In Brazil, All Vehicles Must Have Radio IDs By 2014

morcego writes "Brazil's National Traffic Council (CNT) published Friday a resolution that institutes the National System of Automatic Vehicle Identification (Siniav). According to the Q&A published (Google translation from Portuguese), only 'visible and public' information will be available (vehicle year or fabrication, make, model, combustible, engine power and license plate number), without any personal information about the owner or registration data. This system will be mandatory for all vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc) and should cost vehicle owners approximately R$5 (less than US$3)."

Comments

certainly much simpler than

[gl4ss]

certainly much simpler than spending gazillion dollars on cameras with ocr for the plates, like what's being rolled out in western world.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[gtirloni]

I don't want to disappoint you but Brazil is pretty much in the "western world" too. And it has lots of cameras with license plate reading tech for speeding tickets, etc.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[SourceFrog]

Why yes, I'm all for more efficient methods for re-creating 1984.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[cheesybagel]

Brazil has high income disparity. They manufacture airplanes (Embraer) but a lot of people live in slums next to the rich people's fenced mansions with high security guards who have to leave their houses in bullet proof cars.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[mister2au]

I see your Wikipedia and raise you 1 Wikipedia ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

In the contemporary cultural meaning, the Western world includes many countries of Europe as well as many countries of European colonial origin in the Americas and Oceania, such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, etc.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[FunkDup]

a lot of people live in slums next to the rich people's fenced mansions

Sounds a little bit like South Africa, or to some extent the USA.

This article says:

There is no agreed upon definition about what all these nations have in common apart from having a significant population of European descent.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[Hadlock]

I have bad news for you, Iran is a modern country, regardless to what you're shown on TV. Their government may be oppressive and backwards, but the country itself is very modern. I travelled 2000 miles by bus through Brazil, and many parts of Brazil are still richer than America's Gulf Coast (Biloxi, Gulfport, etc). The GDP says one thing, but wondering through the capital cities at night tells another. The rural parts of many countries do need to catch up though.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[craigminah]

...and it will improve the accuracy of drone strikes as well.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[zill]

Why yes, I'm all for more efficient methods for re-creating Brazil.

FTFY

Re:certainly much simpler than

[Vladius]

The Mississippi Gulf Coast was ignored in the aftermath of Katrina because of New Orleans, even though Bay St Louis is where the eye came ashore.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[TheRaven64]

You have to be pretty close to see that a car has no tax disk. They make them a different colour every year, so it's about as easy to see if one has expired too (although, there's some significant overlap, so the colour just means that you need a closer look). If you're close enough to see the tax disk, you're almost certainly close enough to wave an RFID reader at the car.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[murdocj]

don't recall the last time I saw any of my neighbors in a bullet proof car in the USA... care to elaborate?

Re:certainly much simpler than

[mwvdlee]

I know you're being funny and I got a chuckle out of it ... but just fyi:

South American has the lowest levels of opiates use of any region in the world, cocaine at about half the rate of first-world countries and cannabis lower that all areas except SE Asia.

http://geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Per-Capita-Opiate-Use-Map.jpg
It would seem Africa and East Asia use less opiates on average, thanks to Brazil.
Perhaps even Australia may use less opiates on average.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevalence_of_opiates_use, I looked up my own country, the Netherlands, where laws on opiate usage is somewhat more lenient than most countries in the world; about halfway down and much less than highly anti-drug countries such as the US. What does that tell you? Either enforcement is less in the US (22% of inmates will tell you otherwise; http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/) or legalizing drugs actually lessens drug use (taking drugs is not rebelious and anti-establishment if you can legally do so).

Re:certainly much simpler than

[__aaltlg1547]

By any reasonable definition Brazil is western. European language, Christian major religions, colonized from the east by people from Europe. IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE. Western does not mean "wealthy."

Re:certainly much simpler than

[__aaltlg1547]

Name a time in American history when the Mississippi gulf coast was not ignored.

Re:certainly much simpler than

[_Sharp'r_]

Lastpass is an RFID issued for toll road payments along the U.S. east coast. Makes it so they can just deduct your toll from an account instead of having to stop at a boothe.

