Slashdot Mirror
RFID License Plates in the UK
An anonymous reader writes "The UK Government is studying license plates with embedded RFID tags. The plates can be read from 300 feet away and in rapid succession by readers embedded in the road or by 'surveillance vehicles.'"
A key benefit of the e-Plate is that the tag provides an encrypted and secure ID code which is registered in the UK Ministry of Transport's vehicle database. This code prevents tampering, cloning, or other forms of fraud that can currently happen with camera-based systems. Additionally, the e-Plate is designed to shatter if anyone tries to remove or otherwise tamper with it, and the tag can be programmed to transmit a warning if any attempt is made to dislodge the plate.
They said that for DVD encryption too, but look where that got us. Eventually, someone, somewhere will find a way to tamper with it and the best the government will be able to do is, like always, use heavy fines to curb the spread, but it will be futile, just like it was with DVD encryption.
I bet I'll have the plate transmit "YHBT" within two years.
When will they learn?
Before you get your panties in a knot, please note that modern license plates were originally designed so that they could be OCR'ed. They currently use this at the borders here in the US.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
My big concern with this is of course, privacy. Survelance cameras are already very common in major cities, adding this technology to the cameras or to areas near the cameras would be trivial. Using this technology to monitor access to corporate parking lots would make this very attractive to the private sector. Companies could band togethor to sell data, or sell it to private investigators, who will combine the data into one large database. Your employer can determine the RFID tag for your car by comparing the ID read with the ID used to get into a corporate controlled parking lot. Then the company (or your significant other) can search in some pay-for-use database maintained by firm X to find out where your car was on tuesday when you wern't at work (or missed that dinner date). If your car spends too long near your competitors office, who knows what the corporate response would be.
Government of course will respond in turn, DMCA laws in the US would prevent anyone there (assuming a similar thing was implemented) from determining what their code was (since it is 'encrypted'). The curious would be thrown in jail, or sued, and the major corporations would still enjoy the power.
paul reinheimer
... because, at least in central London, all car number plates are OCR'ed for use in the Congestion Charge scheme; RFID would have less inaccuracies (like the Somerset farmer who got a demand for his 17mph tractor being 150 miles away in London).
James F.
As an outsider, I have noticed that there is not much in the way left of Privacy in the UK.
Is this just not considered important over there? Is a "greater good" mentatlity strong? Or, is it just a no one really cares so the government can get away with anything put on your tinfoil hat oh fuck I got a ticket for going 5mph over attitude?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
...and speeding tickets in the mail. 'Nuff said.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
Tampering with plates is a bit easier to track than ripping your DVD's to PC.
Pass by a cop broadcasting l0s3r, and I'm sure he will not say, "Oh well, I guess we can't track him anymore.'
Now they'll know exactly how fast i was going! without using those arbitrary numbers those radar guns make.
Now all I need is a RFID tag stapled to my little buddy so the government can track how often i get it on with the wife. May come in handy for the future population controls and killing off all ppl over 30....
besides our cars are supposed to be just metaphorical extensions of our penises anyway right?
The future is so BRIGHT!
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
Do you mean to tell me that that wherever people drive in the UK, their cars will be "tagged" with a unique identifier that will allow a car to be "traced" back to an owner?
We can't put up with this, people. Next thing you know, police will be able to take this "tag" number, run it though a "computer data base," and find out how many traffic violations you have committed! I, for one, fight tooth and nail to keep this from coming to pass.
dinner: it's what's for beer
By the way, I'm making all of this up. And you didn't read it anyway. So it never happened.
How so? All this technology enables is the ability to read the tag off the plates more accurately. Search and seizure is, well, just that. They are not searching your vehical, just identifying it.
The UK government, especially under Blair, has long used the motorist as a large source of tax revenue. Whether it be through high Fuel costs, a large number of hidden speed cameras (most of which do little in the way of preventing accidents), toll roads, and various other initiatives under the banner of "increasing the use of public transport".
The government would only invest in this with one motive and one motive alone, squeezing more money out of the motorist through draconian fines.
