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RFID for Automobile Tracking
mindless4210 writes "The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration has called on four of the largest RFID manufacturers to jointly develop dedicated short-range communications technology systems for a trial as part of the agency's efforts to cut road fatalities in the U.S. by 50% within 10 years. The DSRC prototype initiative is a prerequisite for introducing new roadway applications such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve. The FCC allocated the entire 5.9 GHz band to DSRC applications some time ago, making the development much more feasible. Any DRSC system would require DRSC technology to be built into new vehicles."
Can you even begin to think about the privacy implications of something like this? I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it! What happens when the government agencies that don't care so much about your rights--CIA, FBI, NSA, police, whatever--decide that this system can be very useful for them? There's a million things that could go wrong
This is the article that I originally posted to slashdot.
Wireless News www.DailyWireless
[...] such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve
Riiiiiight... they're wanting this system incorporated to protect you. They'd never dream of setting up receivers in traffic lights at (major) intersections to track the movement of people. Watch: it will be a crime to disable these systems, "for your safety" of course.
Yeah, yeah; I may need a tinfoil hat. Ask yourself, though, do you feel safer?
Trolling is a art,
I can't wait till the readers are mounted at stop lights and over passes to monitor your speed...5 miles or more over and you get a ticket in the mail =)
watch fatalities, gas consumption drop and attitudes improve.
I am for that 100%
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
"weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve."
Who decides when a car is going to fast??? I live in Michigan and if your going the speed limit that's to slow. Would they warn you based on a spped limit or what the road is rated at. The expressways here are rated for safe speeds at 20 or 30 miles an hour faster than the speed limit. This is also different depending on the car. A jeep can topple over easier than a grand prix (for example). Who decides these things????
Evolution or ID?
no one has ever heard about driver training?
Let's get the idiots off the road.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
i don't see it as a big privacy concern...it's like saying a licence plate is a security issue...i mean take the tin foil hats off...your cell phone notifys where you are and even if it dosent if the wanna find you or track you they will and you wont even know about it...any type of comunication device can be tracked by triagulation....example is you have 2 microphones 100 yards a part and somone screem or a gun is fiered...as the sound hits the mics at difrent times and based on the location of the mics and the data they recive you can calculate the exact location of the source...same thing can be done to anything like radio waves and other frequincies...if you dont like it then move to garaho land ...other than that no reason to worry.
No, the DSRC prototype initiative is NOT a prerequisite to introducing the proposed new roadway safety applications. None of the proposed safety applications require individual identification of a vehicle. An application could issue the planned alerts and warnings without specifying or identifying the vehicle or its owner. If you are issuing a warning about a road hazard, or that vehicle is going too fast to make an upcoming turn, the identity of the vehicle and of the owner are irrelevant.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
- Compulsory seat-belt use (works in my area)
- Mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists (agan, works in my area)
- Zero tolerance for liquored-up drivers
- Restricted permits for new drivers (no rush hour, no driving between sunset and sun-up, etc).
- Governors on all engines so that it's not possible to exceed the speed limit
- Increased penalties for racing, reckless driving, etc.
- Removal of so-called "restricted permits" for people who have accumulated too many demerits.
- Mandatory retesting for anyone who has lost their license because of moving violations or booze.
- Get rid of "road tanks" (SUVs) that make people think they're invulnerable.
Of course, the above aren't techno-sexy ways of saving lives. But they would work. And, for those who are going to point out that these are unreasonable restrictions on freedoms, there's no such thing as a "right" to drive. It's a privilege.Well, I guess police wont have to worry about funding anymore.
Link RFIDs to the already instated Cameras and the auto-fined-mailer and youve got a steady stream of income from speeders.
Not that this would _EVER_ be abused for something like this. Its for our saftey.
*cough*
no
The problem is that in the current paranoid political climate, anything like this can be turned against you. Witness the case a few weeks back where the FBI used OnStar systems in cars to eavesdrop on people.
