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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."
Lets see how many Trolls vs Insightful's I'll get on this post...
1) This is a great idea- AS LONG AS there is a recorded method for access that is timestamped and GPS'd by the police department for querying the users information (ie, after pulled over but not before).
2) This is a BAD idea because, as has been demonstrated with the SpeedPass(tm) the encryption routines thought secure have been easily broken by dedicated hardware. Access to the db by walking out with a copy of it would result in very interesting privacy implications.
Now, I'm a fan of the black-box in a car because should I get into an accident and die, I'd really like my loved ones to know whether or not I was being a responsible individual or an asshole. And frankly, given the number of total incompetent drivers that are apparently granted licenses to operate 2500lb guided missiles, I think the black box has got a better chance of defending me in an accident than attacking me.
RFID tags provide a method of enforcing insurance- do you know what happens if an uninsured motorist hits you and does damage? You're fucked. Totally, completely, fucked. It would have been better for you to wrap your car (and yourself) around a tree than to get hit by an uninsured motorist.
First, your insurance skyrockets because there's no one to recoup the cost from- guess what, you're fucked.
Second, there's no one to go after for pain and suffering (and I suffered for 5 months after getting T-boned by an asshole that ran a stopsign)- thats alot of physical therapy and chiropractic work to get your neck to move in the right direction without needles of pain shooting everywhere.
Finally, there's the whole issue of 'submitted claims' that then follows you around for 7 years. It doesn't matter that your only fault was existing in that particular place at that particular time, it'll follow you on your record and probably influence such things as your credit report and interest rates.
A much better solution would be to simply confiscate the car of a driver that was uninsured or driving illegally, and if it was someone else's car require a 250$ or 500$ fine, doubling each time the car was 'caught'.
But I guess that's my opinion... someone that's had a perfect driving record, dodged into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting a little girl that ran into an intersection (great mother), been t-boned by a moron, and had 2 friends killed by drunk drivers with no insurance.
Might even have been one of those banditos who runs through parking lots de-activating all of the tags.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
How hard is it going to be to forge these things? Once the police start relying on this stuff the tech savvy criminals are going to have it easy. Car flies through a toll at 90mph? Don't need cameras anymore...we have the rfid of the car. (it HAS to be the right car because the company that sold us this stuff said it can't be fooled... )
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
It's not the RFIDs. It's not even the ubiquitous readers that Texas will install along roads. It is, as you point out, the Texas police state that will invade our privacy. Just like when Sir Giuliani got the (RFID) EZ-Pass installed in NYC, promising that tollbooth records would be protected by requiring probable cause, court order, etc - but turned out that any lawyer with $50 could get a copy from the cops. The RFID tech is relevant because the RFID industry is lobbying these lying politicians to buy their products, with private promises of easy privacy invasion, and public lies.
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make install -not war
It's an awfully sad world - that's why I keep my personal corner well patrolled, and quite happy. I don't know why you think that the politicians (especially in Texas, of all places) aren't doing what their bribes^Wcontributions pay for. Isn't Texan #1, Tom Delay, facing (yet another) ethics crisis, this time over his illegal corporate sponsorships? I know Wisconsin isn't the cesspool that Texas is, but we're talking about Texas.
Your kind of denial is typical, portraying the the abuse as so extreme as to be unthinkable. When it's really just business as usual, without all the demonic trappings: sell out the public, starting with our privacy, for corporate gain and political power. Or couldn't you bring yourself to read the part about how Giuliani has already perpetrated this scam here in NYC?
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make install -not war
Now imagine driving down the freeway, the exit sign above seems to have a flashing light (dramatic effect, not needed for RFID readers) and within seconds you are pulled over because (a) your insurance lapsed, (b) your registration has expired and (c) oh yeah, you're not wearing your seatbelt... got some unpaid parking tickets too.
I have mixed feelings about it.... I laugh when it happens to someone else, I cry when it happens to me. You know, life is pretty tough and law is pretty unforgiving. But when financial times are hard, sometimes you can skip along with some luck until things get better. I'm having good times now, but I've had some bad ones where insurance and registration wasn't as important as gasoline and rent. (And for the record, I don't drink, smoke or otherwise waste money recreationally all that often and never did.) The thought of having an almost robotic police force out there pulling people over getting the most income possible from fines and such is a little creepy.
On the other hand, if it were forbidden to pull someone over for trivial offenses (insurance and registration for example -- they could mail out a "warning letter" and make you pay postage or something... that would be reasonable) but say, "Amber Alert" type stuff, someone with a warrant for a violent crime, stolen car(!) and stuff like that I'd be down with. Is there any hope for sanity in the application of new technology in government?
Let's consider for a moment. You are driving down the highway in thousands of pounds of machinery at 65 miles an hour with your most beloved people in the world. You are doing this with thousands of other people each in their thousands of pounds of machinery traveling at high speeds. How would you feel about the following:Today, a police car can drive up behind you and run your plate to find out everything listed above except insurance. The only difference RFID would make is that this same thing could be done by stationairy check-points or by an officer watching a monitor that shows where the violations are occurring rather than checking vehicles one-by-one.
This is about safety and responsibility on public transportation systems. I have to say that it does make sense. This sort of thing would protect us much more than it would intrude upon us (And I am a major privacy advocate).