Here's a related video showing the RFID capability now installed into tires. Note that the manufacturer is programming the VIN number into the tires. It is only a matter of time before you will not be able to get tires installed without them programming the VIN number.
More infor here.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
with the recent spike in US gas prices, I'll bet some companies would like to put this in gas pumps to track drive offs.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
If this was attempted in America, I wonder if it would be considered as allowing "unreasonable search and seizure."
How would this be unreasonable search and seisure? They aren't seasing anything and they aren't searching anything
My worry would be if the police started tracking speeders with this.
Otherwise, I'm not worried about them tracking my moves. Who wants to track me? And how can they track me and everyone else at the same time and keep records of this. The states don't have that kind of money.
Evolution or ID?
I do NOT want to have my whereabouts monitored by anyone who has a reciever. No information whatsoever is given in the article on any safeguards that they plan on placing in the system to protect against abuse of this system. If the govt tries to impose this upon us I will unplug the battery/run 220V through the plates to decommission the RFID emitter.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
This isn't about about privacy. This is just another way to charge you for speeding tickets.
Tickets are a major source of income for many cities. Especially in areas where people commute across state lines, and police target people with out-of-state tags, whose owners don't pay local taxes.
In my area, there are cameras and speed detectors right along the borders. When out of state drivers go into the state and fail to follow the excessively low speed limits in and around the border area, they get fined. When the locals don't follow it, police look the other way.
You can be in the middle of a large group of speeders, and if you're the only one among them with out-of-state tags, you're the one that's going to get ticketed.
from the 90s here in the U.S.A was a change to vehicle OBD (on-board diag). OBD III was to transmit to roadside nodes any vehicles that had slipped into emissions failure. The LE (law enforcement would then send a 'fix or else' citation in the mail. One feature of this was vehicle location, direction and speed were also sent, so although they would 'never' use said information, it was an easy extrapolation to speeding tickets.
No, the people are willing but a blind man named Blunket is trying to remove all privacy for everyone else. He's blind so he cannot drive, so penalties for drivers are always good. He's blind so he cannot read his own mail, so mail privacy is not necessary.
The man is totally unfit as a home secretary, yet nobody here wants to tell the blind bastard to fuck off, its not politically correct.
I'm moving out of the UK soon and I won't look back.
I'm really glad this new technology will soon be available to our brave boys in blue, valiantly battling crime on the streets of the UK.
</Sarcasm>
Honestly, aren't the motorists here persecuted enough? We have speed cameras popping up in every lucrative "accident blackspot" in the UK (I have a number near me that appeared on roads where I can honestly never recall hearing of any accidents, but the local school curiously has none outside the gates), we're getting taxed off of the roads despite the fact the public transport system would be ridiculed by any visitor from afghanistan. So what does our "brilliant" government do? Find a new way to bring in the much needed revenue from those crazy car drivers....
I can't see this going live until after the next election though - it would be political suicide after everything else Blair and co have done.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
Just stick a transmitter in my arm already, I give up.
in bed.
Are these people stupid. Are they thick. Have they no idea what they're saying?! Don't they read history books.
One of the corner stones of our democracy is anonimity from the government. People will say: "Oh your just a crank. _OUR_ government will _NEVER_ abuse this to repress us!". Say that to someone in China when RFID is introduced over there.
Will all this new survelience technology emerging, the rights we took for granted are being eroded.
I'm sick of morons introducing all this stuff without thinking past their next meal. I for one will be removing/disabling these tags the minute they come out on a _Volutary_(i.e. manatory) basis.
Though they'll be extremly difficult to find and remove i'll bet. I wonder why?
May the Maths Be with you!
Do the UK police have time for this sort of thing? Is crime really so low that they can chase after motorists when the inevitable false alarms, tampering (accidental and otherwise) take place if the RFID tag system is deployed? I mean really, collecting data is the easy part, but at the end of the day real live humans have to follow up on this "data".
Ugh, can't you just feel Big Brother's breath on the back of your neck? In the end though, I have faith that the Britons won't take this lying down.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
This also gives the government (or anyone else who can hack into their systems) the ability to locate your car at any point in time.
Fight Spammers!
