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Lawyers blame this technology for “turning divorces into an arms race,”

- http://www.rmtracking.com/blog...

I failed English is that irony?

There's a lot of assumptions all over this topic.

Look we're all slashdot posters here, including the one who said he wipes the harddisk when he steals laptops. The fact is the vast majority of thefts happen not by computer geeks and security nerds who have high paying jobs, and not even by well controlled laptop thieving crimerings who may know what they are doing.

The vast majority are crimes of opportunity. There's cases of such laptops being returned due to tracking software all the time as thief thinks, sweet I have a new laptop, takes it home plugs it in, and gets themselves caught by logging into facebook

The majority of criminals are idiots. Those who aren't it start becoming prohibitively expensive to protect against.

This entire topic is ignoring the major problem. Even large organised gangs will perform crimes of opportunity. They don't go down every street smashing every car window looking for a laptop. You want to leave valuables in the car? Cover them up, put them in the boot (trunk for those who don't speak the queen's tongue), or slide the laptop under your seat. It's not that hard to avoid many thefts.

Police can do almost anything by with a warrant. However, I would argue that if there is probable cause to track a vehicle with a gps tracking that it can be done without a warrant.

This doesn't even sound logical. I have checked out a few GPS tracking companies and the cost of these devices is not cheap. I wonder who they think would pay for this.

Quite a few states have emissions testing every year or every other year. Make them get a sticker that also has the mileage. The next year, you figure out the difference. Pay the tax. Odometer fails it's the same as if ODB readiness fails.

How often are these RFID checkpoints going to fail? Devices fall off cars, etc.

Let me guess, there's a GPS tracking company in someones district.

No, I don't think it's the last point you mentioned. I know of one GPS tracking company that's against it and they have written articles showing how it won't work. I think the congressman is trying to get rich with a new invention. By the way, it's not just the congressman, the Oregon Governor came up with the idea a couple years ago.

Reading the odometer would be too easy. They need to make a name for themselves and control everyone with GPS tracking. What happened to our right to privacy?

Tracking vehicle mileage is not even practicle. Yes, you can track miles driven via gps tracking, but the entire process, including data collection and compliance, would be extremely complex. How would the state possibly begin to enforce and monitor this and mandate everyone to buy a GPS device or some type of tracking system? As far as the research costing so much money, maybe they could read comments on Slashdot to get their answers for free.

The best method to protecting asset from theft is tracking it with a gps tracking or a RFID Tag. Obviously, the cost of the asset has to be greater than the cost of the theft protection device. GPS would work well, but the issue here is the cost of $200 or more. There are two types of FRID: Passive and Active. A passive RFID tag will only report on contact. An active RFID will report within about 1,000 feet. Battery life of smaller and inexpensive devices impedes longer distance tracking.

Wouldn't there have been a date from when the article was written? Sounds to me like someone else may have helped this happen.

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Beleive nothing you hear, half of what you see, and everything you track with vehicle tracking!

There is an easy fix: just don't check your email so often. Addiction is the real problem, but I think IM is more disruptive than email. We use Skype in our office, and although Skype is a great tool for communication, I find it to be more disruptive.

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Beleive nothing you hear, half of what you see, and everything you track with a vehicle tracking device.

As long as my wife doesn't know where I am then who cares about the government.

I agree. I work for a gps tracking company. I can tell you the government comes to us to buy tracking devices. They are not buying them to spy on people; they are buying them to solve criminal cases. However, the general public is doing more tracking of each other than the government. Most of the tracking is done by spouses trying to spy on each other with a gps tracker.

Good idea, but on second thoughts, we may need something with a little more zap.

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Be in control with vehicle tracking!

I will stick with a gps tracker. ____ Work smarter, not harder, with a tracking system!

I will stick with a gps tracker. ____ Work smarter, not harder, with a tracking system!

True, and it looks like they did well with all the comments.

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Work smarter, not harder, with a tracking system

This is good. Google Earth has room for improvement. Maybe they can catch up to Microsoft V.E. This will improve our mapping for gps tracking devices.

A gps tracking device would be a better crime solver.

The Government should plant gps tracking devices on the vehicles of suspected terrorists. This could lead them to the guys running the show.

This is no surprise to me. Hackers have found a way to do just about anything. There are a lot of people already protecting themselves from these type of crimes by installing a gps tracking device in their own vehicle. Obviously, there are other reasons for this too, such as, theft protection and recording mileage for tax purposes. However, for the point of this article, an innocent victim can prove their vehicle was no where near a toll, contrary to any overwriting of a FastTrack device.

Police should not need a warrant to track vehicles with gps tracking devices . This is no different than a police officer following a suspect vehicle around from a patrol vehicle. gps tracking devices are a great tool for law enforcement and eliminate several risk factors.

Police should not need a warrant to track vehicles with gps tracking devices . This is no different than a police officer following a suspect vehicle around from a patrol vehicle. gps tracking devices are a great tool for law enforcement and eliminate several risk factors.

Radar can be accurate if used properly. Most gps tracking systems are also accurate, but it sounds like there's more to this story than just a question of accuracy.

Some of you obviously think this is a GPS navigation device. It's not. I looked at the company's gps tracking web site. This is a TRACKING device.

Radar has several human error factor:

The 1st human error factor is that more than one vehicle near the same location will trigger several different speeds. The radar will bounce between multiple vehicles and it's up to the officer's discretion to determine which one is going faster.

The 2nd human error factor is the method of running radar. There are two options: stationary and mobile. Stationary radar is much more accurate because the radar does not have to calculate the police vehicle speed. However, even with stationary radar there can be improper readings. I have personally seen radar jump up to over 100 MPH for a second or two when I knew there was only one vehicle in sight that was going less than half that speed.

The 3rd human error factor is proper identification of the vehicle. This can be especially difficult when an officer is running stationary radar. Pulling out into traffic without causing an accident and then accelerating fast enough to catch the vehicle can be challenge. The officer is then responsible for identifying the vehicle that was believed to be speeding before a traffic stop is conducted.

There are also other things that can interfere with the accuracy of radar, such as, hills and turns in the roads; the police cars fan for the heater / AC; and if the radars calibration is current.

There is almost no room for error with regard to gps tracking devices. The couple negative things that could be said about gps do not apply to the Shaun Malone case. To that point, the prosecutions own expert witness who is being paid $5,000 for his testimony said himself that Rocky Mountain Tracking's RMT Rover GPS device is "very" accurate to within 1 mph. I checked out the company's gps tracking web site and looked at the spec sheet for this device. I would concur with his analysis.

Now it would be interesting to know (or the court forcing him to say) on WHAT he based his first expertise and what new publicly available information made him change his mind

The Rocky Mountain Tracking website is light on technical details but many vehicle GPS units include a gyroscope, and tie into the vehicle's ABS system wheel rotation sensors - allowing the system to track location (approximately) when going through tunnels, under bridges, between tall buildings, and so on.

Once you've got an accurate temperature-compensated clock (for your GPS) and you've got one pulse per wheel rotation from your ABS system, and you've got a GPS system so you can calibrate for wheel diameter, you should be able to measure speed pretty darned precisely.

It's possible his initial opinion assumed it was just a basic GPS and he revised his opinion after learning that the system also measured wheel rotation.