Updating the summary: "This system will be mandatory for all vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc) and should cost vehicle owners approximately R$5 (less than US$3) and their privacy."

for what purpose?

[dutchwhizzman]

Why would you want such a thing? Humans can't read it and it sounds like criminals can easily swap tags or fake tags if they want to disguise themselves. License plates at least gave you the option to report a driver that caused an accident. At best, this is useful for statistics about vehicle usage, not for individual tracking, taxing or that sort of thing.

Re:for what purpose?

[Anonymous Coward]

A national toll road system can be setup now. Tolls can be made billable to the vehicle OWNER since they have the license plate number..

Re:for what purpose?

[Havenwar]

This is a government project we're talking about here. Don't expect them to hand you the lube.

Re:for what purpose?

[bky1701]

The wonderful state of NC (sarcasm) opened a plate-recognition toll road here about a year ago.

Re:for what purpose?

[alexgieg]

If you're going to put tolls on the entire country, just do it in a much cheaper fashion - put a tax on gas. Far cheaper to implement, and doesn't have the privacy implications.

Ah, but that's the point: here in Brazil we already have tax on gas: roughly 50% of the end price. And on the vehicles themselves: also about 50% of the end price (yep, if a model is sold here and in the US, ours is priced at roughly twice its US counterpart). And tolls on privately built roads (there was a promise back when those were introduced that it would lead to decreased taxes on gas -- it didn't happen, evidently). Now all that remains is to put tolls on every other street, so it's all covered (there's a promise private road tolls will be replaced by the per distance automatic one -- I'm not holding my breath). But just ask someone who's visited us what they think of our roads, streets etc. To sum it up: that money hasn't gone where it should.

That's Brazil.

License plate /= registration data?

[LaZZaR]

This means you are trackable.

Re:License plate /= registration data?

[gtirloni]

Not exactly 100% efficient since the _car_ is trackable but I get the point. Same thing with your cellphone though.

Re:License plate /= registration data?

[Cornwallis]

Bingo. All the previous posters are wrong. This is the *only* purpose.

Re:License plate /= registration data?

[cowboy76Spain]

It means that if someone sets a private "listening" station, they will get no more data that they could have get just looking at the car.

Only the people with access to the vehicles registration database(i.e. the state) could make a match with additional info (owner, address, and so on).

For people

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it will not be long before it will be mandatory for persons as well here (Netherlands).
They are now putting fingerprints and other biometric parameters in your passport and identity card, and it is mandatory to carry it whenever you are outdoors.
The next step will be to implant the RFID chip.
It is now being tested with pet animals, next will probably be farm animals, and when this does not cause any obvious health problems you will be required to have a chip implanted with your identifying information.

All for the sake of the war on terrorism.

Suspicious Timing for TFA release

[betterprimate]

Bloomberg just released an article relating to car theft in Brazil: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-10/brazil-wonders-why-its-rich-kids-are-so-good-at-stealing-cars.html So who's the manufacturer?

Most people don't care

[tmcb]

Well, car thefts are quite frequent in some Brazilian cities, so it's not surprise that most people won't see anything wrong on that apart from paying 5 bucks for the thing themselves. Some people will even see this as a good thing; well, it's an extremely cheap car tracking service!

There were really few contrary opinions to the resolution. Mr. Raul Jungmann, national representative, filed a request for its suspension, alluding to privacy concerns, but no final solution was given to the matter since 2007. It had no big repercussion on media, too. That's how things work in Brazil: these stuff get approved with enough antecedence, but become news just over the deadline. I can't say if it's intentional, but it really seems so.

Re:Most people don't care

[maxwell demon]

Of course the car thieves will have no way to just remove that chip on stolen cars ...

Re:Most people don't care

[tmcb]

Oh, of course they can't do that in any way! It would be a crime!

Re:Voluntary... when the chip breaks.