Which I submitted yesterday, but they rejected. Putting them into people seems FAR more interesting than into licencse plates.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If you don't like the idea of your car being tracked, just microwave the license plate. It will fry the RFID tag and make lots of pretty sparks too.
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
Um . . . I'm sorry, I'm coming up short here.
Can't think of a Simpsons license plate reference? Come on... there are dozens:
Just a few:
[8F14] Krusty's pink convertible: KRUSTY
[8F15] Quimby's vehicle: I RULE U
[8F15] Snake's car: EX CON
[8F20] Sideshow Bob & Selma's honeymoon car: IH8 BART
[1F14] Ned's car: JHN 143 (John 14:3)
[2F09] car in lot of nuclear plant: 3MI ISL (3 Mile Island)
[2F13] Hitler's Mercedes Benz: ADOLF1
[2F32] Lionel Hutz's white Bronco: NOT OJ
[3F09] President Ford's limo: MR DUH
[AABF06] Comic Book Guy's car: NCC 1701 (Star Trek)
[8F20] Sideshow Bob's creations: RIP BART, DIE BART, BART DOA, IH8 BART
DIE BART - "Nobody who speaks German could be evil..."
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Let's say I'm a Muslim in Oregon, and I'm accused of committing a terrorist crime in Cleveland. I have multiple people willing to testify that I was in Oregon at the time. But the police have three different RFID reads placing my car in Cleveland at the time. Which one of these has more credibility in a court of law? Which one should have more credibility?
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
If this would get the police off the road, and let me speed at will with just a bit of tinfoil, then I'm all for it!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I didn't have a clue what the poster was talking about (Congestion Charge)... so I asked google:
http://www.cclondon.com/whatis.shtml
Suddenly, this RFID buisness doesn't seem so bad in comparison to what Londoners are already going through.
And here we have the classic straw man argument. "Why should I care if I don't have anything to hide..." All resource issues aside (because if they don't have the ability to do it now, they will certainly be able to in the near future), there are many of us who value our privacy, and this is one more invasion of it. Just because you don't care about people knowing intimate details of your life, don't ruin it for the rest of us by propogating this argument.
Unless the government is suspecting me of being a criminal, there should be no reason for them to be able to track my every move. Period. And god have mercy on our souls if they decide to use this for ticketing.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Additionally, the e-Plate is designed to shatter if anyone tries to remove or otherwise tamper with it,
The pranksters in the UK are going to LOVE this one.
My opinion..
Useful applications:
1) Easier to implement no-toll-booth toll roads
2) Police purposes
Drawbacks:
1) Privacy - but I'm thinking of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and it doesn't seem to conflict with anything. Is it our right to drive unfettered on roads paid for by taxpayers?
2) Cost
3) Battery power
Should be interesting. I have a feeling that this is going to go through and 50 years from now, we'll wonder how ancient peoples from 2004 managed to get away without RFID license plates.
...look at stories such as this and worry about the loss of privacy. What makes you think you have any privacy now? I'm not trying to be flippant, but privacy in the US and most of Europe has become an illusion. Your cell phone can or will be able to track you; your use of credit cards tracks you; the fact that you have a social security card (in the US) or a license can be used to track you.
Many of us, myself included, thought that our privacy would be robbed of us by some huge, overbearing government like a thief in the night. But you know what? We gave it up for nothing but convienence and our never-ending desire for newer and better gadgets.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Let's just put an RFID in my ass and be done with it.
Self awareness - try it!
Wonder how susceptible this is going to be to a microwave oven. Sure, it's going to fuck your oven, but it should also provide an easy way to disable the tag. Drilling a hold through the RFID would also be effective I suspect.
I understand the need to monitor criminals and terrorists, but I really don't like the idea of having the government (anyone in fact) able to freely track my every movement. We have the Oyster card (RFID enabled travelcard) for the Underground over here, os it will get to the point one day that you won't be able to buy or sell or travel without being monitored. Kinda biblical almost.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
The UK is really descending into a Big Brother state, with Blunkett trying to get all the draconian measures in he can.
