Pay as You Drive and Pay as You Throw

I heard on the radio (Moneybox) about a new type of insurance policy called "Pay as You Drive". Insurance companies say you are more likely to have an accident if you drive between 11pm and 4am, so they will give you discounts if you don't drive in that period, but they propose to check this using a gps tracking system in your car. You pay for the device to be installed and then you pay per mile you drive - more if you drive at rush hour or in the wee small hours. They interviewed a woman that is already using it and she read out the information that the device reports - time, distance travelled, area. The insurance company interviewed said they would hand over the information to the Police if requested as part of a serious inquiry, but not in order to catch speeders. Here's an article on the BBC news site

That reminded me of something that came up while I was watching the tv program about local councils and waste disposal this week. Some councils have installed little recorder devices on rubbish bins so that they can report on what weight of rubbish has been collected from that bin and when. This will allow them to charge separately for waste collection based on the weight of your waste. I think they already do this in Ireland, which has a much better recycling record than the UK. Another BBC link about the devices
I'm sure there will be more uses found for this kind of technology, but personally it doesn't worry me much yet... maybe when database technology starts to get sophisticated enough so that "they" can put the disparate elements together. What was that film where the hero's walking down a futuristic thouroughfare and all the billboards are talking to him personally?