I practically died with joy the first time I got to use a pre-check lane. Kept my coat, shoes, and belt on, didn't take shit out of my bags. It almost justified the 8 hours it took me to get a global entry card (drive to boston, wait, talk to beurocrats about how I'm not a threat, drive back to vermont).
Sounds like a battered housewife, explaining how the fact that her abusive husband only blacked one eye in his latest drunken rage means he really does love her.
If the system doesn't collect individual data, then it's impossible to get the scope creep you're afraid of.
Your whole premise is that the big evil Man will secretly collect individual data. Maybe they'll secretly implant tracking chips in our molars. Maybe the Pod People will reveal themselves. If you want to worry about every possible outcome of everything, go for it. I actually have a life that I like to enjoy.
THe GP made the mistake of assuming that you knew how BT works.
Yes, curse this altruistic sense of giving the benefit of the doubt!
I don't expect you to read the article. But I do expect you to read the entire submission.
"County officials note that they are stripping out part of the MAC".
Which will always happen, universally; the policy will never change, and there's no way clandestine Three-Letter-Agencies will present NSL's demanding the logs and records for them to compare against their massive haystack databases. Trust us, we're from the government and we're here to help!
I sometimes wonder what it's like to be so naively trusting of authority... but only until I remember that I have a brain, and remember that it does function properly.
OK, since you've worked in the field and are apparently concerned about privacy, I'll take your word for it. I can always spoof my MAC addys, I suppose.
One caveat:
DOTs actively avoid retaining that kind of data.
That's not universal - hell, here in MO the DOR (who runs the DOT) just got their asses handed to them for illegally retaining records of CCW permit holders, then illegally turning them over to the IRS.
I've learned better than to rely on bureaucratic incompetence.
If you are going to plug in and you need to do it automatically you are just lazy.
Dude - lazy is the true name of progress.
If not for the inherent laziness of humans, there would be no such thing as automatic transmissions, power windows/locks, window defrosters, and pretty much ever other invention in the history of mankind.
Seriously - do you want to spend the majority of your waking hours hunting, gathering, and fleeing from predators? No?
What is needed is a simple mechanical design standard to 'plug in' the car that doesn't require extra steps for the driver. Like, when you drive into a car wash, you feel the wheels come to rest in a track.
I was just thinking about a solution for that: A combination of self-parking mechanism and a magnetized connector (like the power cord on my '08 vintage MacBook) would take care of it.
Basically, any vehicle that's part of the system could pull up next to the spot, at which point the computer-assist would take over and park the vehicle so that the charging pads lined up. Once the vehicle shifts into park (or the key is removed), sensors would communicate with the charging system to release the magnetic lock on the pavement and engage the one on the vehicle. The charging port would then snap into it's connector on the floor of the automobile.
When leaving the space, have a trigger set so that when the key is turned to the ACC or ON position, the magnetic coupling switches polarity, dropping the charging port back into its cradle in the street below, and freeing the vehicle up for travel.
It's an idea anyway... and since I posted it online, I call prior art! CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0, bitches!
A couple license plate readers would accomplish the same feat, without having to port-scan my personal property*. Probably a lot cheaper to do it that way, too.
Nope, computer-vision-based vehicle detection systems are more expensive -- in fact, the only reason why DOTs bother with bluetooth is that it's cheaper (it is not better).
By the way: vision-based VDS detects the whole vehicle (in the sense of "are the pixels in this rectangle we've superimposed on the image of the lane changing?"). One VDS camera can cover the whole width of the freeway (in each direction). Detecting license plates (let alone reading them) would probably be even more expensive because it would require either higher-resolution cameras, a camera for each lane, or both.
So put an RFID tag in the registration tag. Granted, that doesn't do much to assuage my paranoia about having my travel patterns logged, but at least they'd be tracking their own stuff instead of mine. Plus, no need to worry about scope creep (other than the aforementioned ubiquitous logging of individual travel).
They aren't 'port scanning' anything. They don't know your 'personal property' even exists. They are simply standing on a corner yelling 'anybody want to identify themselves'. If you don't want to identify yourself, don't answer.
