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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."
Like, how hard would it be for a "terrorist" to get fake licence plates and stick them on a car?
No sig today...
They also plan on using this setup to catch speeders. The time it takes to move between cameras can tell exactly how fast you're going.
You seem to be assuming that the people who want to make a counterfeit plate are without resources. It's no harder to counterfeit a license plate then it is to counterfeit a CD, and look at how well the efforts to crack down on those have gone. At the most primitive, any color printer can make a fake license plate that will fool a simple (or even not so simple) optical recognition system. It probably wouldn't fool a human, but for many things that's not a big deal, especially if you don't need the ruse to last very long. If you need something that will last longer, it will require a bigger investment, but certainly not an investment that any crime syndacite or terrorist organization would have trouble acheiving.
And of course, don't forget that the simplest form of misdirection doesn't require counterfeiting plates at all. Just steal one from a similar make & model & swap it out someplace outside of the view of the cameras. If you attach the plate with Velcro, you can swap out the plate in probably 15 seconds.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is -exactly- like CD copy protection. It does little, if anything, to stop the purported targets (organized pirates, terrorists), but is very effective at it's real goal (forcing people to buy multiple copies of their favorite CD's, control the masses & collect revenue from speeders). Hopefully the scheme will backfire as badly for the British government as it has for Sony.
An interesting fact known to many bikers is that the current fine for not displaying a licence plate on a vehicle is only £20. Also, since it's a 'Construction and Use' offence and not a driving offence it doesn't add any penalty points to your driving licence. So if you're a biker going out for a blast take off the licence plate, stick it in your back pack, and "it fell off" should you get stopped by the police.
I am increasingly convinced that the sacrifices of his generation count for less and less in today's world. It has always amazed me how government behaviour such as this or the recent revelations about the NSA in the US not only fail to alarm citizens but are widely defended.
I was recently reminded during a conversation with a someone who grew up in Soviet Russia of the saying that the USSR didn't fall because the majority of the populace wanted freedeom - it fell because they didn't like standing in bread lines. I'm afraid the same thing might be true about the Nazis - that they are regarded as bad guys for committing genocide not for being a totalitarian regime, and that many people aren't bothered by totalitarin governments.
Tell me this:
If you were to pull into a parking lot of a mall and swap plates with a car of the same make/model (shouldn't be hard to find), how many days/weeks would it take your average person to notice that their plates have changed? Okay, so then someone has your plates, but create a chain of swapping plates on 5 cars and they'll never quite find it in time... giving you a few days to do your damage. Find someone on vacation, go into an underground garage of an apartment and find a covered car or car where someone looks like they've been in Florida all winter.
-M
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