The scenario: In the not-too-distant future, cars have RFID-type chips in them that report your car's speed to your local police station, who then ticket you electronically if you break the speed limit. This could potentially save millions of dollars, as police are no longer required to cruise the streets with the sole intent to look for speeders and meet quotas.

The question: Do the monetary/beauracratic/whatever benefits of this system outweigh civil rights concerns?

My take: Obviously, there would be a lot of opposition to this system. Civil rights activists, such as the ACLU would do everything in their power to get it stopped. Do I agree with them, though.. to tell you the truth, I don't know what to think about this. I was just daydreaming today and thought this hypothetical scenario up. (Props to whoever thought of it first though.. surely someone's thought of it by now, I just haven't read or heard anything about it).

Honestly, to me this is a tough question. What are your thoughts about it?

i think there would be a lot of opposition to that.

opponents would say that it infringes their rights.

propponents would say that it would cut down on police on the streets and that it would make the roads safer

That should be the least of their worries... humans will probably be RFID'd before cars are...

no. the civil rights of this issue far outweigh the advantages of this technology.
if you have an rf transmitter strong enough to go to your neighbours house (these are very easy to make or buy) you could see what your neighbour has in their house.
no one i know wants that.

I'd oppose it. Many times, you have to break the speed limit in the passing lane.

Said tags would probably be able to tell the location of any car too. Making the chips mandatory would give a lot of civil libartarians seizures.

Okay, assuming the technical flaws like the one Wolfy described are ironed out, what would your answer be then? I'm interested in the civil rights of the issue, not the technical aspects. :p

So far the only compelling argument against it has been Evad's. But, how will having this chip in my car allow me to see into my neighbor's house? Please explain.

True, but think of the implications from the law enforcement side. They'd know exactly where a stolen car is, unless the thief was smart enough to disable the RFID chip. By the way, this information would only be available to law enforcement. I really don't think just anyone would have access to where any given person is at any given time, or at least 99.99% of the population wouldn't have the technical expertise to do that.

Things like OnStar can already locate vehicles. I realise it is quite handy in certain circumstances, but making it mandatory goes way too far towards big-brotherness for a lot of people. People who would complain wouldn't be worried about some other random person knowing, they would be worried about the government knowing.

American law assumes that one is innocent until proven guilty (or at least it's supposed to assume that). This would be like a police officer following innocent people around, waiting for them to break a law, or like the government putting up cameras or wiretaps inside your house. I, for one, would not support it.

The technology for locating cars already exists. It's just private and you pay for it. The speeding tickets could be done other ways that wouldn't be such an issue, like timing drivers along certain strecthes of road and things like that.

if you have an rfid tag in something, all you have to do is have a transmitter/reciever of rf and it could read what the item is that contains the tag. it's a very simple technology.
so if everything has rfid tags for convenience sake, i could very easily find out what my neighbour has, when they bought it, what size it is, where it was made... and i could probably tell how far away it was from my position with the right equipment.

so i would know what my neighbour has and where it is in the house. all for less than $2k.

i don't want that.

But that's the thing. There's not much wiggle room for your innocence when you're going 50 in a 20. The only thing you could argue is faulty equipment, not Miranda rights.

Now wait... isn't the idea against speeding that it's DANGEROUS? Shouldn't someone who's speeding be STOPPED and PULLED OVER? Electronically ticketing them is completelly avoiding the major concern; punishing and preventing. You're not preventing a major highway accident by throwing a fine onto someone's tab. I can see it now:

"Get the new 'high speed' plan from Honda. For only 10 cents an hour, you can drive over your speed limits each month!"

"Lauri! I and your father warned you about going over your monthly speeding allotment... you're 50 dollars over! What do you have to say for yourself?!"

What should happen is that a little popup shows how much of a fine they're getting for continuing the violation. The price goes up every 20 seconds another 500 dollars. That'd stop speeders.

JediKirby

Oh, that'd be great. Every time you need to pass someone or go accidentally go 1mph over the speed limit you get a fine. Watch next time and see how often you go more than 3 MPH over the speed limit next time you drive.

It's not so much about actual guilt or innocence in this case, but about how the government goes about determining said guilt or innocence. It may be fine (if not really desirable) to have cops and electronic surveillance in public places, but a car is private property. It would be like a law requiring a cop to ride around in your car with you and make sure you're not speeding. The framers of the American constitution went out of their way to make sure the government didn't intrude on people like that.

Kirby: It wouldn't be too difficult to connect this monitering chip to a cutoff switch that would kill your car's engine if you were going at dangerous speeds. But I agree -- machines can't do everything. For instance, stopping a car dead in the middle of a busy freeway might not be such a good idea. And etc.

We have the next stop below that already in Australia: permanent speed cameras. They're installed on a few freeways and make the local government millions.

And they're the reason I avoid said freeways like the plague.

Can't you just like, jump in the pouch of a kangeroo and it will take you where you want to go? Isn't that how it works down there?

Nah, it's all gross and sticky in a kangaroo's pouch, we try and avoid doing that now.

i wouldn't care... someone would invent a technology to block whatever is installed.... just use that... kinda like the stuff you can buy that detects speed cameras.

