Exactly where have you been?

If you don't value your privacy, the government won't, either.

Sure, we say we want some boundaries. Then we buy cell phones with cameras and global-positioning navigators and post Web pages with personal photos and ... way too much information.

The government follows suit. Elected officials pass heavy-handed laws to lock down your medical and educational records and punish anyone who peeks at them, then they propose a national identification card, put computer chips in passports and authorize the storage of your phone records in a massive federal database.

Because we are well down the slippery slope that leads to George Orwell's "1984," news that the Nevada Department of Transportation is researching how to track your vehicle's every move might seem downright predictable. It should be setting off alarm bells within the driving public.

NDOT Director Susan Martinovich told lawmakers Wednesday that her agency is looking into a "Vehicle Miles Traveled" program to raise revenues for needed highway maintenance and capacity upgrades. She pointed out that gasoline tax collections, the department's primary funding mechanism, offer diminishing returns because newer vehicles travel farther on a gallon of fuel than older vehicles do. As a result, motorists are logging more miles than ever while paying less.

In its research to identify a new funding source, NDOT is focusing on "congestion pricing," which would charge drivers a premium for using heavily traveled routes during periods of peak demand. To identify everyone who is clogging those highways, the department would install tracking devices inside vehicles.

The Nevada program would be voluntary -- at least during the research phase. And the folks who first thought of this system like to say it would remain "voluntary" after coming online because motorists could choose to avoid the congested roads that trigger tolls.

But that tracking device never goes away -- and neither does the government's ability to find out where any particular vehicle is at any time of the day. Transportation officials might have no interest in using the technology for such purposes, but their colleagues down the road at the Department of Public Safety sure might. Anyone who volunteers for this research should know that.

"When they start developing this nationally, I want us to be at that table and have a voice," Ms. Martinovich said Wednesday. "I don't want the East Coast dictating what works in that measurement for the West Coast."

Ms. Martinovich's intentions aren't bad. Since her promotion to NDOT's top job, she has worked diligently to prioritize the state's highway projects and to alert lawmakers and taxpayers to the fact that her department can't complete most of them over the next decade without additional funding sources. But this research should be scrapped in favor of more practical, less intrusive means, such as automated toll lanes -- technology that recognizes your vehicle when it passes through certain points, but can't find you anywhere else.

When Ms. Martinovich and other Nevada officials sit at the aforementioned table with other state and federal officials, they should use their voice to say, "No way, no how."