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E-Tracking May Change the Way You Drive
frdmfghtr writes "ZDNet.com is running a story about a runaway idea of a tracking automobiles via GPS. Not to be confused with the Canadian project geared towards anti-speeding ideas, this one does in fact have the goal of tracking your vehicle. 'The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these 'mileage-based road user fees.' However, the article goes on to talk about how there is no provision in place to prevent the uncontrolled surveillance of motorists without a court order."
I'm sorry as great as this would be for road planning, we have horrible, congested roads where I live, and other important and completely valid projects. I just have trust issues with the local, federal, and state governments. I don't want to put more of my rights within their immediate control. Whether or not they actually act on their newfound abilities doesn't really matter. What matters to me is that if I had a GPS in my car and they were actively tracking me there is the POTENTIAL for abuse. As I said, I don't want to give a group of governments I do not trust the tools they need to infringe upon my rights down the road.
Would you mind if plainclothes police officers followed you everywhere you went, for no particular reason than that you might commit a crime somewhere?
It's an extremely rare person who has never broken a law in his life. Never once jaywalked, went a mile/km an hour over the speed limit, passed on the right, changed lanes a little too soon after the last one, dropped a piece of paper and watched as it fluttered away out of reach...
If they police want to catch me doing something, then they can put eyes on me, not a GPS. If I see lights in my mirror, I'll pull over. If I see a government-sanctioned GPS on my car, then it will get blocked. It's their problem to figure out how -- especially since they'll need eyes on it to do so.
For that matter, cops will often look the other way on minor things. Someone going 5mph over the speed limit on the freeway is probably not going to get stopped. Someone parked just slightly outside of the lines is likely to get leeway. And if it was an honest mistake, the person might just get a warning instead of a citation. Automated systems do not allow for judgement calls that might take into account mitigating factors.
Cops have a rough life. One of my high school classmates is a cop. I grew up down the street from a SWAT officer, who had to retire after a leg wound from a gunfight with a suspect left him unable to run quickly enough. I admire what they do, and I defer to them. I don't argue the issue, and I treat them honestly and with respect. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to spill my entire life to them.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The feeling here is we don't want law dictating morality down to the T. We have enough problems as it is with the law carving our collective rights and wrongs. Lawsuits are thrown about like a ticker tape parade in the US. Not to mention the great potential of abuse, what with things like the Patriot Act still around.
TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders ALREADY!
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: ...but the shocking link finally died in July 2004 and the new location 2005 does not have a photo of a RFID bridge underpass RFID database collector. But this 20005 link below does discuss their toll booth RFID tracking 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 (since 2001).
The us gov T.R.E.A.D. act (which passed) made it illegal to sell new passenger cars lacking untamperable RFID in the tires allowing efficient scanning of moving cars.
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 chemical 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 tracking chips before molded deep into tires!
http://www.sokymat.com/index.php?id=94
PLEASE LOOK AT THAT LINK : Its the same shocking tire material I have been trying to tell people about since the spring of 2001 on slashdot.
a controversial dead older link was at http://www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html
(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertes usually into any of my urls 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 high speed overpass prototype WAS at
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
http://www.telematics-wireless.com/site/index1.php
Washington (mentioned in TFA), like most (all?) states, only requires that you update your tabs every year, not your license plate. Go ahead, put RFID in my tags. Nothing's stopping me from nuking that in my microwave for a couple seconds ...
Oh, I'm sorry officer. It must be defective. Okay, I'll take that 10-day-or-$30 fix-it ticket, get a new tab, "prove" that it's working, and then go home and nuke the damn tag.
Front license plates are required in many states as well, but you're not going to prison for not having one. You'll get a fix-it ticket to put the plate back on, which you then have to prove (show the cops, or the courthouse, or however they have it set up). Then you take it back off again, and when you're pulled over again you must've "lost" that plate (damn road debris! Can't you use my tax dollars to keep the roads clean? :).
It's going to be GPS. Anything else requires a more elaborate infrastructure.
That's only true if you believe that the government must precisely measure and collect road taxes. If we all take a step back and consider just how fucked up government budgets are, it should become obvious that accurate measurement of road use is not going to benefit the state because any level of accuracy will be quickly lost in the chaotic noise of the overall system of government budgeting.
So, instad of coming up with some super-elaborate, fascist's wet-dream to measure and collect the exact road use tax down to the penny, how about we just stick to basic measurements:
1) The odometer
Pay a road use tax that is based on odometer readings when you get your car's yearly inspection or registration renewal.
2) Average traffic flow between states
Bordering states can fairly easily estimate average daily traffic flow across their boarders, they use that information to negotiate sharing ratios between states for the collected road-use taxes.
There - problem solved in a fashion that is more than "good enough" with minimal cost overhead and minimal loss of privacy.
If it turns out that a state is not getting enough compensation to cover road upkeep, then they can raise the road use tax rate and possibly renegotiate the sharing ratios with their neighbors until their road maintenace costs are appropriately covered.
Only the big car/people tracking corps will lose out because there will be no reason to pay them (waste) barrels of federal pork to implement a piece of big brother. Oh, and the GPS receiver makers will also lose out on an otherwise captive market (you know their CEO's are spooging over the thought of forcing all cars to incorporate at least one GPS receiver).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Unfortunately a lot of the abusive tactics of the DMV are created by ordinary bureaucrats not by legislators. At least the legislator traditionally has to worry about public anger. Remember when you could go to the DMV without an appointment? They actually had to attend to you? How about when you could explain that your vehicle was not being operated and you did not owe them any money for it. Now you have to inform them ahead of time that it is no longer in service, and you have to pay to do them this favor! Thousands of people wind up paying the DMV for *not* using their roads. And what about the price of tickets, when were those prices snuck through. Who figured out that $50 isn't enough deterrent for speeding or not wearing your seat belt? Why the fuck is not wearing your seat belt an offence at all!
