Plan for RFID chips to track license plates may be coming to U. S.

[seafan]

From Wireless World, August 12, 2005


A controversial plan to embed radio frequency identification chips in license plates in the United Kingdom also may be coming to the United States, experts told UPI's Wireless World.

The so-called e-Plate, developed by the British firm Hills Numberplates, is a license plate that also transmits a vehicle's unique identification via encryption that can be read by a small detector, whose output can be used locally or communicated to a distant host.

"RFID is all the rage these days," said Bradley Gross, chairman of Becker & Poliakoff, a law firm in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., "but my fear is that this use of the technology is tracking at its worst."

The reason for the concern in the legal and privacy-rights communities is that e-plates may expand the ability of police to track individuals by the movement of their vehicles.

A single RFID reader can identify dozens of vehicles fitted with e-plates moving at any speed at a distance of about 100 yards. The e-plate looks just like a standard plate, but it contains an embedded chip that cannot be seen or removed. It is self-powered with a battery life of up to 10 years.

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http://www.physorg.com/news5781.html


Are we ready to push back against this next, incremental violation of our privacy?

[spindrifter]

1. This is an outrageous

incursion into our privacy. I don't care what benefit the cops think they will derive from this, I have absolutely no desire to have people know how long I spend at the grocery store or that I drove out to the mountains on a weekend day. Screw them.

[Ilsa]

2. Is there a way to disable it? Maybe some sort of

electromagnetic interference?

[kestrel91316]

3. Betcha a little treatment with a large magnet would mess it up.......

[AllegroRondo]

5. Depends on what kind of chip they use

if its a battery powered chip, they are pretty easy to read and hard to interfere with. They are also much more expensive, and sill kind of big (about the size of a small cell phone). I doubt our states would pay to put one of those on your plates.

If its an unpowered chip, they are notoriously unreliable. They cant be read at more than about 3 feet from a powered reader, and are easily interfered with by anything electrical or magnetic. For example, you cant use them to track computers or electronic components, they just cant handle it.

[TechBear_Seattle]

7. Find where the chip is embedded, then vigorously apply a hammer

"Honestly, officer, I was rear-ended about a month ago. The body shop did wonders for the car, but the plate got a bit banged up."

[dusmcj]

4. static electricity or other surges destroy delicate circuits. nt

[Bridget Burke]

6. But--Texas stopped putting Stickers on License Plates years ago.

The stickers now go on the windshield next to the Inspection Stickers.

Reason: So many license plates are stolen! Guess this would make them even more valuable.

[seafan]

8. Texas now quietly using chips in tollway cards to generate records.

snip

"Police will be able to track your every move when you drive," said Liz McIntyre, an RFID expert and author of the forthcoming book, "Spychips: How Major Corporations and the Government Plan to Track Your Every Move With RFID" (Nelson Current, October 2005). "What if they put these readers at a mosque? They could tell who was inside at a worship service by which cars were in the parking lot."

Indeed, the makers of the technology boast that the e-plates can furnish access control, automated tolling, asset tracking, traffic-flow monitoring and vehicle crime and "non-compliance." The chips can be outfitted with 128 bit encryption to prevent hacking.

snip

"The technology side of this is readily available, as it is used in the high-frequency battery-powered transmitters in the toll road systems like Fastrak," said attorney Dave Abel, with the international law firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP, who was an engineer before coming to the bar. "To use the toll road, a user signs up -- providing name, address, billing info, et cetera, which is stored in a database. Each time they drive past the reader station they are billed or a credit is deducted from an account."

snip

Some experts said governments already are using the chips embedded in tollway access cards without heed to privacy rights. In Texas, for example, tollway authorities have been "making printouts of the records of every time you pass through a toll booth, what time you passed through," McIntyre said. "The government hasn't established a privacy policy for this, and people are not being informed that they are doing this. This is an instance of Big Brother on the highway."

[LeftHander]

9. Nothing that a hour in a 350 degree oven won't fix.

Does that mean they will arrest you if you chip doesn't work?

What is the point of having one??