FCC Allocates More Bandwidth to Transportation

Ydeologi writes "MSNBC is running this story on the FCC finally getting around to allocating a more significant chunk of the airwaves for "intelligent transportation" services. "

Comments

Top 10 accidents of the future

[Enoch Root]

Now that wired cars are a mere technicality away...

10. Thunderstorm in California; traffic slows down in NYC.

9. Forgot to go to the garage to get that new Service Pack.

8. Windshield is overtaken by a slew of porn site ads.

7. Incompatibility between your car's OS and the highway's OS.

6. Got distracted by all the pretty iCars.

5. That's what you get for running a beta!

4. Instead of the fancy car with all the extra options, you should have chosen that reliable, Open Source car...

3. Your car is highjacked by a script kiddie and driven into a ditch.

2. "What are you talking about? There's no Ctrl-Alt-Del in my car!"

And the #1 accident of the future...

1. It was a bad idea to advertise your new car on Slashdot...

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

More bandwidth for privacy invasion.

[Tau Zero]

That's what this amounts to. It would be trivial to piggy-back traffic information and other useful data on existing services, such as FM radio broadcast subcarriers. (What car ships today without an AM/FM radio as standard equipment?) We already have digital cellular service for moving data on behalf of the occupants of the car. So what's there in the car itself which creates the need for this new spectrum?

It seems pretty simple to me: Tracking vehicles. Not just tens or hundreds, but millions simultaneously. Oh, it'll be dressed up with some noble language like "It can help the tow truck find you when you break down" or "It can direct you away from traffic jams", but none of these things require the vehicle to broadcast data (and with the mandatory cellular location features, its position) all the time.

If you travel by bus or airline, your movements are easily tracked. Now we're looking at this being true for personal automobile travel as well. Surveillance society, here we come.
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