IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2014 - 51

company records. The road
Traffic Authority can get any
records from a company on
demand. They don't need a
warrant; they can just get them
so the company is caught on
all fronts. The new system and
the amount of offenses were
so huge in number, even the
administrators believed there
was an error in the system."
Driver C: "Companies run
trucks with different weights
so for the truck to be on certain roads, they have to justify what they are carrying.
So a 68-tonne load must have
a higher-mass limit tracker
on it, then if that truck is
tracked on roads that he is
not allowed to travel on he
is breaking the regulations.
So a GPS system will tell the
boss when the driver is going
to get to the depot. Say they
check and find the truck is
10 kilometres away, but they
can also check that the truck
went the correct way."

Driver B: "I was coming
down a steep hill. We all
knew there was a cop sitting
hiding in the bushes, hand
held radar, so I am coming
down and the cop follows
me, pulls me over. He tells
me that I am doing 118 km.
So why would I speed when
I know that he is there and
I am going down a hill?
Typical stuff that they do
although the Commissioner
said the other day "visibility" is the best deterrent.
Anyway, I reached up turned
the key off. I said to the cop
I have just switched my GPS
off. So when I turn it off. I
know the company is going
to ring me and ask why I did

Drivers Discuss Surveillance

it. I am then going to say...
check my records. So we can
print out my speeds for the
last 20 minutes or so and I
know that I am doing just
over one hundred kilometres
an hour probably one hundred and one kilometres so
I am legal. So these systems
can be used both ways if you
know how."

Driver A: "So you can feel
like you're a criminal in the
truck because you're being
watched from the time
you get into it, till the time
you get out by road Traffic Authority (rTA), police,
and the boss. They take our
time sheets and check, are
we are using the truck for
private use? Then they check
are we working properly so
that they can make money.
What I don't understand is
that I work legitimately, and
I end up being rung up anyway. They ask can you get
there early...faster? My mate
got rung up because he was
stopped. They could see the
truck was stopped. What are
you doing? He was tired. He
was working...on time and
having a sleep. They wanted
to know why?"

transparency regarding employees
and employers. They also discuss,
in detail, the growing relationship
between surveillance of employees,
companies, and law enforcement
[5, p. 375]. Worksite information
is shared, unencumbered in Australia, by regulatory oversight,
and the gap is closing between the
Australian justice systems and the
Australian economic systems. Individual civil rights are disappearing
between these two systems. Australian traffic enforcement institutions can readily and legally access
an employee's record obtained
through GPS.
We are not discussing an engine's
dynamics but rather, a driver's
behavior. The system now established could also turn against itself,

Companies say that they have the
trackers on so that they can watch
that the drivers don't go to where
they are not supposed to.

Having briefly mentioned the
profit involved in selling the GPS
technology and the laws that can be
introduced to support such technology, it is important to note that policy makers are not discussing the
issues around oversight. Perhaps
this is because the more powerful
worksites such as worksites for
police, doctors, and politicians are
generally not subject to such oversights. Both Snider [8] and Herbert
and Tuminaro [5] refer to important
issues such as accountability and

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SuMMEr 2014

as the company, which has installed
the GPS devices as a method of
proving its safety practices, can find
that their records are also available
to government authorities and the
on us is on the company to prove
that this new and unregulated technology is correct, or in some cases
incorrect. These official records,
once permanently on an electronic
server, can determine a company's
"health" in terms of compliance.
An imperfect system can be held
to record perfect results. Another
scenario to consider is that a company uses such data as evidence to
increase consumer and government
confidence (Canadian research
Council p. 395).
The complacent public acceptance of GPS in interstate trucks
condones the practice of gathering this information in the area
of electronic commerce, meaning
the worksite. When an industry
accepts the unregulated handing
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2014