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Police and Lawyers Love E-ZPass
John_Schmidt writes "The AP is reporting that police are using EZ-Pass records to solve crimes. Lawyers are also getting the records to use in divorce cases. The article also mentions that the NYS Thruway has sensors to read the cards along the highway (not just at toll booths) but says the data is scrambled and not stored."
How soon before:
You passed between milepost 1 and 15 in under 6 minutes, here's your speeding ticket.
Convenience? Privacy?
Convenience? Privacy?
Decisions, decisions.
An awful lot of tollbooths also have license plate cameras, so who needs EZpass? Maybe they're just going to analog video recordings for now, but one assumes the license plate images are easy to OCR and that can be done in real time soon enough. I'm sure I could easily do it with a webcam. Of course once all tires have RFID, then every magnetic traffic light sensor and parking meter can have RFID readers built in.
This is even worse than having to have a LICENSE PLATE! I don't want anyone else, (LET ALONE POLICE!) knowing who I am.
I realize you meant that as a joke, but some of us don't want our whereabouts known at every second of every day. This has nothing to do with paranoia (beyond the standard healthy dose), or a penchant for illegal activities. I just don't want my every move tracked.
Also, realize that this has a huge potential for abuse... I go through a toll perhaps once a month. If I had one of these EZ Passes (or the local equivalent, the TransPass), I would not notice for up to a month if someone stole it and had earned me quite a bit of debt. Now, even aside from the bill, what happens when my TransPass record for the past month shows me regularly visiting a mistress, or a crime scene, or some other place I've never gone, all because someone thought ahead of time to cover their tracks and use a stolen TransPass? Yeah, suuuuuuure the police/divorce-attourney will believe someone nabbed by pass and I just didn't notice...
This boils down to the classic argument about speed cameras - they don't prove a driver, just a vehicle. Although some may justify the inconvenience (personally, I find it reprehensible) of getting a ticket after loaning out your car to a friend, the situation goes from "annoyance" to potentially "pound-me-in-the-ass-prison" or "lose-everything-to-ex-wifey" when records like these suffice as "evidence" of the actual driver in court. I do not consider that even remotely acceptible, nor should any of us.
The difference between EZPass and the Metrocard is that if you attempt to enter the turnstyles with an empty Metrocard, the system can stop you. You cannot be stopped from going through an EZPass lane with an empty card. If users had an option to do this anonymously, EZPass lanes would soon disappear as more and more people would just allow the pass to empty and still go through the booth. I am also not sure the privacy debate is valid because your license plate can still be photographed and the car's owner can be identified that way.
EZPass uses RFID -- Radio Frequency Identification. The point is you're still being tagged unless you put it in an anti static bag or farraday cage. Your trick blocks any cameras from taking pictures of your EZ Pass, yes, but don't you think the cameras at many toll booths grab your license plate as well?
IBM has been running a commercial recently with three 'tech guys' discussing an EZ pass with two of them implying to the third that he's a fool for not having the pass. Whereas my reaction has always been that he's the smart one for not submitting to having his every trip filed in a database.
The potato it is uninformed.
I think it's actually pointless to argue too much about EZ-Pass being tracked. As soon as its potential use in court becomes obvious, the states will just start including RFID tags embedded in license plates. I don't think *that* will be an opt-out situation...
(or they'd make political hay from mandating a no-evil-uses-with-EZPass policy, but this is Slashdot, so we all just assume a police state is inevitable, right?)
Ahh yes, our dear Slashdot, where tinfoil is headwear and 1984 is the bible.
Rent a clue.
People organize and strive to obtain more control over their environment. That tendency includes both governments obtaining more control over their citizens/subjects and citizens/subjects defending themselves against such control.
But institutional groups (such as governments) tend to go on for a long time, accumulating ever more power, while individuals are replaced from time to time. So if nothing is done about it the tendency will be for governments to accumulate ever more power, and become ever more oppressive, until they become so tyrannical that they're attacked from within and/or without and eventually overthrown (which may end up with an even worse situation).
The founders of this country recognized that tendency of government to accumulate ever more power. They prescribed a system of institutional restraints. But, because the government would eventual work its way around it, they ALSO prescribed ongoing watchfulness by the citizenry, so they can use NON-violent means to back the government off before it goes so far that only violent means will work. "Eternal Vigilance is the price of Liberty."
Which is EXACTLY what is going on now: New tech makes for new opportunity for spying and oppression. The government starts using it because there's no specific rule against it and it helps them "do their jobs". Eventually the citizens catch on and raise a ruckus. Sometimes this ruckus results in the creation of specific rules to suppress the misuse and restore the status quo ante (or even improve on it).
Slashdot is all about new uses of technology. "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." And what matters more than government misuse of new tech to oppress the citizens?
So of COURSE it shows up here. Of COURSE it makes up a significant fraction of the news items. Anybody can post, but ordinary citizens greatly outnumber the elite controllers. So of COURSE the bulk of the voices are against the new misuses of technology.
No tinfoil hats required.
This is a very healthy process. It's exactly what the founders of the country prescribed, to keep the country from developing into a tyranny and prosperity from degenerating into civil war.
Ridiculing the people criticizing the government's misuse of technology is NOT "conducive to these ends". But it does tell us something about the ridiculer:
Either he's a fool -
or he's on the wrong side.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Survey the speed people are driving on the road. Select the 85 percentile of that for the speed limit.
That's how the roadway designers originally established recommended speed limits (by observing behaviour and implementing rules to accomodate the majority of drivers). Politicians tend to use speed limits as revenue generation schemes and "please think of the children" emotion-tugging.
God, how I'd love to see someone get a ticket for going slower that the status quo speed, parked over there in the penultimate fast lane (2nd from left) on a 10 lane highway with people passing on left (when they can) and on the right.
If people are passing you on the right, you're breaking the law. You must move to the right except to pass.
If you change lanes without signalling ahead of time, you're breaking the law and endangering people. If you slow to 45 to take an exit without a signal on, you should get hit, then given a ticket. You are a hazard on the road.
But no, american "culture" is that you must drive, you must be able to drive and damnit, drive how you please and where you please. Just don't speed in front of The Man. Aside from drinking and weaving that's the only offence you'll get nailed for.
"There is no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to track down criminials. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so things to be a crime that it is impossible to live without breaking any laws."
-- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
I consider my driving habits private
Interesting, as driving is done in a public place.