Electronic Toll Records Help Solve Crime

When Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Luna's sedan cruised through a toll booth the night he was killed, his E-ZPass card automatically billed him. More importantly, it left an electronic record of his travels for police investigating the crime.

Millions of drivers now use electronic toll systems to pay for tolls without digging out cash, and investigators are increasingly using the electronic record they create as a crime fighting tool.

The New York Thruway System has received 128 subpoenas from investigators since 1998, and has turned over records in response to 61 of them, said Terry O'Brien, a spokesman for the thruway system.

The thruway system has issued electronic cards for use in 5.1 million vehicles, so the number of records subpoenaed is a small percentage. But experts predict the records will increasingly find their way into both criminal and civil cases.

No particular quibble with this usage, but the potential these devices have -- that is, to track our whereabouts on an ongoing basis, because each person is carrying a tiny transponder device that can be picked up at ez-pass boothes and elsewhere -- is pretty scary.