Starting Next Year, Brazil Wants To Track All Cars Electronically

New submitter juliohm writes "As of January, Brazil intends to put into action a new system that will track vehicles of all kinds via radio frequency chips. It will take a few years to accomplish, but authorities will eventually require all vehicles to have an electronic chip installed, which will match every car to its rightful owner. The chip will send the car's identification to antennas on highways and streets, soon to be spread all over the country. Eventually, it will be illegal to own a car without one. Besides real time monitoring of traffic conditions, authorities will be able to integrate all kinds of services, such as traffic tickets, licensing and annual taxes, automatic toll charge, and much more. Benefits also include more security, since the system will make it harder for thieves to run far away with stolen vehicles, much less leave the country with one."

Comments

The big brother society

[ickleberry]

Marches on steady. Unstoppable and with an insatiable appetite for new technology

Re:The big brother society

[wierd_w]

And we, the technicians, geeks, engineers, and software architects of the world, greedily line up to offer suggestions on how best to feed that pernicious appetite out of either being forced into it simply to have food to eat, or for fame and fortune.

The result is the same. We make the very chains they enslave us with, and happily forge ever more diabolical pleasures to satisfy big brother.

Who made DRM? It wasn't a media executive. It was somebody in a cubicle. Think about that.

Re:The big brother society

[Obfuscant]

There was no sane reason why NASA needed that information. They were just collecting it because they could. Because someone said, "well, we've got just about everything on these boys...

I can think of one very good reason. To have a control sample to test against when they get back, to see what effects the low gravity/increased radiation had on them. Who knows, there might be gravity related issues with reproductive processes just like there are for bone and muscles.

Or for later use, in case there was a radiation accident that would render them incapable of having children.

Soon to be hacked

[concealment]

I clone your MAC address, I decrypt your Wi-Fi, and I own your basic electronics already.

Apply these relative basic skills and what do you have? A high-tech integrated system which can actually be used to conceal the identity of a vehicle behind a false identity, and charge up all sorts of services to the legitimate owner besides.

Re:Soon to be hacked

[Tom]

You overestimate yourself and underestimate your enemies.

Sure you can hack some home WiFi. Your enemy is one guy, statistically speaking most likely someone with just enough computer know-how to reinstall windows.

Going up against a national system is a different game. Not just a different league, a different game. If they don't make the MPAA-stupidity-mistake (invent your own crypto and don't let anyone outside test it for weaknesses) or the typical software-company-mistake (do thinks cheap and fast so you have a great time-to-market, facepalm the day before release and say "oh btw, has anyone thought about security?"), or some other obvious ones, this can be very, very solid.

Crack NSA's SELinux to get a feel for what you're up against. Sure it's possible. All you need is either a serious mistake in the policy configuration, or a ring-0 exploit.

Yes, everything can be hacked. Don't expect to be the one doing it, though. If they do this properly, then a hundred other people have thought of your approach before, during the design, development and testing phases. Maybe they've put in an easter egg for you to find, to reward the effort.

Re:Soon to be hacked

[epyT-R]

Fine. Get that service if you want. That doesn't mean it should be shoved down our throats by the state under the guise of safety. Would you want a policeman in your house 24/7 to 'monitor' your 'well being'? No? Why not?

Re:"Services"

[Tom]

Traffic tickets are not a "service". A service implies that you actually get something useful in return.

You assume that the service always has to be towards the subject. It doesn't. The police performs a service when it arrests a burglar, but the service isn't towards the burglar, it is towards the house owner. Traffic tickets are a service to the other participants of traffic, because by punishing undesireable behaviour they limit it.

Yeah, we can talk all night about how reality sometimes differs and how speeding traps are often put not at the spots where speeding is dangerous but where they'll catch the most people, etc. etc. - that's implementation details.