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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."
This just means my car will get a tin foil hat, too...
mileage-based road user fees.
Didn't we pay taxes to build the roads in the first place? Will these fees be accompanied by the reduction of taxes, since they are getting transportation funding elsewhere?
This could be useful in figuring out which roads need expansion, and it could help with traffic routing. Imagine the effect on stoplights. They'll know which way has the biggest backup, etc. Of course, they could do most of this non-invasively.
Of course, this'll be touted as an anti-theft thing or something, and everyone will jump all over it.
As an avid cyclist, I'd love to assume it will end at user fees. But just because that's what the system is designed for doesn't mean that's how this stuff will end up.
If this kind of thing goes live I'd say that it's just a matter of time before some desperate politician campaigns on turning this into an "anti-terrorism" device... similar tracking systems are already in place for trains and (obviously) airplanes. Between this and RFID I'd say that it's just a matter of time until either the government or our employer knows our location (give or take a couple meters) 24/7.
(Yes, I am paranoid.. thanks for pointing that out)
We already have mileage based tracking without GPS. It's called an odometer.
In states with annual inspections, it's trivial to record odometer readings too, and tax based on that.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Why stop there? I'd be willing to pay more taxes so that the government could install surveillance cameras in every room of every citizen's home. It would help with illegal drug usage, private gambling, prostitution, wife-beating, child molestation, and a whole host of other problems. If you don't have anything to hide you really shouldn't be against it. The possibilities are limitless.
How do they propose to install one of these devices in any of my vehicles??
There will be no such device ever installed in any vehicle I ever own.
BTW, all of my vehicles are over 20 years old and long ago fully paid for in full.
They'll have just as much luck installing one of these things in my vehicle as they will inserting a RFID chip under my skin.
And you care if the police know your location... why?
Because there are quite a few laws in this great nation which I (occasionally) ignore. I speed, I drink* (not at the same time, mind you), smoke illicit drugs... I don't feel I do any of these things in a reckless manner, and feel that my behavior is in line with the American spirit of freedom.
The ability to exercise my free will as mentioned above would be rendered impossible were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.' In short, I have no fear of being called a terrorist.. at worst I could be labeled a drug addict, unfortunately that would be enough to land me in jail (no voting rights, no freedom).
* a criminal offense because I'm not 21...
Also, there's a big difference between tracking you when you're in a public space (like a road) and installing a camera into your home so policemen can watch you jack off.
And there's my beef: the slippery slope. If we let this fly, watch the "big difference" between them disappear. It isn't anyone's GOD DAMNED business when and where I go. I like to keep it that way.
The ability to exercise my free will as mentioned above would be rendered impossible were the government able to watch my every move, convict me of my every 'crime.'
You'll still be able to exercise you're free will. You'll just be punished in accordance with the law whenever you do something that breaks it. There are no parantheses around crime. If the law says it's illegal, it's a crime.
The problem with law enforcement agencies becoming more efficient with enforcing laws, is up until now they haven't been able to get TOO efficient. So people haven't cared too much about things being illegal.
How about instead of attacking the law enforcement agencies for trying to do their job (protect and serve the people by enforcing the laws their representatives enact on behalf of their constitutents), you work towards changing the laws? But then again, that's much more difficult. It's much easier to simply break the law, and hope you don't get caught.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
One great thing about having this power in the hands of the police, is that the police are always people you can trust. Same with the FBI. There aren't any corrupt cops, police power is never used discretionarily to harass people the local police doesn't like (or for that matter, political enemies of the federal government). As government agencies, they also have data security second to none! Just like the DMV, no-one will be able to misuse this information!
Sounds great all around!
"Instead of posting rhetoric why don't you say what your problem with this system actually is?"
His "rhetoric" as you put it, is the same "rhetoric" the OP used to justify his support:
"This is a great idea, it would help with drunk drivers, crimes, and speeding. If you dont have anything to hide you really shouldnt be against it."
Why is it okay to "argue" like this in favor of big brother, but not flip it on it's head against big brother?
You and the rest of the pro-big brother crowd are fools. You have no concept of where this is all heading. You think governments are a bunch of selfless public servants only looking out for our good. If you didn't think such a naive stupid thing, you wouldn't argue for this.
