"What are you unhappy about?" John asked to the figure stomping past his office door.
Luke stuck his head in the door after a quick u-turn.
"Ah, I got caught in one of the automatic speed traps. Another 20 bucks down the drain," said Luke.
"Well, if you are going to destroy the environment and the safety of the public, you'll have to pay the price," said Mark with a sardonic grin.
"I think that 32 in a 30 zone is not a crime against anyone or anything," said Luke.
The California FastTrack Pass was introduced in the 1990s and by 2020 there were about 2.5 million of them in various cars. The bureaucrats liked the idea of free loans from the taxpayers. Evey Pass required a $40 draw against a credit card. The state didn't let that money sit idle. Of course they didn't invest it, that would be madness. Nope, they did what a modern leftist state would do and that was to spend it on pet projects that would help few peoples, accomplish nothing long term, and enhance nothing but some politician's resume.
This didn't go unnoticed and it soon became the law that every car had to have one. As technology got better a new version of the Pass came out. It contained GPS chips and required connection to a car's electrical system. What the new pass provided was state knowledge of the location of every car. It didn't get used much but there were the odd case where it solved a crime. It was also used in a lot of divorce cases as the data could be opened by court order.
The dark turn came when a bright tech mentioned to his boss that the GPS chips can also report speed with a bit of software updating. The update was required and pretty soon every speed limit sign had the means to read the speed of any car that passed it. The speeding tickets were quite modest to start with, just a dollar per MPH over the limit. But the state was happy and excited to tap this new money stream. The fine per mile over the limit kept going up. There was no speed infraction too small to overlook. Motorists couldn't fight it in court as the electronics were unbiased in theory and numbers were numbers. After a while no one fought them, just allowed the funds to seep from their accounts and tap their credit cards whenever the account balance got too low.
Some smart guys canceled their credit cards. It took no time for that "solution" to be fixed by the state. They knew where the car was, so they just put a wheel boot on it until the account was refunded. They of course, added on $100 for boot installation and removal.
"We could prbably do something about the FastTrack if you were up to it," Mark said.
"Huh? What do you mean?" asked Luke.
"Between you and me and John down the hall, we could probably create some chaos," said Mark. "It would be illegal as hell, but we have the tech to do it."
"Hmm... I'm a bit bored and maybe it's time to do our part to make California free again. What do you have in mind?"
"We get John to get us into the hardware and then you and I do some software mods to their database. We can't just make ourselves immune to tickets, but maybe we create enough problems to force them to become a bit more benevolent," said Mark.
"Let's go talk to John," said Luke.
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