If Ashcroft and company can find some way to turn this system into a tool for the "war against terrorism", you can damn well be sure they will.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
This is only very Loosely connected to RFID. in fact it's mostly journalist and executive hype throwing around a tech term to try and sound informed...
This will mostly amount to another alarm to annoy the driver....
"bing! you are exceeding the speed limit for this zone...."
"bing! there WAS a 13 car crash 3 miles from here underneat the "no reported road problems" sign...."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
'Nuff said.
I'd rather live in a free society than have fewer road deaths. Maybe that's just me.
I guess my real question is this: when is it OK for the government to implement surveillance, tracking, monitoring, etc. in order to save lives? Or are we so afraid of own governments that we can't afford to allow such things?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Absolutely. While I'm as much for privacy as the next guy, this doesn't alarm me that much. This is really no different then OnStar, GPS Nav or even your cell phone, all having GPS locators installed. In fact, I was in the Verizon store last week and was informed that they face a $500 fine if they sell a phone that is not GPS enabled. For 911 tracking, of course :/
I know I'd like to know if there's a jam on my way to work and I need to take an alternate route or be late to the board meeting. The alternative of course being those big signs warning "Traffic Ahead" which you get to stare at while parked on the interstate.
I guess the other alternative to researching traffic patterns is to pay some guy to sit in a lawn chair with a clip board and pencil.
I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it!
Your state will just put it in your license plate. Watch for it.
After all, they already hang a number on your car and require it to be visible - to eyes and to OCR cameras. Why not require it to be readable by radio, and save themselves some cost and flakeyness by replacing cameras with transcievers?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Unfortunately, it not always the dumb, drunken hick in his pick-up that ends up dying. It is the mother and her two children, in the minivan he ends up blindsiding.
One of those children might have been the next Albert Einstein.
RFID for vehicles seems crazy to me. RFID only works when the tags are carried by cooperative people.
When RFID tags are carried by people who may not be cooperative, or in situations where they can be damaged or switched to another vehicle, there can be chaos. Remember the RF of RFID refers to "Radio Frequency". That means they can't be put in a steel box. They must be exposed.
The government of the state of Oregon in the U.S. proposed to tax people by the number of miles they drove in Oregon counties, using Global Positioning receivers and RFID tags. That would be easy for the government, but, of course, there would be people whose cars said that they drove 10,000 miles in the mountains of Peru last week.
A large percentage of accidents are cause by someone not paying attention. Like going through a red light while distracted, or not being able to respond in time to a sudden stop. Usually, when people are near an accident, they are paying attention becasue the traffic conditions have changed.
It would only be a matter of time before any warning was deligated to 'background noise'/
Secondly, I imagine this turning into the device that Corbin Dallas had in his cab in 5th element.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oh WAKE UP.
You can't REALLY believe that they need a system that allows them to uniquely identify every car just so they can alert drivers of hazards. it doesn't even add up.
Even if that was true, what is wrong with the current system? A road sign is cheaper to implement, doesn't malfunction, doesn't invade your privacy, and doesn't consume energy.
Perhaps, but imagine an extended RFID system.
Bridge mounted systems take a quick reading of each and every car passing by them, if they do not provide RFID info a picture would be taken and it's license plate information hit against a database to determine if the vehicle should have such a system.
A month later, you as an owner of a black-marketed RFIDless car receive a fine and a court summons for driving an illegal vehicle.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'm late for work, I jump in my underpowered Toyota Pyris hybrid and rush off for work. Manage to get it up to 66MPH and hear the speed alarm at just about the same moment I see the printer shoot off a slip of paper. A speeding ticket. These tickets have evolved to a sort of tax. The automated equipment can't take your license and can't stand up to cross examination in court so, they don't count as points on your driver's license so you are emailed a ticket you have to pay. In essence, a speed tax. I owe another $108.00. Third time this month!
A couple miles down the roadway, My GPS beeps and tells me that I should take an alternate route, there is congestion ahead. I'm sick of this because everyone else gets the same message and everyone is told to take the same alternate route. I'll ignore the advice today. Chances are, enough people will leave my route so that it will open up.