They might not today, but all that data adds up.
MAC 00:00:86:FF:2B:C4 might not personally identify you on the first pass, but as we've learned from Google and Facebook, with enough data points you can identify anybody. What happens when LEO Bluetooth scanners are ubiquitous? Defacto universal tracking system, that's what.
If you don't want your personal property to identiffy itself, instruct it not to answer.
Many cars do not give the owners that option; if the car is on, then the BT is on and broadcasting.
I am - it is a problem because of the inevitability of scope-creep. Waiting until it's too late would be absolutely fucking stupid, because as we've all seen with legislation such as the PATRIOT Act and NDAA, once the government takes a kind of power they will not fucking surrender it.
I'm going to ignore the rest of your post as it adds nothing useful to the conversation (other than letting the rest of us know how unreasonable a person you are).
It should be noted that they are not "connecting" to these devices, just cataloging the ones which announce their own presence. It's pretty fricking passive.
OK, so why not scan my license plate (which belongs to the state anyway), and not my personal property?
I'll bet the license-plate-scanner equip is probably a lot cheaper to boot.
If you don't want to be discovered with Bluetooth, don't leave your devices in discoverable mode!
More to the point - What BT devices actually broadcast their availability continually?
I know the Bluetooth in a VW Jetta will talk to anything within range, until a device actually pairs with it; I also know that when Ford started putting BT capabilities in cars they were notorious for being wide open and beaconing constantly, although I'd wager FoMoCo has done something about it since then (I found out about the issue pre-Sync).
Why would they need to know statistics about bluetooth devices in cards? They see a bluetooth device at point A, then a little later see the same device at point B. d=rt, the distance and time are known so the rate of traffic can be easily determined.
A couple license plate readers would accomplish the same feat, without having to port-scan my personal property*. Probably a lot cheaper to do it that way, too.
* Contrary to popular misconception, your license plates are property of the state, not the individual they are issued to.
I like all of the computers in my car. If someone wants to gather anonymous data to make traffic better, I'm fine with that.
Right, because just like every other government tracking program, there's absolutely no way it will ever have its scope expanded to include warrant-less tracking/searches.
Ever. Nothing to worry about, citizen, Big Brother loves you.
Now back to your regularly scheduled broadcast of Everyone Loves Hypnotoad.
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
What you thought the French people were working to forward US interests in the francosphere? There was the famous you are either with us or against us speech as well. What I don't get is why hasn't the bombing started yet since the French are obviously planning to subvert our authority.
Just seems like a colossal waste to spent time and resources spying on a group of people we all know will wave the white flag the second shit comes to blows.
Ha ha, just yankin' yer chains, surrender monkeys*!
All kidding aside it seems like they are basically wasting massive amounts of resources creating the impression that they are doing something. Look at all of the stuff we are looking at type of thing.
Huh, sounds like Congress - lots of action that never really accomplishes anything useful, just a reason for them to tell their constituents, "we're doing something."
I think it is time to poison the well and just create some throwaway e-mail accounts and haven them e-mail around multi meg attachments that are dumps from/dev/random with dates a couple years out or latitude / longitude coordinates for subject headers.
Have seen that suggested repeatedly, but to date have yet to see anything useful come from the suggestion: I dunno, a bit of software or script that I can run in the background SETI@home style would probably garner a fair amount of popularity, since it would be essentially fire-and-forget. People don't mind willfully running stuff they agree with if it takes little effort on their part
Boo freekin hoo. This is what the NSA is supposed to do.
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
They are not supposed to waste billions of dollars worth of resources building haystacks through which to search for needles.
Face it, if the US governments interest was truly limited to fighting actual terrorism, the whole dragnet approach would be considered nothing but an expensive waste of time.
So a post saying CIA wanted 9/11 to happen so it's budget would be increased gets modded "Interesting". You mods really need to hang out more on conspiracy nut message boards, you'll find a lot more "interesting" stuff there.
