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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."
Marches on steady. Unstoppable and with an insatiable appetite for new technology
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.
The "must be tagged" law will not prevent theft, and will not prevent other criminal activities.
It does not prevent the criminals from disabling a tag, altering a tag, or replacing the tag.
What the tracking system ultimately tracks are the tags. Not the vehicles.
As such, removing the tags, and then transporting the vehicle under a different but "valid" tag would make an effective means of breaking this system.
The real benefit to law enforcement/government is *NOT* combating criminals, it is tracking law abidding citizens.
I would expect catch-22s like "we show your vehicle at the scene" in one case and "you can't prove that isn't a fake transponder being used to put you on the other side of the country" in another, with the difference being the desire of the prosecutor.
(Eg, "iron-clad, irrefutable!" When used to show guilt, and "suspect, clearly a technological fabrication!" When used to assert innocense.)
If anything, this masure will spawn a new form of criminal activity, buying, selling, and provisioning counterfiet/shady transponders.
The big brother society ... Marches on steady. Unstoppable and with an insatiable appetite for new technology
It also deploys very quietly these days. It's already up and running before people notice it's there.
We already HAVE four federally mandated car trackers on all passenger cars (along with most other vehicles) since 2007.
It's called a "Tire Pressure Monitoring System". It works by having (typically) a lithium-cell powered device in the valve stem on each wheel that transmits the tire pressure information along with a unique serial number (so your dashboard computer doesn't get confused by nearby cars). These can also be read by loops in the road.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
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Brasil is a communal society; we could care less for individual rights. Heck, if the entire country goes out on the streets naked every February, there is no need for individualism.
That being said, it's really hard to enforce a law in Brasil, mostly because it is a matter of national pride to find a way around the rules. They can put as many transponders as they want, but if all the population gets are tickets, then even the dealerships will have an "unofficial" - official - system to remove the tags.
The same thing happened with DVD players way back. Companies tried to force consumers to only get players for region 7. Except that, when you bought a DVD player, the salesman himself would write a code in a piece of paper that you could use to unlock all the regions.
Of course, if the system is used properly, then people won't bother. They could care less if some random guy knows if they are going to churches or brothels.