department for Transport's Congestion and Road Pricing web page provides an overview of the issue, as seen by the UK Government. In addition, the Feasibility Study of Road Pricing in the UK explores the issues surrounding a road pricing scheme in some depth. With respect to privacy issues, Annex G - Compliance, Enforcement and Privacy of that report acknowledges that there are significant privacy issues to be addressed:

"The importance of privacy as an issue means that it will be at the forefront of policy making. But there are also legal safeguards for privacy which are likely to create specific requirements on any scheme. The two most important sources of these are the Human Rights Act (HRA) and Data Protection Act (DPA)."

The report analyses the implications of the HRA and DPA and concludes that it should be possible to construct a system that stayed within the constraints of these acts. Of the HRA it states:

"The HRA does not ... appear to prevent or impede the collection of the data needed for road charging, [provided that] the interference [with the right to privacy] is proportionate, going only so far as was required to meet the aim."

This might be interpreted as requiring the selection of a system that provided a higher level of personal privacy over a system that provided a lower level of protection.

Of the DPA the report notes that:

"...the 'adequate, relevant and not excessive' principle [involved in collecting personal data] might be inferred to imply that this separation of powers [between the body that tracks the vehicle and the body that charges for the journey] should be built into the scheme."

The report also raises the issues of whether and how data can be shared with other bodies - the police for example. It also discusses how long data should be retained. Since the DPA gives individuals the right to access the data that is held about them, it may be that a mechanism would be required to allow road users to access information about their journeys stored in such a database - quite possibly an expensive requirement.

More recent Department for Transport documents (such as this and this) contain many references to the overriding importance of privacy in road pricing systems, including this:

"...guiding principles for the [road pricing operators] and road-user relationship [include...] ensuring that confidentiality safeguards relating to privacy and the use of data are treated as paramount.""

We contend that the privacy issues raised by the HRA and DPA are of paramount importance in the design of a TDP road pricing schemes, and that where a choice of technologies is available a technology that provides the highest level of privacy must be chosen over a technology that may be more convenient or inexpensive.

That is: if your privacy solution is not as robust as the Trusted Driver technology, you should be talking to us!