So are you guys so against it because you're concerned for your privacy, or just because you want to speed?

I don't like it. I have a hard time hiding from the government as it is.

>.>

<.<

Both. I like my privacy while speeding.

Well you guys have just about convinced me, but I have yet to see an authoritative post about exactly why it'd be such a slap in the face to civil rights. Evad's arguement, while interesting, just isn't believable to me. The average person isn't going to have that capability.

I think Krig was on the right track, but I'm not convinced. This isn't the same kettle of fish as requiring a cop to ride around with you everywhere you go. This is completely non-obtrusive. If you want to speed -- then speed. Speed all you want. But face the consequences later.

I'm not totally convinced. I'm really close, I'm just not there.

Or you could just have a detector within the car, making it physically impossible to go above the speed limit, as the car won't let you.

Imagine the kind of jobs this technology would eliminate. We could destroy our economy by eliminating nearly 90% of the highway patrol officers. Great plan.

Uh, no. The same job would be done, just without the people. How is that going to damage the economy?

It's like car manufacture. That used to be done by hundreds of people, but is now done by a dozen machines. It's quicker, cheaper and more efficient.

There are plenty of jobs out there that could be done just as well by machines, and should be done by machines.

Isn't it just like a permanent wire tap, though? Sure; you have "nothing to fear unless you've done something wrong". Or, of course, the people watching you are corrupt or a little too bored or...

Australia is far too draconian about speeding as it is. You have to spend more time checking you're not 2km/hr over the speed limit than you do on the road to make sure you're not hitting anything. Stupid speed cameras.

Bill, your economic argument is weak. In 1900, 50% of all jobs were agricultural. Today, 2% of all jobs are agricultural. Delaying world progress for the sake of a few bucks is, honestly, very frightening to me.

And.. well.. yeah.

Those things are used more and more in Finland also. But I think they have some kind of marginal, maybe like 10 km/h or something (quite like the police, who won't give you a ticket if you drive just some few km/h over the limit).

There's no allowance here, at all, I don't think. It used to be 10%, but then the damn government reduced it to 3km/h, and now I think even that's gone. And it's all in the quest for revenues.

Unless you're being sarcastic that was the stupidest thing said in the history of ever.

Mort-Hog phrased it a little weirdly, but his point makes economic sense.

I'm for stricter enforcement of looser laws.

A scanner powerful enough to charge, read, and then triangulate the location of an RFID tag from any distance would be powerful enough to render an entire city's population sterile.

Kids, learn how things work before trying to talk about them.

Edit: If the government wanted to track you and how fast your car was going there are many devices which can do it better. Not to mention, you know, we currently have the technology to build one, while large RFID scanners are not possible.

Okay, replace "RFID" with whatever. God. I don't care about the technology, and I don't claim to be an expert on it. I'm trying to discuss the civil rights issue.

The real reason for all these privacy laws is to limit the powers of government over the people. The Founding Fathers were concerned that some Hitlerian dictator (either foreign or domestic) might somehow get control of the government, despite all their safeguards against that. If such a thing were to happen, they wanted the people to be able to fight back and overthrow said dictator. After all, they'd just emerged from a successful revolution against the powerful British Empire, they wanted to make sure that, if things got bad enough, their descendants could do the same. Obviously, if the government could track the location of every car in America (which, let's face it, would be a simple thing to build into one of these monitoring chips), that would put a bit of a dampner on any potential revolutions.

Obviously, this isn't such a concern right now what with America being a world superpower and all (I don't think even the most extreme anti-Bush people have proposed an armed revolution), but it's our grandchildren and their descendants it might concern. Who knows what might happen in a hundred years? Two hundred years? I'm pretty sure it won't be a Star Trek type utopia, at any rate...

Bow chicka wow wow.


Sorry.

I believe this isn't a major infringement on civil rights. Sure it might take alot of joy out of driving (and possibly hurt the automobile industry), but this just is, what I consider, an overly-aggressive law-enforcement plan (if they are only used as you said). Would it be much of a concern if they know at what speed I am driving at all times? Not really (unless if the speed limits are unreasonable). The road patrols' main job is to watch for speeders, and this plan just aids them. A speeding ticket is a speeding ticket no matter where and when. And if the patrols know where the location of my car is at all times, is this such an alarming problem? Not really. If the data can not be released to the public, could it ever harm me? Transportation in today's society is covered with cameras and surveillance materials. As long if this matter doesn't cross into my private home, what I do on public ground can be recorded.

Now, if the law requires a camera to be installed inside my car, that would be a major concern of privacy. Unlike just driving speed data, video footage would show what I personally do in my car at all times. What I do inside my car, unless its illegal business, in no one else's right to know. If the location of my car was given to companies like advertising, this would also be a problem. I don't want to get ads like, "You seem to like going to New York! Do you want to know the best fares for hotels and resturants? We can help and hotels.com!" And so on.

The things only have a range of 20meters anyway.
*Watches as entire thread falls flast on its face.*