I wonder, if there was a list of steps that a state needed to take to be completely like 1984, how many of these steps the UK government would have taken?
Man arrested at work for sending a text (SMS) with a few "questionable" keywords
I think the government will only be happy when they tax us so much that we can't afford to do wrong, and they can monitor our movements all the time.
I also think the UK wouldn't be so high on the list of targets if we didn't blindly support whatever the US does, which usually seems to anger much of the world.
Get your own free personal location tracker
The plates are the same shape and size as conventional plates, and are permanently fitted to the vehicle in the same way. says the article.
So, attached by 2 screws then? Damn that permanent fitting. How will we ever get around it?
A criminal who needs to drive around isnt going to prevented by the RFID tags, she'll just drive a car that isnt tagged: the only way that can be caught is by police checking that every car that passes has a valid tag - how is that different from using the current 'dumb' numberplates against a database?
Meanwhile, the law-abiding have lost the right to lose themselves in a crowd, keep who they choose to associate with secret etc. (i.e. without taking heroic measures to ensure that privacy)
Of course, the real power brokers are either using taxicabs or chaffeur-driven cars from the car-pool, so their rights arent affected...
(tinfoil hat)
I know wheresgeorge.com does this for fun, but how come Ashcroft isn't using serial #s in US dollar bills to track their journey from corrupt hand to corrupt hand in the name of terrorism?
Think about it: You withdraw cash from an ATM, it records the #s on the bills handed to you. 2 weeks later FBI agents bust an anthrax transaction, and some money is confiscated. The money in the confisaction found has serial #s on the bills that matched the ones givent to you by ATM. Are you a suspect now?
Seems like # tracking on bills would prevent any coverups by going "cash-only"(ie no bank transactions, etc)
(/tinfoil hat)
Just wondering, sort of, if I have 3 or 4 nice doggies in the car, all of whom have RFID chips (at least here in the US, it's a nationwide pet recovery ID system) implanted. What are the chances that their 4 numbers will get intermingled with the licence plate ID?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
A few years later, the govt requires everyone to carry personal RFIDs when out in public, 'for your protection.' You think, "that's not cool, but I haven't done anything wrong." So you let it happen. You probably believe the the few who bother to protest are in the tinfoil hat-wearing crowd. "Only people who have something to hide should be concerned," you assure yourself. Besides, nothing bad happened when the govt started tracking vehicles. "Alarmists," you think. So you swallow another one.
Then the govt decides that every room in every home should have a camera, 'for your protection.' At this, you balk: "that's going way to far!" you cry.
Too late. You didn't care when they put protection devices on cars, or on people, but why do you care now? Surely, you must have something to hide. "Don't worry," grins the guard, "they'll cure you of those subversive thoughts at the Ronald W. Reagan Memorial Reeducation Center.
Moral: Every right you abnegate while gaining nothing in return is another proverbial nail in your coffin. Unless there is a demonstrated benefit (Fox "news" saying there is does not count) for your tact acceptance, your acquiescence robs us all.
Yeah, right.
I think one of the possible differences is that the RFID solution has a much lower bar to entry for those who would like to use it. Yes, I know, anyone can look at a plate and record the number but it takes a lot more to OCR it (and hence the higher bar to entry). Another disturbing thing about the RFID solution is that it makes it all much easier to automate and therefore do on a much much larger scale. Instead of needing a slick camera and computer based system all you need is an inexpensive reader. Those differences will make proliferation of the system much much more likely. Where will they be instituted and for what purposes? That's what has a lot of us worried.
You grab the RFID of plates for whatever dumb politicians allowed this to go though, and then replicate them for anyone who feels like taking a quick little spin down the road?
You don't even need the RFID on your plates, in fact it might would better with a seperate RFID responder (RFID is fairly passive, can you send a boosted return signal?).
The safety/privacy concerns of this are staggering. Yes, I can always sit and watch for "license plate X" on the highway, but I'm sure that it wouldn't be hard for a non-governmental person/corp could actively scan plates with a homebrew scanner. Think advertisement, lots of advertisement (as they start to track your movements and where you frequently park your car), or perhaps even stalkers.
