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National Car Tracking System Proposed For US
bl968 writes "The Newspaper is reporting that the leading private traffic enforcement camera vendors are seeking to establish a national vehicle tracking system in the United States using existing red-light and speed enforcement cameras. The system would utilize Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to track vehicles passing surveillance cameras operated by these companies. If there are cameras positioned correctly the company will enable images and video to be taken of the driver and passengers. The nice thing in their view is that absolutely no warrants are needed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars."
I cannot possibly foresee a way that this could be turned against the public in some horrific Orwellian fashion.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Now the agenda of the DHS should be clear for everyone. It isn't about catching terrorists, its about tracking every citizen. Most of their money goes to putting up cameras in cities across the US, big and small and putting up "fusion" centers which track everything.
Call me crazy or whatever you want. It isn't hard to verify everything I said via google.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Don't expect to see this go anywhere, not for a long time at least.
On this side of the pond.
To my friends in the UK, I'm so terribly sorry. I'm assuming you will have this technology installed and in full swing by next Tuesday.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
How would it tell my Civic from the millions of other Civics?
Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.
I just love this quote so much, for so many reasons.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
When my wife and I were in another state, we were using her car, I was driving, and I got photographed running a red light. They sent a citation to my wife, complete with a copy of the photo clearly showing me driving. They demanded that she either pay or give the name and address of the person who was driving. My wife - who is a lawyer - told them that that her husband was driving, and then refused to give name or address. She informed them that is is a protected relationship, that is, you cannot be compelled to testify against your spouse. They gave up on it.
So register your car under your wife's name, and hers under your name. Don't have a wife? Pay your attourney to register it for you. Attourney/client relationship is privleged also.
"You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Seriously, how do these people live with themselves, knowing what they are doing.
Your car was determined to be at point 1 at time alpha and point 2 at time beta. 1 and 2 or the same road with a speed limit.
(D2-D1)/(beta-alpha) - speed_limit = excess_speed
As the owner of the automobile this ticket has been sent to you under law HTA2009-01 and you are responsible for payment. A picture from point beta is attached for your reference should you not have been driving at the time you can contact the driver and make arrangements for them to reimburse them for your expense.
Note of this excess speed has been forwarded to your insurance company. Should the automated face recognition software have matched the photo against your drivers license you will also have been assigned appropriate demerits.
If an extreme hazard was detected in the amount of observed speed we trust that an officer has already contacted you about this issue.
This is my Civic.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Let me relate an incident that happened to me regarding DUI. If you do not like my language you are free to edit it out, however, I refuse to call a sonofabitch a gentleman of questionable heritage.
I used to drive tractor trailer over the road. I was so self-employed when the Federal DOT passed their new regulation regarding enforcement and investigation of such, despite the fact that in all the accident investigations involving big trucks, whether at fault or not, the commercial driver was subjected to tox and alcohol screens to determine his condition of sobriety and/or impairment at the time of the accident had returned result of far less than 1% of impaired commercial drivers.
I entered Utah at the border between it and Wyoming on I-80. Just across the line is a weigh and inspection station for Utah, almost directly across the highway from the same thing on the Wyoming side.
After being weighed and passed for legal weight I was flagged for inspection and pulled over to the side off the scale. I gathered my log book, my bills of lading, my permit and license books, my Commercial Drivers License and my medical certificate and entered the station house.
Upon getting inside, I said to the trooper on duty, "I don't know what you need, but I brought it all, what do you want to look at first?"
He replied, "I don't need any of that I pulled you in for a random alcohol screen."
I said, "What?"
He said, "You were number 17, I have four numbers I must pull in to screen for alcohol."
I asked him, "Did I do something on my approach to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered,"No."
"Well did I stagger or walk in any manner during the 100 yards walking back here to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered, "No."
"Well then, do you smell any alcohol on me now, or do you have any reason to believe I am drinking?" He answered, "No, I don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."
I then asked him, " You really don't understand why I am upset that I must prove to you I haven't committed a crime you have no right or reason to suspect me of?"
He again stated, "I just don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."
I said, "Are you really so stupid that you don't understand the reason I am angry that I must prove my innocence, though you have no reason to suspect me?"
