UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam

Barryke writes "According to The Observer, England is working on a remote control for cars to be used by the police. England's police force is lobbying to get a remote-control to stop other cars; this could also be used to limit speeds. Since needed technology is already available in modern cars, modification is very easy and cheap. But what if I just escape by hitting the clutch and use my speed to go downhill? Bet I'm in the hospital before they are!" Orwellian, or ... Californian?

Comments

And thus...

[Compact Dick]

we feed the machine that will eventually enslave us.

Forget labelling capitalism, communism or socialism as "evil". It's time for a new eco-political model, one that learns from the mistakes of past systems and is designed to prevent this sort of tipping of the power scales.

Re:And thus...

[KamuSan]

Amen.

Problem is that our governments are not democratic anymore: they don't act in the best interest of the population.
OOTH most of the population are sheep that will accept anything as long as they're fed and entertained.

So, the solution is not to install *another* government that thinks it knows best what good is for the people, but to raise the political awareness of the general population.
And I think that the EU, with it's byzantine rules and centralized and ideological rule-making is not going to help. It get's even worse when countries like Germany and France can apparently do whatever they want and won't even hold their own promises. This will only lead to more detachment and desinterest.

Note: I'm not from the UK, but from NL.

Re:And thus...

[the_mad_poster]

Last night I had to stomp the accelerator and shoot up from 55 to 70 to avoid an idiot that decided "merging" at a yield sign meant "pulling into uncoming traffic without looking". Slowing down was not an option thanks to the moron tailgaiting me.

A kid came careening down his driveway on a bike a few months back and almost slapped the back of my car while I was doing 45. If I hadn't stomped the gas and shot up to 55 he might be dead now.

I had to drive my girlfriend's father to the hospital after he severly injured himself with a power tool. Ambulances are notoriously slow in the area because of the extremely rural setting. I spent most of the time on open road with a 45 speed limit doing upwards of 80 mph while he gushed blood in the backseat.

I regularly have to speed up to get away from psychopathic tail-gaiting rigs, pickups, and SUVs that don't appreciate you doing the speed limit on the open highway.

In all of these cases, I had to travel well over the speed limit to PREVENT accidents.

In short - when you're a little older, you'll realize that "defensive driving" is a good way to get somebody killed in some fairly common situations. Once you finally have a little bit of experience driving in the real world where everything doesn't always play out like it does in the driving manual, why not come back and share your thoughts with us on the subject?

Re:And thus...

[LPetrazickis]

I regularly have to speed up to get away from psychopathic tail-gaiting rigs, pickups, and SUVs that don't appreciate you doing the speed limit on the open highway.

You make good points, but these psychopaths would be playing by the same rules as you if the speed limits were a physical law.

Re:And thus...

[LPetrazickis]

However, people won't tailgate explicitly for the purpose of getting you to accelerate. I'll be quiet now.:)

Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, ignoring all of the privacy issues that I know other people are going to address... It seems to me like giving any more control other than allowing the police to severely limit the speed of the target vehicle is just asking for all kinds of accidents from another person suddenly taking over control of the car. I think it would also possibly open the police up to civil suits were they to accidentally crash the car or harm any other people or property.

Yawn!

[pxpt]

Don't they realise that this is THE THING to hack if you were a car-jacker! Anything that is supposed to be secure and in the public domain WILL be hacked. It will be the innocent public that have to suffer the newer types of criminality that will undoubtably occur with the introduction of this new technology.

what, me worry?

[tuxette]

Is it me or do the police tend to have far less hindsight than everyone else? I mean, call me paranoidette or whatever, but I can already see the following problems:

- If these devices get put in use, sooner or later "everyone" will have one. Or at least relatively easy access to one. Just like police radios. Just like those dingies to control traffic lights. Let the fun begin!

- When "everyone" has this device, thieves could easily use them to stop a cool car and take it.

- The potential for abuse by police officers is high. It's already bad enough that some police officers go around hassling and abusing people just because they don't like their face. Bad cops can stop cars/drivers they suddenly, arbitrarily decided to hate. Another real but underreported problem is police officers stopping women just to rape them; this device would make it a lot easier for them to do it. At the same time, anyone else (people who buy these devices on eBay) could do the same thing.

- Because of the potential for abuse, car owners will carry weapons (guns, pepperspray, whatever) "just in case." You can never be too careful or trusting. Take the rape example above. Before, it would be enough to kick the bastard in the nuts and drive away. Now you have to do him some more serious damage. Things could get messy.

- And just how will police officers avoid ever stopping the wrong car? And will citizens have the right to take action if they are wrongfully stopped?

Re:what, me worry?

