Comment by rex_gallorum2

It should definitely be illegal. There are so many other options for charging these kinds of fees, all of which were used by public bodies in the US in the past, from dropping envelopes of money in a box to paying a person at a kiosk or using a vending machine to buy passes. Many of these payment methods are still in use at some parks/facilities.

The noose is tightening around the necks of those few of us who do not use smartphones. I hope a future wave of 'tech minimalism' gains enough traction to ensure that there are alternatives, but for now, as we ride the wave of tech-optimism and the mass adoption of intrusive technologies in the name of convenience or cost cutting, most people seem to see asking for alternatives as unreasonable.

There is an element of innate freedom in anonymous, analogue processes, even if they are not entirely 'anonymous' - such as writing a car license plate number on an envelope of cash for a drop box - it might as well be if the information is never entered into a searchable digital database where it will presumably be stored for eternity.

I few years ago I went camping at a state park in a system that had recently introduced usage fees (having always been free in the past). The state apparently partnered with some obscure parking app company to collect the fees. The use of the state park required submitting a considerable amount of information to a third party, with little or no information on how that data might be used, stored, or sold - in essence you had no choice but to submit to a third party's TOS in order to use public facilities at all. I did not like this at all, and having no smartphone, I paid cash at the manned office - only to have them collect my information and enter it into the parking app database.

A few months ago someone here made a comment in another discussion about having a pervasive sense that things are not quite as they should be. That stuck with me.