9/11 happened, and what was the result? We passed the patriot act which would not have stopped 9/11. This is a government that views us a threat and because of that, any sane and rational person who has any love of freedom needs to recognize that they are a threat to our freedom and individual autonomy.
You want a non-rhetoric reason for why this shouldn't pass? I'll give you one, though I think the OP hit a homer with his reply... I don't want to live in a god damned police state where my every move can be tracked. It isn't because I have something to hide, it's because I'm not a fucking inmate in a prison. I haven't violated any laws that should require me to be under surveillance all the time. That's bullshit. I don't want to be under surveilance. We have better technologies to deal with car theft, drunk drivers, and speeding, that don't require putting us all under defacto surveilance.
Why aren't the other options explored? For the same reason we got the patriot act in response to 9/11, instead of secured borders... POWER.
I just read with comments set to level 1. It was alarming: many of the people in the low-ranked comments are in support of this idea. These are your fellow citizens!
If there is some sort of plan to turn Americans into a passive, watched population, it's working. People actively want to be spied upon. It makes them feel "safer."
If you, like me, think this is a step toward the loss of our valuable ideals of freedom, you sure as hell had better start speaking up. These gullible, frightened people are driving our government. We need to stop them and the only way to accomplish that is to become more politically active.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Aren't gas taxes basically a pay-per-use fee for motorists for infrustructure building?
Gas taxes have the advantage of being anonymous, plus they promote lower gas-usage vehicles. The only reason I can think that anybody would consider using GPS in favor of simply taxing fuel is that they want to LOWER the taxes on gas, thus prices at the pump. You lower gas prices, and you're GUARANTEED to get re-elected.
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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 initial impetus for this was alternate fuel vehicles. An electric car you plug in at home now pays no road taxes like a car at the pump. The same goes for propane or natural gas vehicles you fill at home. As vehicles go away from filling at a gas pump that collects taxes per gallon another model is needed.
Coming up with the mechanism for billing by gallon, watt, therm, amp, whatever and separating what you use in your car vs what you use in the oven isn't practical. So to assign the taxes based on use mileage ( or even "hours on the road" ) needs to be figured out. It's got to happen.
Even with an odometer, a mechanism taxing for mileage by state would be needed. Especially with the smaller states in the northeast where people live in one, work in one and transit a third to get to work each day. As long as you're figuring out which state you might as well figure out things like toll roads, bridges and time of day congestion usage.
It's going to be GPS. Anything else requires a more elaborate infrastructure.
What it doesn't have to be is privacy-hostile. Rather than uploading your entire driving history, the "road tax road map" could be uploaded into the unit in the vehicle. With the schedule of tariffs for your particular vehicle onboard, all you really need to reveal is the taxes owed. No need to reveal whether you went 1000 miles in a high-congestion area or 10,000 miles of night time interstate driving, just that you owe $5.95 in taxes. ( Expect this to be used as a by-use insurance tool as well)
There has to be a way to have drivers pay for use of the roads. Ideally we won't be limited to gasoline engines, so charging $ per gallon won't always work. An alternative is needed. Arguing about privacy impacts of a GPS receiver in the car is fine, and appropriate. But better would be to come up with a viable alternative to bill users for road use that is independent from fuel delivery.
Maybe you don't have a reason to care, but lots and lots of your fellow citizens do have reasons.
Anything like this would be likely to have security leaks. Probably big ones. So what if someone with $1000 in hand could find out where your car is right now? Let's say it's:
1. Your ex-spouse, who has a grudge, a temper, and a .44 magnum.
2. The leader of the gang whose homey was just sentenced for a robbery that you were a witness to.
3. That person you met in the bar last week who just won't leave you alone.
4. The burglary ring who's looking for people more than 500 miles from home so they can have a nice cup of tea and a sit down while they are stripping your digs.
I'm sure everyone has other examples. And, by the way, not every person in law enforcement is unfailing honest and upright. Sometimes they fit right into scenarios like those above. Or worse. Just Google ' "Ramparts Division" Scandal' for an example.
