Ok, I keep this simple: I went to a customer last week that has his offices close to the German border, north of Bülach. On some country road there did I see some funny looking VW van with a high roof and several odd looking black windows. Instinctively did I adapt my speed to the limit expecting some police trap. But when passing did I see that the bus was labelled with "Zoll" - the customs service. The location made sense to me and I guess the second camera on the high roof means they snap pictures of the drivers of trucks.
Yesterday did I see the same vehicle parked next to the highway between Zürich and Pfäffikon apparently filming the traffic coming from central Switzerland and Chur in the direction of Zurich... that's a secondary transit route at best and nowhere near the border.
I could not find any info on the trucks or their purpose... any idea what's going on? I don't wear tinfoil heads, but well: Public video surveillance is a thing that in a democracy gets discussed first... especially if this is done on a federal level (Police is not).
Nope. It's a white VW transportet with raised roof similar to this one:
Only thing was that it had some weird holes in the roof as well as body on the side and back, so it looked like a video surveillance car from far away. Markings were small and said "Zoll Douane" with some red line.
I've seen them a few times before on the A3 at Wallensee. At the time I thought that they might be checking the routes taken by trucks that are passing through the country with transit documents and not delivering those goods duty free within the country. Or, goods that hadn't been cleared by customs were on the correct route to the client or warehouse to be cleared.
Sounds complicated, but in my dealings with customs in the UK, France, Germany and here, nothing would surprise me. These guys do have a lot of power.
I'd be honestly curious about what data they collect and what they correlate and what not. Clearly, it's a camera van. A video on itself makes little sense, so they must be reading out the number plates and from the higher camera take images of truck drivers. I know they record the numbers of every vehicle crossing the border. I guess that trucks will need to declare if they are bringing stuff to CH or only cross for transit... so that's probably enough to see if somebody is on his route or going somewhere else. But it's a federal agency collecting loads of data. I wonder what the boundaries are... how long they store data and which one...
The photo of the blue VW T4 shown by V___ is actually a system used by CH Customs for reading the recording system that heavy trucks have to carry/use that shows how many KM they do so they pay the correct road tax. They call it a Tripon system.
This mobile system is for checking the units (normally tamper proof) to make sure they are turned on, working and to download the readings.
Based on the heavy truck tax legislation.
DE: Schwerverkehrsabgabe (SVAG). Erfassungsgerät (Tripon)
Yes, the customs have loads of photos online about their Tripon system. They also had a lot of info on their mobile x-ray machines with which they can spot check trucks to see if they really loaded what they claim... funny enough could I not find any info or photos of those camera vans I saw.