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I live in Texas and I'm not to afraid. Why? Because in order to abuse these tags, it will cost money. Money to build speed traps, or money to equip cop cars. Since the taxes are lower in Texas, most deparments don't have enough money for staff, let alone new devices (I can't tell you how many times I driven through a small town in Texas lately where an empty cop car is parked at the nearest intersection because they can't pay to man it...). Only a in a few areas (suburbs, retirement places such as Williamson County) where the local rich blue hairs throw tons of money away to get yonger people like myself off the streets will these new things be abused. And in those places it doesn't matter anyway because the ultraconservative elected judges let the cops do whatever they want anyway- a little RFID is nothing compared to those heat guns some Texas cops still use (despite a supreme court order saying no). With those cops, you are either favored (rich, white, "good ole boy") or your screwed, the laws that are in place to unforce this are mostly irrelevent. The rest of the state will get techonology to use RFID twenty years from now when every state does it. It took till the 80's for school segrigation to end in some parts of Texas for crying out loud!
Open Source Sushi
TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders!
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: ...but the link finally died in July 2004 and the new location does not have a photo of a RFID bridge underpass collector. But does discuss thhe toll booth RFID uses...
Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.
A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFID chips embedded in the tire).
Yup. My brother works on them.
The us gov T.R.E.A.D. act (which passed) makes it illegal to sell new passenger cars lacking untamperable RFID in the tires.
Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.
Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.
Taggant research papers
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].
It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.
Photos of chips before molded deep into tires!
http://www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html
(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertess usually into the url above to get to the shocking info and photos on the enbedded LOGI 160 chips that the us gov scans when you cross mexican and canadian borders.)
You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.
Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.
The photo of the secret prototype WAS at
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
http://www.telematics-wireless.com/site/index1.php ?ln=en&main_id=33
but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.
The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessin
You're right to be concerned about your privacy, but there's already plenty of tech out there for tracking your car. If you don't want cops to spy on you, you need to make sure there are legal safeguards in place, not worry about a minor technology upgrade.
First, I'll let you in on the secret of the "middle" (as in "fallacy of the excluded middle"). The world that you and I share is not some hellish torture chamber, with diabolical corporate politicans scheming 24/7 to annihilate each of us in the most humiliating personal destruction, after extracting maximum profit from enslaving us, the hypnotized, ignorant masses. Neither is it a safe republican democracy, where politicians work for the people, protecting us from corporate exploitation. Somewhere in the middle is America, where hundreds of millions of people produce lots of money, which corporations get politicians to let them take from us, while we get politicians to stop them from taking it without asking. It's an endless conflict between competing self interests, including the self interests of the politicians. Portraying it as one extreme or another is a good way to get exploited.
In that context, I make my way as we all can. I work directly with the NY City Council. I call the cops on threatening people when I witness them, and I've used the courts to sue people to get commercial justice. I got rich off a multinational corporation that mostly created software as management consulting endgame for banks, brokerages, insurance companies, publishers and governments. So I know firsthand how this stuff works, and I'm not above working within this largely fraudulent money machine to make my way. Within my own ethical standards, which include honesty and delivered value, as well as openness and effectiveness in communication systems. Business in our country does not require "smoky back rooms", or Hollywood conspiracy villains. Capitalism is built on extraction of surplus value, and corporations work together to extract the maximum, from as disadvantaged a market and labor pool as possible. With the paid cooperation of politicians.
Our responsibility as Americans is to distrust the government. Jefferson said that our government is based not on trust, but on distrust: of power, and the powerful. We are fortunate to have such a realistic tradition, which we can largely indulge even with a $2.5T annual government budget, and the most corporate media ever. If we don't use our freedom to be vigilant of our rights, our government will swing further towards the nightmare scenario that you set up as a strawman. And the middle ground, in which we at least stand a fighting chance, will disappear into the past, forever.
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make install -not war
>> # Rules of the road are implemented to maximize road safety. Including a 50 km/h speed limit on a 10 lane-wide ultrastraight strip mall at two in the morning on a clear night with no other traffic.
I say bullshit. Rules of the road are implemented to maximize revenue. Meaningless trafic regulations, arbitrary speed limits with no sound engineering behind, and speedtraps are designed just for that.
>> Police find ticketing drivers a demeaning task, so they will only do it when pushed or shoved.
Really? I believe they love it. Their salary depends on the revenue (not only from ticket fines but also from insurance increases which lead to insurance companies sponsoring things like red light cameras and radar manufacturers giving out free equipment to the police dept.) Besides, it's terribly easy -- you don't risk your life and being a ticketbook and pencil hero intimidating the driving public is real ego boost.
>> Therefore, it is only logical that the State implements automatic means of enforcing road rules, such as red-light cameras, radar cameras; tracking vehicle position can also be used to punish speeding.
Actually, I read about some studies which show that installing red light cameras lead to a higher number of accidents (please use Google). Also it's not about safety, it's about revenue -- it's an addition TAX, get it?
Or they could just do what Illinois did. Double the tolls for anyone not using the IPass (EZ-Pass, call it whatever). That way, use is "voluntary". If you want privacy, it costs you twice as much.
Many raise the point about how easy it would be for RFID to be used to pay for parking or tolls and such. I prefer, however, to be able to see it when my money is being spent. It is much easier to keep track of where it goes when I have to count it out. If I am going to be charged, I want to make the conscious decision whether I'll pay or turn around and go elsewhere. I sure don't want to have to try and remember whether each line of fine print on a monthly statement is a correct representation of the roads I travelled or the places I parked.
Likewise, consider the effect on the public? How much easier would it be to raise prices? If you pay now, you can protest. If you get a statement at the end of the month, how many people will go to the trouble of arguing?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
To be fair, Texas does have Ron Paul as well. Consistently votes for citizens' privacy, votes for legalization of marijuana, and pushes for a Constitutional Federal Budget. He's pretty much the only politician I trust.