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Australia Mulling a Nationwide Vehicle-Tracking System

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that as political support for Australia's version of the national ID card is waning, the powers that be have found a far more effective way to catalog the populace. CrimTrac, an Australian government agency responsible for designing technical solutions to aid policing, is due to hand in a $2.2 million scoping study for the introduction of a nationwide automatic number plate recognition system (ANPR). It seems that as well as ANPR, the system will also collect images of drivers and passengers with high enough resolution for identification purposes. All ANPR data collected would be made available to participating agencies in real time, and retained for five years for future investigations."

11 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. CrimTrac is an interesting company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I did some work as a contractor for CrimTrac a few years ago and they had this fingerprint recognition system that went into enormous detail in a single finger print, not just the swirls and where the lines were but it analysed the actual mini-ripples along the edges of each of the lines. Even if you had less than 10% of the total fingerprint it would still find matches by the sequence of ripples along a single line.

  2. Privacy Masks? by EdIII · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People will start wearing masks.

    Personally, I have always wanted an excuse to wear a burqa. Yes, I am serious too. When we get to the point that facial recognition is everywhere I am just going to start obscuring my face. If I have to do that then I want to be comfortable doing it. Naked underneath a burqa seems to be a good place to start. I am only half kidding.

    That will be a pretty weird looking world when you have to protect yourself head to toe to obtain a little privacy.

    You think it won't happen? You think I am overdoing it a little? They are going to keep that data for FIVE YEARS. You think they won't sell access to it, illegally or otherwise? Of course they will. You better not cheat on your wife or girlfriend. Go to happy finish massage parlors in the middle of day. Basically do anything you want to be private, since it will be a trivial matter to find out EVERYWHERE you have been for the last 5 years.

  3. Countermeasures? by jcr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ok, this is a technical problem begging for a technical solution. What's it take to detect cameras and hit them with a laser? A watt or so should do to fry the image sensor.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  4. Top Secret Fact: USA Already has it: RFID in tire! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders ALREADY!

    Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.

    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 :
    Â http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
    (remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
    [amazing document deleted by feds recently]

    The chips in your tires are for forensic "after the fact" database tracking, from databases collected on highway choke points, It can be done in real time too though.

    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 allegedly 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.

    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).
    The governement can then either look back in databases to see wheere and when your car drove, and OCR liscense plates at tool or Customs can
    build the database up even better without the feds needing to visit your home to get your RFID GUIDs.

    More sinister, it is near impossible to buy tires without the vendor in the USA filling out federal paperwork of what VIN the recipient car is!

    Photos of tracking chips before molded deep into tires! :
    http://www.sokymat.com/index.php?id=94
    Link is deleted now but company that bought the tire snitch chip company makes passport scanners for the feds now : http://www.aaitg.com/index.php?id=23

    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
    (its gone off archive.org internet way back repository now too)

    (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 po

  5. Re:No ... by electrictroy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I disagree. Anything you do to yourself, since nobody else is harmed, is not a crime.

    The only reason certain "self" activities like masturbation, smoking dope, or committing suicide are outlawed is because we got a bunch of petit-dictators (aka control freaks) who want to control everybody else. There's no justifiable reason to outlaw these activities as long as the only person I am harming.... is myself.

    "No person has a right to harm another. And that's all the government should restrain him." - Thomas Jefferson

    --
    The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
  6. Use IR laser diodes by cheros · · Score: 2, Interesting

    An IR laser diode that is left unfocused will do the trick.
    It won't zap the sensor, but unless they have used a decent IR filter it will saturate the chip to the point of not registering anything else.

    Reasons why you may want to avoid doing this:
    - no idea if there will be retinal damage if someone else looks at it
    - ANY camera will get upset, so an traffic monitoring will show up your car as worthy of close inspection
    - AFAIK, anything that hinders reading your license plate by whatever means is illegal (it is in most of the countries I've been in, no idea about AU).

    This is NOT a tech problem, it is a political one. As long as the population doesn't make it VERY clear they disagree with what is going on, their government will continue to seek ways to waste a lot of taxpayer money. I'm willing to bet money on the UK ID Card scheme getting nuked if there is a change of government (AFAIK that is an election pledge), that's why they're so pushy about implementing it in at least some form (hence the contract announcements etc etc) - the intention is to make it hard to roll back.