I use my voice activated phone to call the office and tell them I'll be a bit late, traffic is heavy.
The road ahead is jammed, it is not moving at all. I swerver to the right to make an exit but my radar screams! I look over my shoulder and see a car a hundred feet behind me. The alarm doesn't think that is enough room. I hear someone say "Go ahead" and I make my lane change. This intercar communication is pretty cool but it seems like almost every night you hear about a case of road-rage where someone got really pissed about what they heard. Maybe it isn't great for people with anger managment problems. I say thanks and catch my exit in a nick of time.
Golden Arches show up on my LCD display and I push the icon to place my drive through order. I'll swing in and pick up my coffee and muffin and my bank card will be debited. It is pretty cool how they know so much about you but I've heard that there are some slammers out there who routinely debit people as they drive by. It hasnt happened to me yet though.
I arrive at work and turn my car over to the valet. He can drive it slowly without the key within one mile of where I dropped it off. It is a nice service to use in this part of the city, things are pretty congested around here. I'm not worried, I can tell where my car is from my desktop, I can also monitor the wife and the kids!
I don't know how we did it back in the first part of the century! Only problem is that I gotta work 13 hours a day to pay for all this convenience!
Instead of invading our privacy, again, how about:
1. Make the driving tests more difficult, meaning less bad drivers pass them.
2. Mandate annual vehicle inspections - many States / counties don't require them and they should. You don't need a brand-new vehicle to run the kids to school, but on the other hand, your twenty-year-old falling-apart-at-the-seams POS needs to be retired.
3. Put the money into hiring more cops to actually crack down on traffic violations, like running red lights, etc.
4. As a follow-on to #2, offer federally-assisted trade-in vouchers with a sliding rule - the older your car * the poorer you are = higher trade-in amount.
5. A Federal plan to repair the trade-ins from #4 that are worth fixing, if it gets another few good years from them.
6. Subsidise clean-fuel vehicles - electric, hybrid, etc. Get rid of gasoline/petrol gorram it!
Just my $0.02 writing as a 28 year old who learned to drive last year and passed the Florida driving test first time despite not doing very well.
Damien
Dude, in any political climate, anything like this can be turned against you. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
The article makes no mention of using this technology for anything other than alerting drivers about road conditions and paying tolls.
Yes. And in the 1940s, we were promised, repeatedly, that social security numbers would only be used for social security payments, and would not be used as national ID numbers.
Lucky for us, the government kept its promise, and that's why, today, social security numbers are not used when you apply for a credit card, are never printed on drivers' licenses, are never used as student or customer ID numbers, and are not requested when you sign up for a video store membership or open a bank account.
and paying tolls
Exactly. Which indicates that it broadcasts a unique tracking code for your car on demand.
Once you have that as a fairly standard feature in most cars then it becomes trivial to set up such scanners for any of a hundred "good" reasons. And for that data to be recorded in a database somewhere. Obviously if it's being used to pay tolls it must be illegal to tamper with them. And the more it gets used for the more mandatory they become and the harsher the laws surrounding them become.
Once it's recorded in a database it's simply a matter of someone feeling like running a scan on that database to find out anything they like. Not only where you go and when, but you can correlate that with the rest of the database to see who you tend to meet where and when. There's an entire feild of study on building up social network maps based on those sorts of correlataions.
There's a difference between making up wild conspiracy theories and looking at the obvious and non-conspirational applications of technology to see what functionality is likely to become trivially available.
I'm not thrilled with the idea and implications of my car broadcasting a tracking code like that.
By federal mandate virtually all cell phones are being produced with GPS or GPS-style tracking features. Sure such a feature is great for 911 calls. But I do NOT want my phone broadcasting that data at any other time, especially since they may do so silently and invisibly either continuously or whenever they receive such a request. Implementing GPS for 911 calls obviously and trivially opens up abuses unless you make a special effort to avoid such problems.
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