Somehow, there is a good side to all this (the RFID and other various tracking/IDing/syping govt goodies).
When a government/organisation relies totaly and fully trusts a computer system to do its work, then, in the end, it gives us more freedom. Computers can be hacked, cracked and controlled by whoever actualy tries hard enough. A real person cannot be so easily fooled.
There are two types of people who criticize technology: those who understand nothing about it but fear it or want to use it to control everything (like the senators who pass stupid laws), and those who make this technology and don't want it to be used against them. Do the math: WE got them by the balls.
The more society will rely on technology, the more freedom we can get. Freedom will be "underground" though...
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
And the govt. is in control of maintaining roads. So aside from law enforcement, this data is useful for determining driving habits and how they relate to traffic congestion. This data can be used to determine how to best expand roadways and find methods for alternatives to rlieve congestion, such as carpooling or mass transit. I don't see how privacy is an issue since it's a public road. If you want privacy, you should ask yourself why the govt. is in charge of roads in the first place. At least with private roads, you have the option of choosing roads where companies have policies that don't involve selling your driving habits data.
I know that in the case of vehicles, these types of things are designed to create revenue for the local police departments and whatnot, but honestly, I don't think this will help make the roads any safer. All it will do is force you to mind every little detail of the law, no matter how insignificant, even in situations where it really doesn't make much sense, as in the case of standing at stop signs for 3 seconds when there are clearly no cars around. I do NOT advocate running stop signs, or even just slowing down and then blazing through them. On the contrary, I hate it when people do that. But if you're stopping, and the car is almost at a complete stop, and you can clearly see that there are no cars approaching, and it is perfectly safe, then what difference does it make if you actually come to a halt and wait for three seconds?
The officer who stops you for that should be looking for the reckless driver, late to work, who is weaving between the cars, going twice the speed limit, and so stressed out that he's about to get someone killed. But instead, the officer will wait on some secluded street, where about three cars pass in an hour, because he knows that none of those three cars will make a 100% stop at the stop sign, and then he'll write those drivers tickets. Meanwhile, on the main road, someone is driving drunk on the wrong side of the road. If you've ever wondered why the police are always there when you do something insignificant that is "wrong" but they're not when something truly dangerous is going on? That's why.
So the short version of all that is that I am against putting any kind of tracking technologies in vehicles because first, it will be for convenience, then, it will be for safety, and finally, when nobody is noticing and the technology is widespread and in place, it will be for revenue purposes. Without adding safety.
Why would this worry you?
Because it's tracking people in case they commit a crime, not because they are a suspect. It's the classic "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" argument. Unfortunately it completely violates the concept of "innocent until proven guilty".
If you speed, you have broken the law and have to take whatever punishment is deemed to be appropriate.
A) Speeding does not necessarily endanger other people every single time. There are times when 80mph is not reckless and times when 25mph is.
B) The penalties for speeding are set to be a deterrent with the understanding that speeders will be caught a small percentage of the time. If that percentage goes up, the fine becomes unfair.
C) The law is not always reasonable.
D) Getting a ticket in the mail a week later doesn't slow anyone down.
E) Devices like this make it too easy for the government to use the fines as a source of income by setting the speed limit unreasonably low knowing people will exceed it.
Should I get away with a burglary just because I wasn't caught red-handed?
There is necessarily harm to a victim in every burglary. Not so with speeding. There's a reason that burglary is punished more severely than speeding. Because it's a worse crime.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Just a quick comment, it may be a little offtopic but I think its relevant. For several years here in the US, a large percentage of cars have had a "black box" (just a term, I don't think they are actually black) embedded in your engine. Its purpose has been geared toward use by the insurance companies, it records your speed at the time of a crash. If they were pushing these RFID's to make it easier to give you speeding tickets, why didn't they just broadcast a unique identifier and the speed from each car. Then they wouldn't even have to be stationary to determine your speed. I'm not saying the idea of RFID tags in license plates is good or bad, but the argument that they are being pushed to make speeding tickets easier to give is kind of like saying te internet was created to make identity theft easier. Basically my point is that despite the overwhelming sense of paranoia that has come from this, maybe, just maybe, there are uses here other than tracking YOU all over the country.