There's nothing nutty about it - it's a proven fact that the government had good, solid intel that a group of mostly Saudi men were planning on hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. It's also a proven fact that our government did nothing to stop them, and that the budgets and powers of various TLAs see explosive growth (no pun intended) when shit like that is allowed to happen. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to want to believe, the people who run these agencies are not inept, incompetent fools who can't tell their asses from their heads; guys like Patraeus and Clapper got to where they are by being very, very good at what they do.
What I find nutty is how so many people deny the truth, even when it has been covered, extensively, by multiple media outlets.
I guess some folks will believe anything... so long as it's a government agent giving the narrative.
It's scary that our electrical grid is so vulnerable and there doesn't seem to be much urgency to get it fixed.
Sure - scary to you, scary to me, scary to the old lady down the road.
You know who it's not scary to? The NSA, CIA, and all other clandestine TLAs that profit from allowing harm to come to American citizens.
Remember: the CIA had solid intel about the 9/11/2001 terrorists, but did nothing to stop them; same goes for the Boston Bombers. The more Americans that they can allow to be injured by "terrorists," the fatter their budgets grow.
Stopping terrorist attacks is the last thing anyone in the federal government wants to have happen. THAT is fucking scary.
Like Schrödinger's cat, we are all both guilty and innocent at the same time within the box of secret anti-terror laws passed by the government.
That made me laugh... one of those sad laughs. You know, where you start chuckling because it's kinda funny, but end up nearly crying because it's also kinda true?
Slashdot Mirror
I practically died with joy the first time I got to use a pre-check lane. Kept my coat, shoes, and belt on, didn't take shit out of my bags. It almost justified the 8 hours it took me to get a global entry card (drive to boston, wait, talk to beurocrats about how I'm not a threat, drive back to vermont).
Sounds like a battered housewife, explaining how the fact that her abusive husband only blacked one eye in his latest drunken rage means he really does love her.
If the system doesn't collect individual data, then it's impossible to get the scope creep you're afraid of.
Your whole premise is that the big evil Man will secretly collect individual data. Maybe they'll secretly implant tracking chips in our molars. Maybe the Pod People will reveal themselves. If you want to worry about every possible outcome of everything, go for it. I actually have a life that I like to enjoy.
THe GP made the mistake of assuming that you knew how BT works.
Yes, curse this altruistic sense of giving the benefit of the doubt!
I don't expect you to read the article. But I do expect you to read the entire submission.
"County officials note that they are stripping out part of the MAC".
Which will always happen, universally; the policy will never change, and there's no way clandestine Three-Letter-Agencies will present NSL's demanding the logs and records for them to compare against their massive haystack databases. Trust us, we're from the government and we're here to help!
I sometimes wonder what it's like to be so naively trusting of authority... but only until I remember that I have a brain, and remember that it does function properly.
OK, since you've worked in the field and are apparently concerned about privacy, I'll take your word for it. I can always spoof my MAC addys, I suppose.
One caveat:
DOTs actively avoid retaining that kind of data.
That's not universal - hell, here in MO the DOR (who runs the DOT) just got their asses handed to them for illegally retaining records of CCW permit holders, then illegally turning them over to the IRS.
I've learned better than to rely on bureaucratic incompetence.
They already have ones that wirelessly charge people and their dogs.
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-yorkers-and-dogs-risk-electrocution-on-city-streets-how-to-be-safe
Thank you for posting a reminder as to why I'm glad I don't live in New York.
If you are going to plug in and you need to do it automatically you are just lazy.
Dude - lazy is the true name of progress.
If not for the inherent laziness of humans, there would be no such thing as automatic transmissions, power windows/locks, window defrosters, and pretty much ever other invention in the history of mankind.
Seriously - do you want to spend the majority of your waking hours hunting, gathering, and fleeing from predators? No?
Then quite whining, you lazy bastard.
What is needed is a simple mechanical design standard to 'plug in' the car that doesn't require extra steps for the driver. Like, when you drive into a car wash, you feel the wheels come to rest in a track.
I was just thinking about a solution for that: A combination of self-parking mechanism and a magnetized connector (like the power cord on my '08 vintage MacBook) would take care of it.