[Jerf]

But it seems that every time a story like this comes up, someone gets modded +5 insightful for pointing out problems that were probably discussed in the first meeting held by whoever is or might be working on this system. It is truly ridiculous to imagine that they'd get this thing all worked up, pass a law to require it in every car, and only then consider that a system with the power to stop people's cars may potentially be abused.

You sound like you're still in school; if you aren't then you really ought to know better. This is a political discussion, not a technological discussion. Frequently, the engineers will put together a disaster scenario, or something complicated like "It will work as long as we...", and the other political side will hire engineers with just as many credentials to say that "Live would be bliss if only we had this system!" Those engineers are generally wrong or even lying, but through the wonders of cognitive dissonance and human psychology will eventually convince themselves that their rosy view is correct.

Generally, both reports are then tossed out, the politicians do whatever the hell they feel like it, and, best of all, even after the system fails catestrophically, the either

1. Hire the engineers who said it would be great to "fix" it
2. Try to sue the negative engineers for some reason ("you should have stopped us"), and whatever else happens,...
3. actively resist learning from the experience about which engineers should be trusted in the future

Or some combination thereof. I'm not intrinsically as cynical as this is making me sound, but you have way too much faith in politicians. They don't understand second-order arguments, they tend to have an incredibly naive view of the world ("All policemen good", etc.), and in general it is difficult or impossible to reason with them because they generally believe in their very hearts that technology can be legislated, and second-order effects aren't "real" and can also be legislated away... despite abundent evidence to the contrary available to anybody willing to just open their eyes and really look around them. "Observation" is not a politician's strong suit.

Oh, and ...

A lot of people have keyless entry remotes for their car, and I've never heard of one of those being "hacked" to unlock someone's door. It wouldn't be tough to make cars only respond to commands sent along with the proper key.

That's because the remotes were created by private companies who would subsequently be sued if the cars were stolen via that route. Companies with a long, rich engineering tradition, so when somebody told them the right way how to do those keyless entries, they actually listened to the engineers, because they were used to it.

Guess which part doesn't apply to the government? Hint: All of it.

For evidence, look at DeCSS, WEP, and any number of other standards. Strong things like the remote keyless entry are by far the exception, and they only arise when there is both the motivation and the necessary expertise to do it. (WEP probably had the expertise but not the motivation (network companies obviously wanted a bullet point, not a real feature, they didn't realize how important this was to us, now we're going to get "second generation" security that should have been here since day one). DeCSS has the motivation but not the expertise.)

If, and this is a big if, they hand the design of this system over to one of those car companies (with some level of experience in these things), it might be secure. If, as history shows is much more likely, the law hands over a design specification of what everything is supposed to do, it's going to be flawed.

And even if it's done competently, the keyless entry has some advantages that make it cryptographically feasible, like the ability to change the key on every entry. This sytem will probably have some small handful of "master keys", and no feasibl

Terrible Idea

[evilviper]

Why is it that people always cling on to the worst ideas? First remote controls to change signal-lights, now this.

$50 of electronics and everyone going down that 5 mile stretch of freeway will be going 2MPH for no apparent reason.

I'm sure people like the idea for resolving car chases, but better solutions have been around forever. Hooks on the front bumber of a cop-car could easily grip-on and stop a car. Maybe a decent-sized spear on a cable could be shot into the back of a car. Better yet, rig a medium-calibur gun onto police helicopters and watch a chase quickly end as your engine block turns to swiss cheese in seconds.

Portable barricades (fences) could be in all cop cars, and put just ahead of the chase, where it can't be avoided. Spike strips would be nearly as good, but it seems terribly few cops are actually carrying them.

Re:Terrible Idea

[Politburo]

Portable barricades (fences) could be in all cop cars, and put just ahead of the chase, where it can't be avoided.

Let's see.. a portable barricade that will stop a 2 ton vehicle travelling at 60 mi/h? Right. Portable if you happen to have a crane on-site. Actually, they already do this. They park the car across the road. Naturally this can cause great damage to the vehicle and is not the preferred solution (although obviously more desired than a loss of life).

Everyone else has already debunked your other great ideas, so clearly the solution isn't as simple as you make it out to be. Why there is this assumption that all criminals will magically be able to get these devices is beyond me. Scanners have been available forever and only a small percentage of criminals actually use them, and an even smaller percentage successfully use them (ever see an episode of COPS where they just keep using the radio because the guy was too dumb to turn the scanner down?). Scanners are readily made available, as well. Any device that we're talking about in this case would have to be a hack, which would reduce the availability even more. Also, as people mentioned above: who wants a device that can disable a car? Then all you have is a 2 ton brick, and no way to leave. I'm not saying there's no reason to be against this, but so far most of the reasons given to be against it don't cut it.

WTF?!

[oPless]

What a dangerous idea.
Any loss of (driver controlled) power is just as dangerous as, say, shooting out tires or using those tire bursting devices.