The stupidity of your average American is just about the same as the average European, we simply show it off better.
RFID will drastically ease the ability of anyone to perform surveillance of everyones movements. The article reports that they can be read from distances of up to a hundred meters distance.
Let me put it this way:
My license plate number is public knowledge. You can come take a look at it without me complaining. For around 2 decades my Email address was also public knowledge (my first Email@ was on a Multics system connected to the Arpanet). With the abuse of Email through SPAM this is no longer possible. The proposed RFID system is apparently almost as easy to abuse as is SMTP. The widespread deployment of RFID, the extremely low barrier apparent and the absence of any penalty for the abuse of this system will make it possible for any organization with enough motivation & funding to spy out who goes where & when. The potential for abuse is boundless.
I can see how you may have difficulties comprehending my position. As a marxist you may place the purported greater good before that of the individual. As one who believes instead that society is only protected when individuals rights are protected, I do not.
Unless there are clear safeguards against the abuse of the system, I'll zap it.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
License plates are a means of identifying your vehicle while it uses public roads, highways, etc. Nobody ever said you had a right to total anonymity, especially while driving a vehicle on public roads. Get over it!
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
FACT: Discarded auto tires contribute 1,243,918 tons of non-recyclable trash to US landfills every year.
FACT: In the United States and Canada in 2003, 87 children under the age of eighteen were seriously injured in accidents involving unregistered tire-swings 70% of which were suspended from unregistered trees.
FACT: In Europe, where private ownership of tire-mounting machines has long been prohibited, not one violent crime was committed with an unregistered tire-mounting machine in the last decade..
FACT: In 2003, 4,451 children below the age of 18 were killed or seriously wounded in accidents involving improperly-secured home tire-mounting machines.
FACT: In French Guiana, where the law forbids private ownership of radio frequencies, the wealth-gap between rich and poor is only 10% of that found in the United States, and studies have shown unequivocally that tires wear up to 40% longer.
FACT: In both Cuba and Canada, publicly-funded health care ensures that doctors can't afford large, heavy SUVs, resulting in significantly diminished levels of tire-related non-recyclable waste.
My worry would be if the police started tracking speeders with this.
Why would this worry you? If you speed, you have broken the law and have to take whatever punishment is deemed to be appropriate.
But I wasn't caught by a cop? Should I get away with a burglary just because I wasn't caught red-handed?
It's a bit of a different situation, imo. Then again, I'm a Libertarian, so feel free to move on if you're familiar with Libertarian positions regarding actual crime vs. perceived crime. If you're still reading, speeding is a perceived crime. Burglary is a crime because it has a victim. Speeding is a victimless crime. (Please don't confuse this with things like fraud, which some claim to be victimless crimes) You may argue that speeding makes the roads more dangerous, however unless you actually hit another car or person, there's no crime. If you *do* hit another car or person, that's already potentially a crime in and of itself, and the possibility that some people may sometime hit some other people should not force the great majority of drivers to drive more slowly. No matter what the speed limit is, there will always be accidents. Studies showing lower accident/fatality numbers with reduced speed limits have been found faulty. In fact, Houston Transtar regularly advertises on the radio that the majority of accidents occur at low speeds, during heavy traffic or while rubbernecking. There's no good reason why good drivers should be penalized in advance *in case* they might turn out to be bad drivers. Also, will they be able to handle sending out roughly 15 million speeding tickets the first day this goes live? Or will they pick on a small region until it finances expansion? This whole thing makes me wonder what the entire population will have to do next to prevent a few idiots from hurting themselves. Perhaps we'll have a government-mandated menu for all citizens because some people don't control what they eat...or perhaps we'll all have to stop playing sports and going camping/fishing etc because every year a small number of people die doing these things. It's really stupid. Also, the claim that lower speed limits produce less pollution was debunked here in Houston. The study that claimed it would help our horrible air was found to be so far off it wasn't even funny. They're claiming a reduction in our overall air pollution, but that discounts the many other efforts in the commercial sector that are finally paying off, and attempts to lay all of the reduction at the feet of the few months our speed limits were reduced. Of course, the biggest problem involving both cars and pollution is traffic, but that's a much thornier issue.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I am no political scientist, nor a historian for that matter, but I remember coming across an interesting idea posited by one of America's 'founding fathers' (either Washington or Franklin?)