Basically, any vehicle that's part of the system could pull up next to the spot, at which point the computer-assist would take over and park the vehicle so that the charging pads lined up. Once the vehicle shifts into park (or the key is removed), sensors would communicate with the charging system to release the magnetic lock on the pavement and engage the one on the vehicle. The charging port would then snap into it's connector on the floor of the automobile.
When leaving the space, have a trigger set so that when the key is turned to the ACC or ON position, the magnetic coupling switches polarity, dropping the charging port back into its cradle in the street below, and freeing the vehicle up for travel.
It's an idea anyway... and since I posted it online, I call prior art! CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0, bitches!
They forgot to mention the potential issue with all those alternating magnetic fields everywhere. What happens when they start resonating?
Then it's time to bust out the crowbar and ask yourself: WWGFD?
I drive an EV because it's better for the environment
You depend on a healthy environment, so this benefits you too
Yes, but unfortunately all the environmental benefits are offset by the hot, noxious gas emanating from your ego-inflated sense of moral superiority.
Nope, computer-vision-based vehicle detection systems are more expensive -- in fact, the only reason why DOTs bother with bluetooth is that it's cheaper (it is not better).
By the way: vision-based VDS detects the whole vehicle (in the sense of "are the pixels in this rectangle we've superimposed on the image of the lane changing?"). One VDS camera can cover the whole width of the freeway (in each direction). Detecting license plates (let alone reading them) would probably be even more expensive because it would require either higher-resolution cameras, a camera for each lane, or both.
So put an RFID tag in the registration tag. Granted, that doesn't do much to assuage my paranoia about having my travel patterns logged, but at least they'd be tracking their own stuff instead of mine. Plus, no need to worry about scope creep (other than the aforementioned ubiquitous logging of individual travel).
Where there's a will, there's a way.
They aren't 'port scanning' anything. They don't know your 'personal property' even exists. They are simply standing on a corner yelling 'anybody want to identify themselves'. If you don't want to identify yourself, don't answer.
They might not today, but all that data adds up.
MAC 00:00:86:FF:2B:C4 might not personally identify you on the first pass, but as we've learned from Google and Facebook, with enough data points you can identify anybody. What happens when LEO Bluetooth scanners are ubiquitous? Defacto universal tracking system, that's what.
If you don't want your personal property to identiffy itself, instruct it not to answer.
Many cars do not give the owners that option; if the car is on, then the BT is on and broadcasting.
How about we deal with problems as they occur
I am - it is a problem because of the inevitability of scope-creep. Waiting until it's too late would be absolutely fucking stupid, because as we've all seen with legislation such as the PATRIOT Act and NDAA, once the government takes a kind of power they will not fucking surrender it.
I'm going to ignore the rest of your post as it adds nothing useful to the conversation (other than letting the rest of us know how unreasonable a person you are).
It should be noted that they are not "connecting" to these devices, just cataloging the ones which announce their own presence. It's pretty fricking passive.
OK, so why not scan my license plate (which belongs to the state anyway), and not my personal property?
I'll bet the license-plate-scanner equip is probably a lot cheaper to boot.
If you don't want to be discovered with Bluetooth, don't leave your devices in discoverable mode!
More to the point - What BT devices actually broadcast their availability continually?
I know the Bluetooth in a VW Jetta will talk to anything within range, until a device actually pairs with it; I also know that when Ford started putting BT capabilities in cars they were notorious for being wide open and beaconing constantly, although I'd wager FoMoCo has done something about it since then (I found out about the issue pre-Sync).
Why would they need to know statistics about bluetooth devices in cards? They see a bluetooth device at point A, then a little later see the same device at point B. d=rt, the distance and time are known so the rate of traffic can be easily determined.
A couple license plate readers would accomplish the same feat, without having to port-scan my personal property*. Probably a lot cheaper to do it that way, too.
* Contrary to popular misconception, your license plates are property of the state, not the individual they are issued to.
I like all of the computers in my car. If someone wants to gather anonymous data to make traffic better, I'm fine with that.
Right, because just like every other government tracking program, there's absolutely no way it will ever have its scope expanded to include warrant-less tracking/searches.
Ever. Nothing to worry about, citizen, Big Brother loves you.
Now back to your regularly scheduled broadcast of Everyone Loves Hypnotoad.