The questions that should be asked are WHY do the police think they need this control over other peoples cars? Instead of going after motorists, maybe the Sussex Police should be concentrating on Robbery (up by a third)

What gives for these non-elected morons think they are trying to limit the liberties of normal citizens?

This country is going mad. Not quite so mad as the USA, but does anyone know of a non-idiotic state that we all could goto ?

2003 is making 1984 look like 1968

[h4rm0ny]

This pales in comparison to the less visible controls that have been introduced recently (e-mail snooping, database consolidation, increasing investigative powers) but it's still not nice.

I'd be surprised if the government monolith is quick enough to keep ahead of the hackers and criminals on this one. Result - false expectations of safety and only the innocent being subject to this. Though less common, I expect non-police officers will get access and be able to use this system on people from time to time. Nice.

DIY Fuel Injection

[femto]

By putting forward such a suggestion, police and politicians are only demonstrating an ignorance of technology.

The computer which controls the engine of a car is not rocket science. There a projects in existence to build Do-It-Yourself Electronic Fuel Injection computers. In addition, a standard piece of auto electrician kit is a small box which provides a set of fixed strobes to drive the fuel injectors, allowing a car with broken (or disabled) EFI to drive away (with potentially reduced performance). The circuit is not much more than a 555 timer driving a few flip-flops. Ultimately, any criminal can easily find a substitute for the 'standard' EFI controller in a car, thus bypassing any disabling features.

This leaves honest people as the only ones susceptible to a 'remote control for cars'. Consequently the only real use for such a feature would be to simplify life for car-jackers.

Re:Ahhh... the opportunities!

[TygerFish]

Harden your car against the system...

Essentially, this is one of those things that recapitulates the (old and creaky) truism by the NRA:'...if guns are outlawed,' etc.

If the authorities set up an intrusive technology which gives them the ability to control an ordinary law-abiding citizen's property without any legal process, chances are it will only effect ordinary, law-abiding citizens.

Barring a technology so intimately interwoven into your cars ignition system that your car actually comes apart if you try to remove it, criminals and pranksters will hack the system making the authorities look a lot like keystone cops in situations where it really counts.

You've got to wonder about the people who come up with stuff like this: you imagine guys with sunken cheeks mumbling about power. All of them suffer from a dangerous cramp in their right hands...

Too many problems.

[Qubed]

Besides all the aforementioned problems (most notably hacking), people dislike having their control and sovreignity taken away from them. It doesn't sit well with most to know that any second they could no longer be in control of something that is theirs. In addition to this, imagine a system like this malfunctioning for some reason. No good can come of that. Then there's also the problem of corruption, and economics and business politics. Who's going to pay the automakers to install these devices in their vehicles? What do the automakers get out of doing this? How do you standardize something like this? Is everyone in the UK going to have their car taken into the shop and have one of these devices installed? What sort of system of regulated checks will exist to oversee the functionality of this tractor beam system? The list goes on. Hold it to a plebiscite, I doubt it will stand.

Re:I vote Orwellian!

[diersing]

Speaking as a former police officer, I'm not sure how many 'deadly force' situations your solving here. As I understand it, this *tractor beam* will cause a moving vehicle to stop, so without it - your talking about police shooting at a moving vehicle? Afraid that is something that happens primarily in Hollywood my friend.

What it will prevent, or at least reduce, are road blocks, spike strips and high speed chases. And yes, high speed pursuit is absolutely important as the any car involved is much more likely to kill participates or bystanders then a car at rest. But I guarantee, it will cause at situation where a desperate person who viewed their only option as evading, who is now sitting in an otherwise dead vehicle, to open fire and cause a deadly force situation from the police.

Re:This absurd

[h4rm0ny]

There ought to be some smart people who will point out flaws in whatever desing they come up and send it back to board untill time stops. It's just too dangerous.

I'm feeling cynical today, but consider this... There is no money to be made from not doing something. There is no status for the project managers, there is no incentive for budget-hungry beauracrats to say at the start "this is a bad idea - lets just put the money back into paying police officers."

And most especially, politicians must be seen to be doing something. A gadget like this will look good on them and if it's crap, then it can quietly be forgotten.

As I say though, I'm cynical today. I'm sure that you're right.

It's called the US Constitution

[leereyno]

The founding fathers had it right over 200 years ago. They created a system of government based upon the rule of law where the power of the state was both limited and widely distributed between the local, state, and federal levels. The powers that would arise and attempt to subvert the system and take power for themselves were forced to fight with one another, thereby neutralizing them.

This system depends upon one thing more than any other, and that is an informed citizenry made up of individuals that make the preservation of freedom and individual sovereignty their personal responsibility. If the US were made up of people like this then what a glorious nation we would make.

Lee