    You know, I can recall times when being in politics was something respectful. I'm obviously old..

    --
    Insert .sig here. Send no money now. Owner may sue, contents will settle. Batteries not included.
  7. Re:Welcome to the Global Village by secondhand_Buddah · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The police in the UK already have the power to detain people arbitrarily. So that piece of the fascist puzzle is already in place for a gulag. All you need is some leader to take advantage of said legislation, but hey, by then its too late..
    By the way, did you know that before the first world war, you could travel and live ANYWHERE in the world freely and without restriction? Passports were put in place to control the flow of people during the war. Guess what? The legislation was never revoked after the war. We just live with it, and it has got progressively More suppressing over the years. Do you really think governments have your interests at heart when it comes to personal freedoms?

    --
    Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
  8. Re:Welcome to the Global Village by gary_7vn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm in Canada and every time I try to take pictures of the police, I am either told to stop, or am questioned, or in some cases have been told to delete the pictures! This just happened to a friend who was taking pictures of police practicing riot control. I get the message. Try it some time. It may not be illegal but it is not a good idea. Do a search on this, police harassment of people taking their pictures is absolutely common in various Western countries.

  9. Re:on-star service. by aurispector · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Agreed. The whole idea is incredibly stupid. "CrimTrak"? If they know someone is a criminal, go to his house, his parent's house or his girlfriend's house. 95% of the time he'll be there. For the other 5%, we need panopticon video surveillance of the general population! It's obvious! How ever did we make it to 2008? The criminals should have killed us all by now without this technology!

    Please, somebody, somewhere cut me a f*cking break and stop this stupidity.

    --
    I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
  10. Re:on-start service. by TapeCutter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Also - Toilets flushing backwards? Doesn't that mean stuff comes *out* of the bowl and flies up at you? Urgh"

    As an Aussie I would just like to point out that things do fly out of dunny's - that's why the redbacks live under the seat.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  11. Re:Australia Card? by rohan972 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Privacy Act (1988) specifically mentions that no unique identifier issued by a government agency or corporation can be used by another entity for the purpose of identification. In practice, this means things such as driver's license number, a Tax File Number (equivalent to U.S SSN), or the medicare number can not be used by any corporation or agency other than the one which issued it in the first place, for identification.

    Interesting theory, but your TFN is probably known by your employer, your bank, centrelink (social security), your superannuation fund as well as the tax office. Of course, you don't have to give it, you could just pay 46.5% tax instead. Now that's freedom of choice to keep your privacy! With the growth of the Family Tax Benefit and other centrelink payments a very large proportion of the population is on some form of government payment. Since many of them have the government take it from one hand as PAYG tax only to put it back in the other as FTB, there seems to be no purpose to it but to increase government control of the population and to force the people into a position where they are always reporting their activities, income and other personal details to the government.

    Don't be fooled by the occasional head rolling and the rhetoric of liberty in this country. The liberty of the people is dependent on being able to thwart government power. We occasionally thwart the power of individual politicians, maybe even a party, but not of the government institutions themselves. The peoples power to thwart government is specific to the branch of government. For the legislative we have the power of elections, but the majority of voters don't seem to be able to understand economic theory, monetary policy, the nature of government and liberty or logic well enough to make a decision based on anything but propaganda. For the judicial we have jury trials but I find few and far between are the people who understand the concept of jury nullification, people think that jury trials are about finding the truth (which is partly right) but don't understand the importance of being able to dismiss unjust prosecutions. For the executive there is the right to bear arms and we gave it up.

    All three of these citizen's powers were used in the forming of this country during the events surrounding the Eureka Stockade. The government was resisted by force, couldn't find juries to bring guilty verdicts on the rebels, and the leader was subsequently elected to the Legislative Assembly of Victoria. Can you honestly say you think anything remotely resembling these events could happen today? I think it would be almost impossible to find a jury that would find in favour of people on firearms charges because their cause was just. It seems likely that even the possession of (unlicensed) firearms would be enough to secure convictions, let alone firing of police, regardless of the cause. Even if you could find a jury to release them though, the thought that they could become elected representatives? Preposterous.

    Australians in general are not the freedom loving people we once were, and the ones who are here are not present in sufficient numbers to have any real influence on an election. You can look forward to things getting worse. Just look at some of the comments on the linked article in favour of this.