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
What you thought the French people were working to forward US interests in the francosphere? There was the famous you are either with us or against us speech as well. What I don't get is why hasn't the bombing started yet since the French are obviously planning to subvert our authority.
Just seems like a colossal waste to spent time and resources spying on a group of people we all know will wave the white flag the second shit comes to blows.
Ha ha, just yankin' yer chains, surrender monkeys*!
All kidding aside it seems like they are basically wasting massive amounts of resources creating the impression that they are doing something. Look at all of the stuff we are looking at type of thing.
Huh, sounds like Congress - lots of action that never really accomplishes anything useful, just a reason for them to tell their constituents, "we're doing something."
I think it is time to poison the well and just create some throwaway e-mail accounts and haven them e-mail around multi meg attachments that are dumps from /dev/random with dates a couple years out or latitude / longitude coordinates for subject headers.
Have seen that suggested repeatedly, but to date have yet to see anything useful come from the suggestion: I dunno, a bit of software or script that I can run in the background SETI@home style would probably garner a fair amount of popularity, since it would be essentially fire-and-forget. People don't mind willfully running stuff they agree with if it takes little effort on their part
* My favorite racial slur ever.
Of all time.
Boo freekin hoo. This is what the NSA is supposed to do.
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
They are not supposed to waste billions of dollars worth of resources building haystacks through which to search for needles.
Face it, if the US governments interest was truly limited to fighting actual terrorism, the whole dragnet approach would be considered nothing but an expensive waste of time.
Let's get real. The worst Christians are Westboro Baptist Church, and what do they do?
First, FTFY.
Second, you're living in a fantasy land if you think the WBC is the be-all-end-all for asshole "Christians" in the USA.
Try telling that to the family of Dr. George Tiller, you ignorant prick.
So a post saying CIA wanted 9/11 to happen so it's budget would be increased gets modded "Interesting". You mods really need to hang out more on conspiracy nut message boards, you'll find a lot more "interesting" stuff there.
There's nothing nutty about it - it's a proven fact that the government had good, solid intel that a group of mostly Saudi men were planning on hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. It's also a proven fact that our government did nothing to stop them, and that the budgets and powers of various TLAs see explosive growth (no pun intended) when shit like that is allowed to happen. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to want to believe, the people who run these agencies are not inept, incompetent fools who can't tell their asses from their heads; guys like Patraeus and Clapper got to where they are by being very, very good at what they do.
What I find nutty is how so many people deny the truth, even when it has been covered, extensively, by multiple media outlets.
I guess some folks will believe anything... so long as it's a government agent giving the narrative.
It's scary that our electrical grid is so vulnerable and there doesn't seem to be much urgency to get it fixed.
Sure - scary to you, scary to me, scary to the old lady down the road.
You know who it's not scary to? The NSA, CIA, and all other clandestine TLAs that profit from allowing harm to come to American citizens.
Remember: the CIA had solid intel about the 9/11/2001 terrorists, but did nothing to stop them; same goes for the Boston Bombers. The more Americans that they can allow to be injured by "terrorists," the fatter their budgets grow.
Stopping terrorist attacks is the last thing anyone in the federal government wants to have happen. THAT is fucking scary.
Make all offers valid for at minimum one second and poof 99% of high frequency "trading" vanishes.
... and transactions costs go up for everyone.
You mean, 'everyone who participates.'
A group of people who, at this point, does not include the vast majority of citizens.
I'll go dig out my 5 nanometer violin and play the saddest song ever written for those privileged few.
The politicians... wanted to ruin the economy from the top down...
FTFY.
Like Schrödinger's cat, we are all both guilty and innocent at the same time within the box of secret anti-terror laws passed by the government.
That made me laugh... one of those sad laughs. You know, where you start chuckling because it's kinda funny, but end up nearly crying because it's also kinda true?
One of the big problems Karma had was getting reliable suppliers for their parts, they didn't have the presence to get what they wanted
Another big problem: People shelling out $100K for a car want something fast and obscene that won't burst into flames upon getting a bit damp.
At least Ferrari can pull off 2 out of 3.