[jamesh]

we have tollway rfid devices in Australia that sit pretty much in the hottest part of the cabin, and they do just fine for the lifetime of the battery (~5-10 years). Are you seriously suggesting that they haven't thought of this??

So it's RFID then.

[cheros]

I can see RFID work in such an application, as long as they are write-once. Otherwise I'd give it a week before everyone is Spartacus :).

RFIDs are actually more practical than ANR - less horsepower required to read, and no games with "accidentally" leaving mud on the plates (however, if they cannot be read very quickly there may be an issue). However, I can only see this work with vehicle attached RFID - license RFID should be separate or you'll have to leave the chip open to reprogramming, which is IMHO where the problems hide here (as above :).

I was actually waiting for something like this to happen - vehicle ID hasn't seen progress since VINs. However, as always I'd be worried about privacy implications - with ANR there is already enough discussion.

Re:So it's RFID then.

[Gordonjcp]

It's considerably less hassle than ANPR, because ANPR only tells you the car's registration number. Reading the article, this won't hold the registration (which you probably don't care about) but will hold the VIN and a certain amount of technical data. If you used ANPR you'd have to pull all that down from a database somewhere.

Re:Financial trickery

[goldgin]

Hmm it seems Brasil needs to upgrade their Corruption v1.1 software to USA's model, Corruption v2.0. It's funny that so few people spot the trick... and so much more want into the deal when they find out about it. It so seems that the only solution for mankind is in evolution, a new breed of mankind that is lacking the ability to lie and cheat their way to success. Thankfully this is already happening, with statistics showing a new generation of humans with Aspergers syndrome and similar disorders on the rise, people that make decisions using common sense and logic. This is of course debatable and fictionary but that's all hope I have left for humanity.

Kapsch it is.

[betterprimate]

Three or four articles and press releases have been released in the past twelve hours. I deduct that Kapsch (the same producer of the failed E-Z Pass) is going to be producing these devices for the Brazilian government. ( See: http://www.kapsch.net/en/KapschGroup/press/articles/files/2012/PR_KTC_First_order_for_delivery_of_on-board_units_from_Brazil_EN.pdf posted 13 hours ago ). Their stock is down in case anyone is interested. Articles are being simultaneously released by Bloomberg. All articles released within a four hour difference.

Destined for Problems

[betterprimate]

The chips will be supplied by Kapsch ( http://www.kapsch.net/en/KapschGroup/press/articles/Pages/ktc_120810_pr.aspx ). These chips/devices are similar to the E-Z Pass in the NorthEast U.S. They are notorious for malfunctioning... http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-05-17/toll-poaching-ezpass/55038948/1 http://www.newstribune.com/news/2012/jun/28/e-z-pass-not-always-so-easy/ http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/49044786.html http://consumerist.com/2007/07/e-zpass-charge-you-fee-when-it-malfunctions.html The difference is that these are mandatory. If they do malfunction, how would it affect an innocent individual?

Helpful for kidnappers and terrorists...

[pubwvj]

Identifying people like this, and it does identify people, should be very helpful for kidnappers and terrorists. Now they'll be able to setup automated booby traps.

Stalking for fun and profit

[WaffleMonster]

I never understood the no personally identifiable information meme. Broadcasting a unique ID becomes quite personal when the data is aggregated and mined. Even if the IDs are themselves encrypted in a way that prevents unique discrimination without a key that same key or group thereof would need to be hidden in hardware in all other vechicles making compromise of all or parts of the system assured. Further since this system is being guarded by secrecy and NDAs, not subject to public scruitny of professionals its security properties will undoubtably suck.

Two observations:

Since these devices will be mandatory and everyone will have one and know about the system why would anyone assume a criminal would not immediatly destroy or disable the device upon taking a joyride in your vechicle or otherwise escaping authorities due to prior criminal activity? The standard you would be surprised at how stupid people are defense only goes soo far.

The second and more serious issue is that some people..unfortunatly way too many live in constant fear of injury or death from crazed x's and assorted stalker psychos. This system puts everyone in this category at unecessary increased risk.

Further what happens when someone decides to start attaching the receipt of an ID to an explosive trigger?