--begin paraphrase--
It is evident that in history, cultures progress through different states of rule. In many cases, the people are ruled by a strict tyranny. The people will revolt and establish some sort of self-rule. After a period of time, those in power will gradually take freedoms from the people whilst the people slip further into ignorance and laziness, thus capitulating their rights to the elite. At some point, the government has come full cycle and exists as a tyranny. This repeats itself throughout history
--end paraphrase--
All people should voice their opinions about the use of this technology. Technology has a habit of limiting instead of broadening people's freedoms.
Remember, a flood starts with one drop of water...
according to the article, the thing needs batteries to work...
remove the battery, no more tracking...
I am not in favour of all of the facial recognition and other invasive stuff, but picking out crims who are too stupid to get a tax disk seems like something worth doing. People who drive without insurance deserve what they get.
...is where the government obtained the power to track us wherever we go. Requiring a license for public safety purposes is intrusive, but arguably important enough to be a valid exercise of the police power. Forcing people who use autombiles to travel with radio transmitters that can be used to track them constantly is qualitatively different.
For instance, it could easily be used to chill the right to free association. Imagine what the Commie hunters back in the '50s could've done with these (assuming they had the technology, of course). That example only took me a second to come up with, and the people at the FBI are probably much more creative than I.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
... I told you so (although that sentiment's probably redundant by now). RFID apologists defense of choice is that the readers only work at a distance of up to 18 inches, IIRC. Well these work up to 300 feet. Meaning that as soon as RFID is universally accepted, I just get my hands on one of these 300-foot-range scanners, and go driving through the suburbs looking for the house with the most stuff to rob... And yes, I did read the article, and yes, they are battery powered, but so what? Creating a very small battery to go along with the RFID chip is a technical problem that's very easily overcome, just like the 18 inches limitation was easily overcome when many here declared vociferously that said limitation would make RFID all cuddly and innocuous.
The point is that everybody who said that RFID will never have a range longer thatn 18 inches have already been proven wrong, even before RFID has even begun to be implemented. You pro-RFID folks care for some salt with that crow?
The real point of the matter is that NOBODY has a right to see what possessions I have in my house. Not a stranger/burglar on the street, not the government, NOBODY.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Otherwise, I'm not worried about them tracking my moves.
In that case, you wouldn't mind a police officer pulling you over at random to check your ID, right? And while he has you stopped, you don't mind if he conducts a search of your vehicle and your person, right?
Those examples are a bit extreme, but in the eyes of the courts, they all violate the Fourth Amendment. A police officer has to have cause to search your vehicle, to check your ID, or even to follow you or track your moves. That cause can be that he observed you commit an offense or that he has a reasonable suspicion that you have committed one--but he can't pick your car out of a crowd and pull you over on a whim. You should expect the same deference whether he has the ability to track your vehicle or not.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
That tollway long ago paid for itself [well, the drivers paid for it] but it's interesting to see an old idea crop up in updated form, as it were.
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
In addition, I have, as of right now, zero wrecks.
Of course, if you *did* kill yourself on a bridge at 85, there's also a good chance that you wouldn't be around saying "Speed *can* be fatal -- why I crashed going 85 and killed myself!"
I certainly do read about fatal car accidents where excessive speed is the major contributing factor, so it certainly *does* happen.
I also feel that people have a pretty strong tendency to misjudge their driving capabilities (nothing is more annoying than people that insist that they're definitely sober enough to drive when they definitely aren't).
Keep in mind two other facts: it only takes a single mistake to be fatal *and* that you may not be the person to pay the price for a bad call on your part -- if a pedestrian gets nailed by a speeding car (and I don't care how great a driver you are, a car going 85 has a *far* greater stopping distance than one at 35), you might go to jail or get fined, but they'll be, well, dead.
May we never see th