Please post your full, real name, home, school/work, and cell phone numbers, unaltered email addresses, home and school/work address, job title, vehicle descriptions and license plate numbers, and a link to a recent photograph of yourself.
Or, admit that privacy has its benefits after all.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I was told once by a cop, that if you follow some one long enough, they will eventualy commit a trafic violation. It maybe something as minor as not using a turn signal or failing to signal within the required distance the law dictates before you turn.
With this in mind, If i had it in for you, I could always find out were you were and then cite you for enought violations you license points out and get suspended oryour insurance get so expensive you cannot affors it anymore. If i was going to do somethign like this, I would target those with different political opinions or ideas that threaten my livleyhood. Maybe i would get borred and target minorities or just church goers. Maybe even the parrents of the child that beat mine up over a game of marbles at school the previous week. How about just screwing with someone who i gave a ticket to and they got out of it because i made a mistake.
The idea of using this to make sure road use taxes are being paid is idiotic. The fact is you pay your road use taxes when you buy a gallon of gasoline. You also contibute when the vehicle is registared and when you buy tires (yes there is a DOT fee on tires hidden in the price) As for big trucks or comercial vehicles, Well this is also taken car of with IFTA reporting and regular audits. Each shipper reports thier shipments so cariors cannot fudge the report. IFTA rules regulate you pay usage on Five mile to the gallon for class eight vehicles (even if you get better milage It changes acording the the use and weight of the vehicle) and every gallong of fuel except that marked for offroad use (noted with a die in the fuel) have the tax already in place when purchased. The drivers report the miles driving in thier log book, the company reports milage in thier IFTA statemnts or routing reports and also when reporting thier income statments as well as tax deductions. The states track comercial vehicles entering and leaving states as well as different parts of the states. Fuel reciept also track were the vehicle has been and is regularly availible to inspecters (fuel card transactions).
You even pay road tax to mow your lawn in most cases. The idea that a car might be driving too much without paying is a load bull. This is just some lame excuse to invade what was normaly considerd private. The problem is more fuel eficient vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles are using less fuel or fuel that isn't being taxed. This can be easily corected by charging a higher fuel tax at the pump or increase registration fees for vehicles that get more milage. For some reason the government want to know were you are, were you were and what time you were there.
Most people will look at the conditions of the roads around them and think this is neccesary. The problem is that road use money is being diverted from the roads and used for other things. Installing these devices are not going to fix that or the roads. It is only going to cost money and allow more money to be diverted.
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
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
This all changed just after the Civil War, where the jury system fell flat on its face due to widespread racism, mostly in the south. How would a black fella get a fair trial in a matter involving a dispute with a white folk? Either 1) Jurors are white, in which case he'd hang for blowing snot on the boss' hankie, or 2) Jurors are black, so he gets off scott-free.
So, offenses and penalties were codified, and state constitutions all over the place were altered, introducing this new "Penal Code" that everybody was suppposed ta follow.
What the hell?! What are you talking about? You do realise countries have had Legal Codes for far, far longer than the United States even existed. Even before the civil war, the US and many other legal systems were already a quagmire of often contridictory laws beset with loopholes.
I don't know where you're getting these ideas from. Especially given that rasicim in juries is still a problem even today. The current US legal system has less to do with the civil war than it has to do with simple human nature and society. See legal and socal history, economics, and most of the rest of the Guide.
May the Maths Be with you!
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
There is no constitutional right to travel
WTF are you smoking?
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Go re-read your constitution, and the federalist papers. The constitution does not grant rights, rights are inherent. They only listed a few important ones within the constitution, but because these are natural rights you have them and a host of others even if they are not listed in the constitution....
Even if you ignore the ninth and tenth amendments, what about the first?
E.G. "the right of the people peaceably to assemble"? obviously we the people cannot assemble without traveling to said assembly. So yeah, I'd say that alone says we DO have the right of travel.
As for the right to track you,
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This is to my mind clearly a case of unreasonable search and seizure. The right of the people to be secure in their persons surely means secure from tracking my whereabouts.
People like you scare me. It is a sad testament to what america and its educational system have become.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!