He said, "Look, this is my job and I have to do it and if you didn't have anything to hide you shouldn't be upset."
I asked, "Do you really believe that?"
He said that he did.
That was three times I asked, three times the dumb sonofabitch indicated he had no concept of liberty or law. Three is all I will give anybody, and sometimes not that.
I said, "Ok, if you really mean that, take off your pants and your underwear."
He looked incredulous, then asked, "Are you crazy?"
I replied, "No sir, I am not. Take off your pants and underwear, we are going to examine your penis for blood and fecal matter to determine if you have been molesting small boys."
That sonofabitch went through the roof, ranting and screaming and telling me I had no right to accuse him of such a thing. I think he would have shot me if he had had the guts and thought he could get rid of the body before anybody happened along.
I calmly replied, "It's random, I have no reason to suspect you, but now you must prove you have not been sodomizing young boys. After all, if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be upset. What do you have to hide? Isn't that what you told me three times that you believed?"
He was sputtering and yelling at me and soooo red in the face, I thought I might get lucky and the no good sonofabitch would die from a stroke. He screamed at me, "That's entirely different!"
I told him, "The only thing different is now we are talking about you proving something I have no right to suspect you of. Evidently you didn't believe all that shit you told me, about nothing to hide s
I guess they could require you to attach some kind of placard to the back of your car with a unique combination of numbers and letters on it....
I dunno though, the logistics of doing that kind of thing on a large scale are pretty limiting.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Been there done that. Worked with a company that did traffic sensors and could see the waveforms from vehicles. We could and did identify makes and models of cars. BUT take that same car and drive north or south over rough road for a while and you get a different waveform ! (Hint the car is now magnetized differently). Anyway yes you could identify specific cars of the set the company owned. But this would not extrapolate to those same models in the wild driven differently or with a different magnetic history. As just driving the car will change the waveform.
And why am I not surprised when the public buys the "think of the children" pitch hook, line and sinker; when previous measures passed on this logic have done little to anything to address the problems they've supposed to have fixed while at the same time introducing new issues?
If only people would seriously think of the children when they consider legislation that would sacrifice liberties: what kind of society do you want to leave to you're children after you're gone? Already I hear parents reminiscing about a time when they could play pickup baseball or hang out by the lake until well after sunset without a care in the world. Even though the activities may be different (e.g. playing Madden 2008 instead of touch football on the street), why can't children today get to enjoy the broad freedom to play that their parents enjoyed? And more directly on this topic, a generation who grew up with a rite of passage of driving around with friends and boyfriends/girlfriends at 16 years (and younger in certain areas) is increasingly pushing to raise the driving age to 18. The hazards of our society haven't changed that dramatically in the past 40 years; on average in the U.S. violent crime rates are signifcantly lower than they were in the early 1970s, a time considered to be the "good old days" by many Baby Boomer parents. Child abduction and pedophila have existed for much longer than the past few decades, and I'm curious to see whether there's really been an increase in incidence of these problems or just an increase of coverage of them.
While some measures like educating children about not getting into a car with strangers and our present Amber Alert system are good, imposing a surveillance society does little to improve actual safety from the ostensible hazards that prompt such measures and at the same time creates new hazards of abuse by government and corporations.
It amazes me that so many a generation that grew up in a time where the defeat of Nazism and fascism were fresh in our collective minds (their parents experienced World War II firsthand) and our freedoms were cherished as our distinguishing feature from totalitarian Communism can turn its back on the values they were raised with and build an increasingly restrictive society for their children. The same holds true of our fiscal values; a generation raised on thrift is now building an unimaginable amount of public and private debt to leave to their heirs.
While not every Baby Boomer is guilty of this type of convenient thinking, apparrently there are enough who do to cause these measures to take effect. When someone says to you "think of the children," you really should think of the next generation. If I ever have children, I'll accept a 1-in-1000 (probably even lower, though I'm too lazy to look it up) chance that they'll be abused by a teacher, priest or any other adult over a much higher chance of being abused by a know-it-all government any day of the week. And even if I don't have my own children, I'll have nieces and nephews and friends' kids to think about.