;-)
They'll charge you whatever they want, they'll penalize you whetever they want if you're late, and in my state they can just go in without prior notice and take it out of your bank account. I think those DMV people must assume that the unwashed hordes that they see their building every day is representative of the public at large (it's frightening to visit that place isn't it?), or maybe they just see us as one big bank account that can always be tapped for a little more.
I don't take this proposal too seriously, because I don't think people will stand for it, but I'm sad for the lost millions that I will later being paying back to the government. If it ever does go public, expect mass civil disobediance. And with a car-mounted GPS jammer, I will enlist more people to my cause
Happy driving. It's a priviledge, not a right, you know. Don't get too uppity about it.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
As long as anyone who doesn't have insurance or money to pay for the hospital is left to die when they don't wear a seat belt, I'll agree to not requiring them to wear one.
Oh, and if you don't have enough insurance or money to cover all medical bills, you're thrown out the second your cash runs out.
I don't think tickets are the best way to handle that, but they're better than nothing and I don't know what a better idea would be.
No matter how much you respect the police now, if you can't guarantee that they will still be worthy of that respect after the next generation of recruits (or the one after that, etc) is in the system, then giving them powers that are difficult to remove is not a good idea.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Seat belt laws actually keep the driver behind the wheel, rather than thrown out of one's seat or hard to one side. Often in an accident a driver can prevent an accident from becoming even worse by steering, braking, etc. after the initial contact. Consider seat belt laws to be like laws requiring you to maintain your brakes, brake lights, etc. It's for the safety of other drivers, not you.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Since I have not read the article, I will spout my opinion as fact, and leave the rest to the jury :-)
I have nearly 10 years of relatively high mileage driving under my belt with a very clean driving record. Its not spotless which is my point. I feel there should be some credit or recognition for distance I have driven, and not just the number of years I have been driving. The person who rarely gets behind the wheel is more of a danger then one who has a lot of current experience.
The problem is there is no way to report the number of miles / kilometers I have driven in the past year. While I hate the idea of being spied upon, maybe this will lead to some form of usage based experience credits vs just time based.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
One problem with the current transportation taxes is that they're levied on gallons of gasoline. As more fuel efficent cars and hybrids take off, governments are losing their gas tax money. California is actually looking at having some sort of device put into cars that records how many miles you drive and then charges you for those miles every time you gas up... Since fuel efficient cars are "cheating" the government.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
By using their roads you agree to abide by their rules.
... whose roads? Oh, the roads the taxpayers (myself included) paid for (and continue to pay for).
Excuse me
Nothing prohibits you from making your own roads and doing whatever the heck you please on them at whatever speeds you like.
Oh, like murdering people on them, or driving on them at high speed from a bank robbery. Yup. Why I could just pull over on MY ROAD and stick my tongue out at the law man. Get real.
If you aren't trolling, and want to see some ligitimate arguments against this government intrusion, read a little further down the thread.
njyoder you ar wrong! TREAD is real.
2 3/1/1/
w ww.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml%3 FarticleID%3D49901229+%2B%22tread+act%22+%2Btires+ %2Brfid&hl=en
..
q s/rfid_considerations_specific_industries.html
m ns/trends/
Goodyear, Michelin and other tire manufacturers are claiming TREAD is the reason they are forced to put in spy RFID transmitter chips in all tires... not whims. A bylaw document addendum for TREAD is merely one strongarm tactic by feds that aided it to be fully adopted. AIAG manipulation was another.
Goodyear RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"Tires have to have a unique identification number called a DOT number," he said. "Cars have a vehicle identification number. Under the TREAD Act, carmakers have to associate the unique number on each tire with the VIN of the car it's put on. RFID offers a cheaper way to do that association
web source : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/12
Michelin RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"The tire industry faces regulatory pressures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requiring tire companies to monitor pressure and temperature in tires as part of the Tread Act, a much-publicized law passed in 2000 in response to the rollovers of Ford Motor Co.'s Explorers equipped with certain Firestone tires. The Tread Act states that the vehicle identification numbers must correlate with the Department of Transportation's number for the tire."
web source : http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:NKrAuVWpXksJ:
Industry and TREAD RFID
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"There are no industry-based automotive mandates out there today. Perhaps the only exception to this is the Tire TREAD Act in which RFID is specified as a method of identifying tires supplied to OEMs. The U.S. Congress passed the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act after the Firestone/Ford Explorer issues emerged. The act mandates that carmakers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there is a problem. "
web source : http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/rfid/fa
===
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"For example, Michelin and Goodyear plan to use RFID to aid their compliance with the Transportation, Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act."
web source : http://www.fawcette.com/wss/2003_10/magazine/colu
You are probably an FBI shill for wanting to FACTUAL INFORMATIVE mod the post to -1 like it was 4 out of five times before... all using the feds shill accounts.
njyoder, If you have a fact to dispute then post your facts! Otherwise read and learn! The feds aready scan car tires on the roads.
Did you even READ this post, did you even read the other? or are you a sock puppet account for the FBI?