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Britain to log all vehicle movement
dubbayu_d_40 writes "Using a network of cameras that can record license plates, Britain plans to build a database of vehicle movement for police and security services: rollout begins in March. Can't someone just swap/steal/disable the tracking device? Seems to me just another way to track the average citizen and not those wishing to avoid authorities."
When a police woman was recently shot dead in Bradford, the gang who were responsible had bullied a man into hiring a car in his name. The man went to the police before the murder had been committed, but the police just filed his complaint and didn't link it to the murder until too late.
The car was tracked on the camera network (it already partly works), but as it had been hired in his name the police arrested him instead of hunting down the gang.
As this network becomes more widely known, this is going to become more common - gangs will bully and blackmail people with no criminal record into hiring cars, and may even, to prevent them going to the policeabduct or kill them.
And, of course, criminals will habitually carry several sets of false number plates, so that they can change the 'identity' of their vehicle several times in the course of a journey.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Using OnStar's technology, neither the government nor OnStar's employees can:
1) Give you a traffic ticket.
2) Track your every move.
3) Run your plates every 5 seconds.
4) Use the above things to get a mistaken police report and hunt you down at any moment while you are on the street. (These things happen in nornal police work; I expect Britain's cameras to amplify this problem.)
5) Force you to participate in the system whether you like it or not.
6) Force you to pay for the system if you disagree with it. (IE-Taxes paying for cameras.)
People need to understand the difference between a business and a government. Businesses have no power over you; government does. Government can and will do all the above things with their own systems. OnStar provides a service, and if you don't like it then you don't pay for it and you don't participate in it. Try that with the government and they take away your driving rights and through you in jail. And of course if the government does start reglating OnStar, forcing them to provide the cops with an OnStar backdoor, you can always cancel the service.
So in summary:
OnStar / private business == Voluntary services
Government == Involuntary coersive force
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.