Texas Considers Putting RFID Tags in All Cars

An anonymous reader submits "In section 601.507 of Texas HB 2893, the Texas Legislature is considering replacing all vehicle inspection stickers with RFID tags. The legislation also makes provision for the government to use the devices for insurance enforcement. The bill contains limited privacy provisions, but does not seem to exclude other law enforcement usage."

Comments

Do you have OnStar?

[lecithin]

If you do, every place you go is documented. Didn't sign up for it but still have the equipment? Doesn't matter, you are still being tracked. Think that is bad? OnStar equipment includes a phone.. Could somebody record what you are doing without you knowing? I'd bet it is possible.

Re:Do you have OnStar?

[drinkypoo]

Actually most OBD-II cars (1996+) have 30 seconds prior to and after any major event. A major accident will almost certainly cause some sort of powertrain management code to be set. Most OBD-II cars will store this data if an airbag sensor goes off, but they will store it for ANY error as well. You usually need the manufacturer's service tool (expensive but available) to get this information - generic OBD-II scan tools cannot extract it.

Re:Do you have OnStar?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

OnStar equipment includes a phone.. Could somebody record what you are doing without you knowing? I'd bet it is possible.

More than possible, it has already been done. The FBI got the Mercedes equivalent of On-Star to route a suspect's telemetry to them first. They remotely turned on the "phone" and listened to all the conversations in the car.

We know about it because Mercedes took the FBI to court over it after the monitoring had extended for more than a month. Mercedes's problem with it was that if there was a real emergency, the FBI's wiretap prevented normal emergency services from being provided to the car owner who had paid for them.

The courts ruled in favor of Mercedes, without addressing the privacy issues at all, instead basing their opinion pretty much on the issue of the wiretap interefering with normal usage.

Here's an article that summarizes it pretty well. The part they missed is that the car vendor in question was Mercedes. I read in a different article at the time that while the company's name was sealed or otherwise not made public, the lawyer for the auto company in the suit was public knowledge and it was also public knowledge that his firm primarily worked for Mercedes with few, if any, other auto manufacturer clients. Thus the inference to Mercedes.

Re:MOD GRANDPARENT DOWN

[Spock the Baptist]

Being a Texan, and having a friend who is a State Representative I'm somewhat familiar with the machinations of the Texas House. From my examination of the Texas House website it appears that Rep. Larry Phillips is the sole author of HB2893 with no co-authors.

This is generally not a good sign for a bill. Normally if a bill is popular with the members of the Texas House you'll see more than one author, and several co-authors. For example HB259 has 5 authors, and 50 co-authors. This bill past embossment by a vote of over 4-to-1. HB259 was very popular.

Not all bills that pass are that popular with the members of the Texas House. That said, for a bill to have just one author, and *no* co-authors does not bode well for that bill to pass embossment.

As of Sunday April 3, 2005 HB2893 has yet to make it through the Transportation Committee. It is scheduled for public hearing via the Transportation Committee on Tuesday, April 5, 2005.